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43 articles, 2016-08-19 18:01 1 Twitter tackles violent trolls and terrorist sympathisers with huge 235,000 account takedown (1.02/2) Daily suspensions are up over 80 per cent since last year, firm claims,Web ,Twitter 2016-08-19 17:24 2KB www.computing.co.uk 2 Galaxy C9 Is the Next Smartphone in Samsung's C Series The new Samsung smartphone is codenamed Amy 2016-08-19 11:14 (1.02/2) 1KB news.softpedia.com 3 Best Windows apps this week One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for (1.02/2) Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days. One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week’s... 2016-08-19 10:48 4KB feeds.betanews.com 4 Microsoft PowerShell Goes Open Source, Arrives On Linux, Mac Microsoft has released its PowerShell command-line shell and (1.02/2) scripting language as open source, demonstrating continued support for alternate operating systems. 2016-08-19 10:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 5 Microsoft isn't alone when it comes to Windows 10's sneaky data mining Plantronics and McAfee could also use a good dose of transparency (1.02/2) 2016-08-19 09:07 4KB www.techradar.com 6 The Galaxy Note 7 Undergoes Teardown, Is Slightly Easier to Repair than the S7 iFixit performed a teardown of the Galaxy Note 7 2016-08-19 09:12 2KB
(1.00/2) news.softpedia.com
7 The best free PDF editor 2016 Edit images and text, split and merge documents, add annotations and convert formats 2016-08-19 09:30 7KB www.techradar.com (0.03/2) 8 PyCharm Edu Adds Adaptive Courses Programming book reviews, programming tutorials,programming news, C#, Ruby, Python,C, C++, PHP, Visual Basic, Computer book reviews, computer history, programming history, joomla, theory, spreadsheets and more. 2016-08-19 17:24 2KB www.i-programmer.info
9 Measurements to See Value and Delivery Johanna Rothman gave a talk at Agile 2016 about measurements for agile program management. She explored the challenges around selecting what to measure, how traditional measurements don't provide the right information to make decisions from and provided examples of measurements that can be useful. 2016-08-19 17:23 4KB www.infoq.com 10 Samsung Announces Commercial Launch of the Note 7 in Select Markets The smartphone is available for purchase in multiple markets 2016-08-19 12:40 1KB news.softpedia.com 11 UAC Bypass with Elevated Privileges Works on All Windows Versions Microsoft delays fixing the reported issue 2016-08-19 12:35 4KB news.softpedia.com 12 Stress-test your PC with HeavyLoad Jam Software’s quick and easy PC stress-tester HeavyLoad has just been updated to version 3.4, its first release in more than two years. The package is as easy to use as ever, maxing out your CPU, allocating RAM and drive space and stressing your... 2016-08-19 12:12 1KB feeds.betanews.com 13 Google Duo Becomes the Most Popular Free App in the Play Store The application was released just days ago 2016-08-19 12:03 1KB mobile.softpedia.com 14 Sony to Announce the New Xperia XR During IFA 2016 Sony will also introduce new accessories during the event 2016-08-19 11:26 1KB news.softpedia.com 15 Apple to Launch Watch 2 Without Cellular Support Due to Battery Life Worries Apple wanted the device to come with such a feature 2016-08-19 10:54 2KB news.softpedia.com 16 iPhone 7’s Camera Will Still Be a Big Deal, Even Without Dual Lens Leaks shows image stabilization improvements for the camera 2016-08-19 10:49 1KB news.softpedia.com
17 Traditional malware falls as mobile malware rises in July The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July, but mobile malware now accounts for nine percent of the total -- up 50 percent from June. The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July,... 2016-08-19 10:39 2KB feeds.betanews.com 18 Windows Defender Demo App Lets You Try Out a Modern Windows 10 Antivirus Try out a modern version of Windows Defender yourself 2016-08-19 09:55 1KB www.softpedia.com 19 Apple's macOS beta timings hint at later Sierra launch It's running later than the pace of El Capitan's previews last year 2016-08-19 09:55 2KB www.techradar.com 20 Samsung and Android Saw Increased Market Share in Q2, Gartner Reports Global sales of smartphones grew 4.3% year-on-year 2016-08-19 09:48 2KB news.softpedia.com 21 Gartner: Public Sector CIOs Need Digital Transformation Vision A report from IT research firm Gartner says public sector CIOs need to promote a compelling vision for digital transformation and make change inclusive. If successful, the results could transform the type of services government agencies can offer citizens. 2016-08-19 09:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 22 SD Times GitHub project of the week: FastText The Facebook AI Research lab open-sourced its library that helps developers build scalable solution for text representation and classification 2016-08-19 09:00 3KB sdtimes.com 23 Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile Finally Available for Download The official app is now available for all users 2016-08-19 08:54 1KB www.softpedia.com 24 Microsoft Seeking “Curious Minds” to Try Out New Android App Join this private testing program to try out a new app 2016-08-19 08:40 2KB news.softpedia.com 25 NVIDIA 354.99 Quadro and Tesla Packages Are Up for Grabs The new version adds security updates for driver components 2016-08-19 08:25 1KB drivers.softpedia.com 26 China wants to monitor and control all live streams in real time China's overarching control of the internet, technology, and its people in general is nothing new. The Great Firewall of China is famous for placing huge restrictions on what citizens are able to access online, and recently the government banned the use of social media as... 2016-08-19 08:16 1KB feeds.betanews.com 27 TransUnion's Tech Overhaul Reaps Cultural Rewards In the process of transforming its technology infrastructure, TransUnion has found itself attracting top-notch IT talent normally repelled by the idea of working for a stuffy financial institution. Here's how they did it. 2016-08-19 08:06 8KB www.informationweek.com 28 SlackEX Linux Live Now Powered by Linux Kernel 4.7.1, Based on Slackware 14.2 Also includes VirtualBox 5.1.4 and Nvidia 367.35 2016-08-19 02:00 1KB news.softpedia.com 29 ReactOS 0.4.2 Operating System Lets You Mount and Read Various Unix Filesystems The overall user experience has been improved 2016-08-19 01:05 2KB linux.softpedia.com 30 Brit Hacks Pokemon Go Servers to Create Bot So Players Don't Have to Walk Around Dev admins he's facing legal pressure to take the site down 2016-08-19 00:56 2KB news.softpedia.com 31 Ubuntu Budgie Remix 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) ISO Coming Soon with New LightDM Greeter budgie-remix operating system gets new features 2016-08-19 00:13 2KB news.softpedia.com 32 MPSA Online Services At-a-Glance: Software Licensing Simplified The Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) At-a-Glance allows customers to purchase not only licenses, but also... Read more. 2016-08-19 00:00 2KB www.pcconnection.com
33 Pandora may finally launch on-demand streaming After years of resistance, it looks like Pandora is about ready to jump on the on-demand streaming wagon. According to a report from the WSJ, Pandora is in.. 2016-08-19 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 34 YouTube opens a Creator Store retail shop at Google’s London offices There’s more than one way to monetize your online video content. Sure, you can go the old fashioned route, making ads and clicks and such -- but just wait.. 2016-08-19 00:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com 35 Tickets to Startup and Hardware Alley at Disrupt London 2016 are now available Listen up, startups in the U. K. and around the world. Disrupt London 2016 is right around the corner, and we're happy to announce that tickets to display your.. 2016-08-19 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 36 Will the Internet of Things make us superhuman? Technology is quickly redefining what it means to be human. There is no denying that we are considerably different from the people who came before us, not.. 2016-08-19 00:00 8KB feedproxy.google.com 37 GuestReady provides Airbnb hosts with the services to professionalize their rental London-based GuestReady officially opened its doors this week, launching its service in six cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and.. 2016-08-19 00:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com 38 Ticwatch 2 team clarifies which apps its Kickstarter smartwatch will initially support The team beyond Ticwatch 2, the Chinese smartwatch project that has crossed $1.5 million on Kickstarter, has clarified the apps and services its wearable.. 2016-08-19 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 39 Watch NASA astronauts spacewalk to install a new dock for the International Space Station NASA astronauts are venturing out into space to install a component key to the future of commercial crew mission. The International Space Station is getting a.. 2016-08-19 00:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com
40 UK Police Arrest Sage Employee at London Airport 32-year-old woman suspected of recent Sage data breach 2016-08-18 23:55 1KB news.softpedia.com 41 macOS Sierra release date, news and features The next generation of OS X isn't OS X at all 2016-08-18 20:17 6KB www.techradar.com 42 UK tech salaries continue to grow Salaries for tech jobs in the UK are still rising in the second quarter of the year, despite the fact that the number of jobs in the industry is slowly declining. This is according to a new report by Dice, the online career site for the technology... 2016-08-18 19:25 2KB feeds.betanews.com 43 Cisco will cut 5,500 jobs According to reports, Cisco Systems is planning a mass jobs cull with 5,500 jobs in danger -- or around seven percent of its global workforce. According to reports, Cisco Systems is planning a mass jobs cull with 5,500 jobs in danger — or... 2016-08-18 18:45 1KB feeds.betanews.com Articles
43 articles, 2016-08-19 18:01
1 Twitter tackles violent trolls and terrorist sympathisers with huge 235,000 account takedown (1.02/2) Twitter has suspended almost a quarter of a million accounts in the past six months as it continues to fight the scourge of those who use the service to make threats of violence or promote terrorism Some 235,000 accounts were suspended between February and August, following the 125,000 that were suspended between mid-2015 and February 2016. Twitter said that this underlines the company's efforts to go after accounts that break its rules, and that it is removing such accounts as quickly as possible . “Daily suspensions are up over 80 per cent since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks," the firm said. "Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically. "We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform. We have expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, along with their tools and language capabilities. " Twitter said that it is also working with other social platforms to share “information and best practices for identifying terrorist content”, although the company did not identify the other sites. The firm also explained that the fight against violence and terrorist accounts on Twitter is not easy, but that systems used to spot offensive content are improving . “As we mentioned in February, and other companies and experts have also noted, there is no one 'magic algorithm' for identifying terrorist content on the internet," Twitter said. "But we continue to use other forms of technology, like proprietary spam- fighting tools, to supplement reports from our users and help identify repeat account abuse. “In fact, over the past six months these tools have helped us to automatically identify more than one third of the accounts we ultimately suspended for promoting terrorism.” Twitter’s move to document its actions against such accounts comes after waves of criticism that the company has failed to take the problem of abusive content and messages on its site seriously enough . This has been one cause of Twitter failing to grow its user base, and even losing some long-term users, as the site fights for growth in the shadow of its much larger rival Facebook. 2016-08-19 17:24 Dan Worth
2 Galaxy C9 Is the Next Smartphone in Samsung's C Series (1.02/2) According to SamMobile , Samsung is currently working on a new handset in the Galaxy C series, namely the Galaxy C9. It will join the other two, but there's no information at this point as to when that will actually happen. The phone is said to bear the codename Amy and the code number SM-C9000. The upcoming device’s specs are unknown, but it should have components similar to its predecessors revealed in late May this year. Samsung unveiled the Galaxy C5 and Galaxy C7 only in the Chinese market, and the Galaxy C9 could have the same fate. However, the company has made more mid-range smartphones available to other markets as well, like the Galaxy A9, which was released in China and later arrived in Malaysia. Samsung's Galaxy C5 came with a 5.2-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, together with Snapdragon 617 processor and 4GB of RAM. The smartphone also features Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and Adreno 405 graphics processing unit, together with 4G LTE and a dual-SIM slot, not to mention a 2,600mAh battery. It ran Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but so did the Galaxy C7 . However, the C7 packed a 5.7-inch display with 1920 x 1080p resolution and 4GB of RAM, with 32GB of internal memory. It also had a 64-bit 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and Adreno 506 graphics processing unit. It came with a 3,300mmAh battery and Quick Charge 3.0, together with a 16MP rear camera and an 8MP front unit. 2016-08-19 11:14 Alexandra Vaidos
3 Best Windows apps this week (1.02/2) One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days. Several promising apps and games were released this week, such as the Agricoal 2-player game and the Rockband-like game Gu. No app of the week award though this week. As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead. Discounts this week The following apps and games are discounted by at least 50 percent this week: App of the week None this week Other apps Agricola All Creatures Big and Small ($4.99, no free trial) Agricola All Creatures Big and Small is the faithful adaption of the two- player boardgame by legendary designer Uwe Rosenberg. You grow a farm in the game, send your workers out to buy livestock or goods, or build better buildings that give you special abilities. You may play the game against players on the worldwide leaderboard, or get your feet wet against AI opponents first. Gu This Chinese game is not called Gu, but they are the only two letters that I can read from the game's title. It is a Rockband-like game in which you play the drums and try to match the beat of the song that is playing. The game is playable with the mouse, but designed for other input devices as you need to hit different drums in rapid succession in later levels. You increase in level while you play the game and unlock new drums and songs. The interface is in Chinese but you can find your way around even if you don't speak the language. Health Band-It The third-party application Health Band-It visualizes heath data that gets uploaded from Microsoft Band devices or other devices that sync data to Health or Fitbit servers. The app does not sync data on its own, but will display data already synced in its interface. Hotstar TV Movies Live Cricked Hotstar is a subscription-based streaming service that is only available in India. It features TV, movie and sports content. Hotstar users may sign in to the Windows 10 application to stream contents provided by the service using the app. Logo Foundry Logo Foundry lets you create logos using a library of more than 3,000 symbols, shapes and icons. The app is free, but most assets become available after you purchase them. You may add text or icons to logos, and manipulate them in various ways. The app supports layers, and logos may be exported as transparent png files or jpg files. Prehistoric Mystery Prehistoric Mystery is a game with a strong story telling part. The free version is good for the first five pages of the story only. The remaining pages need to be purchased. You control Lucy, a young detective and her pet bird Darwin in the game. You read (or listen), learn and play at the same time. Stickman Soccer 2016 ($1.99, no free trial) The arcade football game may remind you of classic football games such as Sensible Soccer or Kick Off. It features a wide variety of game modes including seasons, national leagues, cups, and friendly games. You may play it with up to four friends on local multiplayer mode by connecting up to four controllers to the Windows 10 device. Notable updates Groove Music update pushed to the Fast Ring brings Cortana integration. SoundByte , a SoundCloud player, updated with a massive list of improvements that include instant search support, shuffling items, or a volume switch. 2016-08-19 10:48 By Martin
4 Microsoft PowerShell Goes Open Source, Arrives On Linux, Mac (1.02/2) Microsoft announced Thursday it is open sourcing its PowerShell scripting language and command-line shell, making it available on Mac and Linux operating systems. The company released alpha versions of PowerShell Core to work on Ubuntu, Centos, Red Hat, and Mac OS X, with promises to add more platforms in the future. Users can download alpha builds and view source code from GitHub. This move marks Microsoft's latest effort to support customers living and working in a "multi-platform, multi-cloud, multi-OS world," explained Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow for the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group, in a blog post on the news . [Read: Salesforce buys business analytics startup BeyondCore] PowerShell is built on Microsoft's. NET framework. It helps IT pros control and automate the administration of Windows and Linux operating systems, as well as the apps that run on them. Previously, Microsoft's enterprise focus meant. NET and PowerShell were only offered on Windows. Snover explained how customers wanted to use PowerShell but were upset that it was limited to Windows. Because PowerShell is based on. NET, Redmond needed to bring. NET to other platforms in order to broaden the availability of PowerShell. This inspired the. NET team to port. NET Core to Linux, which enabled PowerShell to port to Linux as well. The availability of PowerShell on Linux means users on Windows and Linux can use the interactive scripting language, and employees on Windows and Linux teams can work together more easily. Microsoft is still in the early stages of this process, Snover said. The team began this project by open sourcing small sections of PowerShell and communicating with experienced open source partners to understand how they could succeed. "What we learned, is that it is critical that individual users can use Git to check out code, make changes, compile everything on their machines and run all the tests to verify their change didn't break anything," he wrote. This meant Microsoft had to make a big investment in its engineering, build, and test systems. It also created a governance model so the team had clear responsibilities and could incorporate community input into the final product. While Thursday marked the alpha release of PowerShell, Snover noted in the future, Microsoft will deliver an official open source version of PowerShell to anyone running a supported version of Windows. Exact timing will be based on business needs and community feedback. Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has adopted the goal of wanting to be the preferred system for all workloads, both Linux and Windows. This approach has inspired several changes at Microsoft, including the availability of SQL Server for Linux users , which was announced in March 2016. One month later, Microsoft announced the Bash shell from from Canonical's Ubuntu would run natively on Windows 10. The two companies collaborated to create the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which incorporated all Ubuntu user-mode code into the new OS. Later in the year, Microsoft released an alpha version of its Skype app for Linux. This move demonstrated Microsoft's commitment to Skype on Linux following years of neglect. It also incorporated several improvements, including a faster UI and the ability to share files, photos, videos, and emoticons. 2016-08-19 10:06 Kelly Sheridan
5 Microsoft isn't alone when it comes to Windows 10's sneaky data mining (1.02/2) Another piece of research has emerged which has a pop at Windows 10's poor treatment of user privacy – although in fairness, Microsoft isn't the only company to be taking liberties hoovering up data, as the author points out. The latest flak fired at Redmond comes from security analytics firm Plixer, the CEO of which – Mike Patterson – did some digging into Windows 10's privacy settings and the user data sent back to Microsoft's servers. Patterson observed several things: firstly, that by default, Windows 10 sends a hell of a lot of data back to Microsoft if you install the OS with 'express settings' – and let's face it, while clearly those who are even moderately tech-savvy will tweak the setup, there are a lot of folks out there who won't be bothered. The second point, also made by others previously, is that even if you do tweak said settings, and then dive into Windows 10's menus to turn off every data grabbing feature you can find, the operating system will still be sending some data back to Microsoft. Patterson made some interesting further observations, noting that: "Even after disabling everything I could find, I noticed that some form of metadata was still being sent to Microsoft every 5 minutes. Microsoft was making a connection to ssw.live.com over an HTTP connection on port 80. The content was encrypted in a way that made it impossible to determine what was being sent. "This is an interesting choice, as Microsoft could have sent the data over HTTPS via port 443 to prevent eavesdroppers from looking at the data; instead, however, they used an unencrypted HTTP connection over port 80. This extra effort to encrypt indicates that Microsoft not only didn't want non- authorized users of the machine from accessing the data – they also didn't want the end-user knowing what was being sent. " In other words, Microsoft isn't just failing to make it clear to users what data is sent back as a baseline, but it's also obfuscating this piped-out data. Of course, there is a group policy feature called 'Allow Telemetry' which can be used to switch off all data collection, but the option to disable everything is only available in Windows 10 Enterprise, not the Home or Pro versions. Although Patterson notes that it is possible, if you're particularly enterprising (pun not intended), to stop the data transmission manually by configuring your firewall to block the servers that Windows 10 hooks up with for telemetry purposes. Patterson also observed that Microsoft isn't the only company guilty of this sort of practice. He found that Plantronics (the headset maker) is sending back encrypted data over HTTP port 80 every minute, and security outfit McAfee is sending data back using a DNS lookup that bypasses security mechanisms when it comes to many companies. Patterson said: "While we agree that McAfee is a friendly vendor, we would like to know what they are sending, we want to be able to decrypt it using traditionally accepted decryption methods, and we want the ability to turn it off. " More transparency and control is needed, and not just from Microsoft. As Rahul Kashyap, EVP and chief security architect at endpoint security firm Bromium, chipped in: "It's unfortunate that many reputable brands are knowingly engaging in 'sneaky data mining' without providing upfront details to consumers. Moreover, it is important that users should absolutely be told – how long this data will be stored, the security of the data and what will it be used for. Failing to comply is a breach of consumer trust. " And in terms of the broader picture, let's not even get started on other firms, such as Google's vast data mining. It's certainly clear enough that the tech industry all round could do with cleaning up its privacy act, but Windows 10 is fully in the firing line right now – with volleys recently fired at the OS by the EFF and French watchdog the CNIL. Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:07 By Darren
6 The Galaxy Note 7 Undergoes Teardown, Is Slightly Easier to Repair than the S7 (1.00/2) iFixit has subjected the Galaxy Note 7 to a teardown to determine how the handset ranks on the repairability scale. The iFixit team gets new smartphones and other devices shortly before or after their release and determines how repairable the said units are. The Galaxy Note 7 has ranked 4 out of a 10 scale of repairability, with one point more compared to the Galaxy S7. This means that the smartphone has a higher chance of getting repaired in case of damage as compared to units in the S7 line. Considering that the Galaxy Note 7 is water-resistant and has a non-removable back, it was to be expected that it would rank so low on the repairability scale. The teardown reveals all the components found inside the smartphone, starting with the wireless charging coil and the NFC antenna. The 3,500mAh battery was securely set in place inside the phone and took a little extra carefulness to get out. The video also shows the motherboard with all three of its cameras. The Galaxy Note 7 comes with a 5MP selfie camera and the IR scanner camera used for iris scanning, a technology believed to be more powerful than the fingerprint scanner. The scanner is a two-part system with an infrared blaster to light up the eye while the sensor captures the image of the user's iris. The motherboard comes with 64GB of internal storage and 4GB of RAM, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The Galaxy Note 7 scored 4 out of 10 because many components are modular and can be replaced, and the charging port board can be removed without disassembling the display. But on the downside, the front and back glass makes the phone vulnerable to cracks, and it's nearly impossible to replace the front glass without destroying the display. 2016-08-19 09:12 Alexandra Vaidos
7 The best free PDF editor 2016 (0.03/2) Adobe describes PDF as "three letters that changed the world", and it has a point: the Portable Document Format, to give it its Sunday name, was invented by Adobe to make it easy to share electronic documents. It's now an open standard used in everything from publishing to public bodies, and there are stacks of tools to create, edit, annotate and organise PDFs. But which ones are best? We've collated 10 of the most useful document wranglers for Windows. If you're a Mac user, don't forget about the Preview app - it's a very useful PDF editor in its own right, although some other programs can do even more. Foxit Reader is ideal for working on multiple PDFs at once, and is expandable via extensions Of all the free PDF tools available for Windows, Foxit Reader is our favorite. It looks and feels rather like Microsoft Office so it's instantly familiar, it has a tabbed interface for working on multiple PDFs simultaneously, and it enables you to complete forms and annotate documents. It also includes security tools for protecting your PDFs. It's expandable via a bunch of add-ons and if you find yourself needing even more power its paid-for sibling, PhantomPDF , has extensive organisation, sharing and document tracking features for a very reasonable US$109 (about £82.82, AU$144.89). Adobe Reader is a stalwart of the PDF scene, and for good reason. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to create your own PDFs, but Adobe Reader is excellent for form-filling and annotations Yes, Adobe Reader on the desktop has a reputation for being overly complex and overly needy - but the iOS and Android editions haven't inherited its flaws and stand on their own virtual feet as fast, flexible and lightweight PDF editors. Some of the best features require an Acrobat Pro subscription, so for example editing text isn't possible without Pro, but you can sign and fill forms and export Office documents to PDF. There's support for Dropbox too. Your PC will see PDF24 Converter as a printer attached to your PC, but it's actually a powerful PDF editing and conversion tool with support for watermarks and password protection One of the simplest ways to add PDF to Windows is to install a PDF printer driver. Windows sees it as a printer driver, but instead of controlling hardware it actually converts documents to PDFs. That's what PDF24 Creator offers, but it also adds its own Assistant that can split or merge PDF files, adjust document properties, re-order pages, password protect PDFs and add digital watermarks or signatures. It's hardly the prettiest app around but it gets on with the job and doesn't require loads of system resources. Adobe Acrobat DC uses Adobe's cloud services to deliver every function you can think of. It can convert just about any document into a PDF, making it particularly handy for multimedia projects The DC stands for Document Cloud, and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is designed to cover every eventuality - for a price. You can try out the software for free, but the license is an annual subscription that works out at £11.42 (about US$15, AU$20) per month for the Standard edition and £13.33 (about US$17.54, AU$23.33) per month for Pro. The Standard edition gives you online access via Adobe's Document Cloud, the ability to create PDFs from almost any source, to work on PDFs via the mobile apps and to electronically sign documents. Going Pro adds multimedia support, the ability to edit scanned documents and the option to request electronic signatures. Unlike many free PDF readers, Nitro supports editing of both images and text Here's another app that looks awfully like Microsoft Office, and once again that's no bad thing. Nitro PDF Reader has a feature set that shames some paid-for apps: despite a price tag of zero it offers document to PDF conversion, annotation and highlighting, image extraction, text editing and e-signatures. It's definitely one to try before you consider paying for a PDF app. PDF-XChange Editor, the successor to PDF-XChange Viewer - has a killer feature in the form of OCR for converting image-heavy PDFs. It also converts Microsoft Office documents to PDF Tracker's PDF-XChange Editor comes in three and a half flavours: a free Lite version for non-commercial use, two paid-for versions at US$43.50 (about £33, AU$58) and US$54.50 (about £41.38, AU$72.60) respectively and a free version of the $43.50 app that removes some of its advanced features. The Lite version doesn't do much - it's a print-to-PDF app to create searchable PDFs from pretty much any Windows app - but it also has has OCR scanning, Google Drive and Office 365 support, commenting and annotation, markup and file conversion. Paying for a license adds the ability to create forms, more advanced organizational tools and more extensive editing options. SlimPDF Reader is a no-frills affair that's light on features, but has an extremely small footprint The name should set expectations here: SlimPDF Reader promises to be "10% of the size of Adobe Reader but views 100% of PDFs". It's microscopic by app standards - just 1.43MB - and that's largely because it doesn't really do anything other than view PDFs. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though: its tiny footprint means it doesn't drag your system down like more advanced PDF apps often do, and it's ridiculously fast on even the most modest PCs. Icecream PDF Converter converts PDFs to and from almost any format, and lets you split up large documents to make them more manageable Icecream PDF Converter comes from the same developer as the useful Icecream Ebook Reader (which also doubles as a good-looking PDF viewer). This app's all about the file formats, though. You can drag and drop PDFs onto the app and convert them to JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, EPS, HTML or WMF format, and you can also convert ebooks and Microsoft Office documents to PDF. It can also run batch conversions and partial conversions for when you only need a few pages of a huge document. That's the good news. The bad news is that you're limited to 10 page PDFs when you export and five files per conversion to PDF unless you buy the Pro version for £14.95 (about US$19.69, AU$26.21). AbleWord isn't be best looking app, but it's very useful when you need to strip the text from a PDF Here's a blast from the past: AbleWord looks very like an old version of Microsoft Word or a recent OpenOffice.org app. It works like those apps too, but the unique selling point here is that it supports PDF files as well as the usual DOC, DOCX and RTF formats, and that means it's a handy tool for anybody who needs to create documents in PDF format or convert between Word and PDF formats. OpenOffice can export text documents in PDF format too, but reading them requires installing an extension. AbleWord has PDF import built-in. When you need to combine or split PDFs, reach for the free, lightweight PDFsam Basic. It gets the job done with the minimum of fuss PDFsam is an acronym of PDF Split and Merge, so you can probably guess what it does. Yep, it splits and merges PDF files. You can use it to combine multiple documents or break a single document into multiples, you can merge alternate pages - handy if you're trying to turn single-sided scans of double-sided documents into something readable - and you can split by size, which is useful if you're splitting a huge document across USB drives or other small storage options. There's also a handy tool for rotating pages across multiple documents. Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:30 By Gary
8 PyCharm Edu Adds Adaptive Courses A new version of PyCharm Edu, a free and open source tool for learning to program with Python, has been released. PyCharm Edu 3 is an educational edition of PyCharm, JetBrains' integrated development environment for Python. Alongside the editor and development environment, PyCharm Edu bundles interactive online lessons that introduce new users to Python to the language and to the IDE's tools at the same time. One addition to the new version is what is being described as an 'experimental adaptive Python course'. This comes from integration with Stepic, a learning management platform. What happens is that there's a course that adapts to the way the student is working. As they work through the course, their progress is monitored and the next tasks they're asked to do are chosen depending on their progress. They can also tell the system if the task feels too easy or difficult for them. The course design elements of PyCharm Edu have also been improved, with an enhanced task description panel, the ability to use hyperlinks in task descriptions, and the ability to preview the course you're designing from within the course creation mode. Another area to have been improved is that of custom tests. These are tests that you write to check students' input and solutions. The new version lets you run and debug the tests from the course creation mode, without having to generate the course or preview it. There's also an enhanced course view in the course creation mode that shows you the course in the same way a student would see it. All system, test and hidden files are displayed in light gray. Other improvements include the option of specifying the Python version the course is designed for, and having PyCharm pick the appropriate interpreter when the course is opened. In case no interpreter is installed on the student's machine, Pycharm will alert them and suggest installing the required version. What's New In PyCharm Edu 3 To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2016-08-19 17:24 Written by
9 Measurements to See Value and Delivery Johanna Rothman gave an inspiring talk at Agile2016 about measurements for agile program management. She started off by recognizing the current issues that program teams are facing in measuring results: Johanna explained that management wants the big picture, but teams see their own picture. The program needs to see the whole. She points out how agile teams use metrics that help the team self-organize and self-manage; however those data points are not meaningful to management. Johanna also explained that depending on what the program looks like, you may have to change the recommended metrics. She touched on dynamics in measurements today being due to a history of not being able to depend on a stream of continuous value being delivered from the team. Because of this, leaders often ask for predictive measurements rather than empirical. Johanna continues to describe what leaders really care about, such as customer acquisition, customer retention, revenue growth, customer experience and touch points. For SaaS companies, customer experience is critical since the company has other options if the customer experience does not deliver. Here are some of the metric movement pattern examples she gave showing Predictable vs. Empirical measurements: Johanna also described in more detail what is important to measure. Measure learning : Can we measure learning? Get feedback all the time on small pieces, and ask, “Do we need to learn more?” We learn to build momentum. Measure trends: Are we creating more defects than we fix? Are there more defects than before? Trend data over time is what is key. Snapshots do not provide sufficient information. Measure completed features: Programs start with Epics/Themes, sound like features, but are vague and not sure what to deliver. Don’t count these as features. Measure more detailed features from a value to the customer perspective. Measure Product Backlog Burn-up Chart : Partial answer to “Where are we?” and shows when features grow in scope and shows progress on features overall. Count the stories for each feature set, and use that as the data. Measure what you want more of and less of: Less WIP, less multi-tasking. More working software that users care about; more users happy with the release. Measure Cost: Run Rate ($), how much does the team cost per month, and are we willing to pay that amount for the results we are getting each month? (Results being released and valuable software from a customer perspective.) Measure Releases: Release Frequency – How long does it take from build to release? Reduce build time down to a few hours! Is our build time increasing or decreasing? Should not be increasing? Cycle time - how long does it take to get a feature from ready to released? Measure Product Measurements: Create scenarios, or performance scenarios. People have to log in, transfer file, pay, etc. What are the performance attributes of these tasks? Performance, Reliability…. Product Performance Measurements: These can be a function of release criteria. Have we improved since the last release? Measure Qualitative Measurements: Customer feedback and happiness How often do you get feedback from customers? Obstacle report - if you have people, you will have obstacles. How long does it take to make decisions? Are things outside of the program affecting our ability to get work done? She concluded with common measurement traps she sees: Guest editor Angela Wick is an Agile Coach and Trainer, she is the Founder & CEO of BA-Squared , LLC a training and consulting company that helps organizations modernize requirements practices. She helps traditional, agile, and hybrid teams develop the skills they need to build the right solutions that deliver the intended value to the organization. 2016-08-19 17:23 Angela Wick
10 Samsung Announces Commercial Launch of the Note 7 in Select Markets Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 is now available for purchase in the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, the UAE, and Korea. The handset has been well received on the market so far, as it seems that it has even recorded an outstanding number of pre- orders in certain countries, including Canada. It seems quite obvious that Samsung doesn’t see Europe as one of its main strong points and has prioritized the US and Canada. Nevertheless, the smartphone will be arriving in Europe next month while customers in some Western and Central Europe countries can already pre-order it. It has multiple security options, culminating with the iris scanner that allows users to lock their phones and content, as well as conduct financial operations. Other than that, it comes with IP68 certification, 4GB of RAM, enhanced S Pen, a 5.7-inch QHD Dual Edge Super AMOLED display, Snapdragon 820, a 3,500mAh battery and other exciting features. 2016-08-19 12:40 Alexandra Vaidos
11 11 UAC Bypass with Elevated Privileges Works on All Windows Versions The technique Gottesman discovered relies on the methods used to interact and control environment variables. Windows environment variables are a set of temporary settings that are specific to each Windows process and are inherited by their child processes, which can read and write their values. Unknown to the vast majority of users is that there are a class of system- wide environment variables that apply to the entire Windows operating system. These include details like the user's current username, the PC's domain, and file paths for various folders such as the Windows OS, AppData, user profile, and so on. This set of environment variables are stored in the Windows Registry, hence they are automatically persistent across reboots and can also be modified by any user via "set" or "setx" commands. But there is more. Because of the way Windows is built, there are special apps that, when launched by regular users, execute processes with higher privileges (Task Manager, Disk Cleanup - known UAC bypass , Event Viewer - known UAC bypass , more). When a user launches one of these apps, Windows UAC trusts its execution by default and does not show a warning. Crooks can use modified environment variables to spawn malicious child processes under the legitimate app and execute an attack. Windows UAC will stay quiet while the attack runs with elevated privileges because UAC trusts the parent process. Gottesman described five types of attacks, which can be combined, in a technical write-up for enSilo. In one example, an attacker can create a copy of the C:/Windows folder and modify the system-wide environment variable to point to the wrong Windows OS folder. This setting activates after a system reboot and allows the attacker to load malicious DLLs on the system. This doesn't mean the attacker has hijacked the OS, but when other legitimate apps need to load a system DLL, they'll be pointed to the wrong location, where the attacker can easily modify and replace files without security products warning the user. In another similar attack, he tricked Windows into loading the same C:/Windows folder from a local network folder, meaning the malicious DLLs don't even have to be stored on the same filesystem. In his examples, Gottesman was able to load mmc.exe, the Windows management console with elevated privileges under svchost.exe, meanwhile loading a malicious DLL from the attacker’s C:/copied/Windows folder. This was done with no UAC warning and with elevated privileges. The enSilo researcher notified Microsoft, but the company classified this as a UAC bypass issue, and not an elevation of privileges flaw. Microsoft doesn't consider UAC bypass a security flaw, meaning it won't get patched with the utmost urgency but will eventually be dealt with in the future. Proof- of-concept code is available on GitHub. "Environment variable expansion in Windows allows an attacker to gather information about a system prior to an attack and eventually take complete and persistent control of the system at the time of choice by running a single user-level command, or alternatively, changing one registry key," Gottesman explains. "This vector also lets the attacker’s code in the form of a DLL to load into legitimate processes of other vendors or the OS itself and masquerade its actions as the target process’ actions without having to use code injection techniques or use memory manipulations," the researcher also added. "3rd party services that run on behalf of an administrator may also be vulnerable to this attack and allow regular users to elevate their privileges inside the system. " 2016-08-19 12:35 Catalin Cimpanu
12 Stress-test your PC with HeavyLoad Jam Software’s quick and easy PC stress-tester HeavyLoad has just been updated to version 3.4, its first release in more than two years. The package is as easy to use as ever, maxing out your CPU, allocating RAM and drive space and stressing your GPU with a click. This release is mostly about compatibility, in particular improving results with the latest OpenGL drivers and handling individual cores in Windows 10. Unfortunately it’s not so compatible with older PCs any more: XP and Server 2003 are no longer supported. The "Simulate Disk Access" test now uses the latest version of Jam Software’s TreeSize Free, and the company reports several other non-specific "minor fixes". As ever, the download page offers 32 and 64-bit versions, both portable and installable editions, and they’re all adware-free. This kind of tool is mostly used for testing hardware stability, maybe after overclocking, but we’ve also found it helpful with Process Lasso-type software which claims to tame "resource hogs". If you’ve installed something which says it can optimize CPU or memory usage in real time, confront it with HeavyLoad and see what happens. HeavyLoad is a free application for Windows Vista and later. 2016-08-19 12:12 By Mike
13 Google Duo Becomes the Most Popular Free App in the Play Store Google’s Duo has become the number 1 free app in Google Play Store, surpassing other popular applications at the moment, including Messenger and Facebook, according to a Twitter post by Justin Uberti , who part of the Duo team at Google. Considering the craze around Pokemon Go lately, one would think that it is the ruler of all apps in the Play Store, but surprisingly, it ranks only third among all applications in the Play Store in the USA, surpassed by Google Duo and Facebook’s Messenger. In case you didn't know, Duo is a simple app for placing video calls and comes with a neat feature that allows users to see a video of the caller before they pick up the call. This way, they won’t miss any important details and will see who’s calling. In addition, Google intends to add audio calling to Duo as well. Google’s Duo is known to provide strong video calls and allow switching between mobile data and WiFi instantaneously, without dropping the call. 2016-08-19 12:03 Alexandra Vaidos
14 Sony to Announce the New Xperia XR During IFA 2016 Photos of the upcoming Xperia XR leaked earlier this month, depicting the smartphone’s design together with its USB Type-C port and rear camera setup, according to Fonearena. The images revealed the blue variant of the device and showed that the rear camera would come with dual LED flash and the ability to shoot 4k videos. New information has surfaced, suggesting that the Xperia XR will be introduced during one of the year’s biggest electronics event, IFA Berlin. Sony has released a teaser image with the invite to its press conference at IFA Berlin. The picture reveals some of the devices that Sony intends to showcase, including a TV, a PlayStation VR, Bluetooth headset, and a smartphone, namely the Xperia XR. The teaser image also depicts other gadgets that could be presented during the press conference. Aside from this, rear camera capacity is said to reach 21MP, and a 12MP unit will be incorporated on the front. The device will feature a 3.5mm headphone jack, will measure 146.4 x 71.9 x 8.1mm, and will sport a 5.1- inch display with 1080p resolution. All of these specs are uncertain at this point, but if the rumors are to be believed, we will also get a glimpse of the smartphone during its unveiling at IFA Berlin. Sony’s press conference begins on September 1, at 1 PM CET. 2016-08-19 11:26 Alexandra Vaidos
15 Apple to Launch Watch 2 Without Cellular Support Due to Battery Life Worries But while a GPS sensor makes sense on the second-generation Apple Watch, there’s something a little bit more interesting coming from the same source (which cites people with knowledge of the matter, so we should take this with a healthy amount of skepticism since nobody can tell if it’s accurate info or not). Basically, Apple wanted the new Watch to come with carrier support, which means that the company planned to make it possible to use the device just like a smartphone and have data coverage wherever you go. This obviously would have created lots of new possibilities for the Watch, and since it already comes with a microphone and a speaker, making it possible to use it as a smartphone kind of made sense. But it turns out that Apple has actually hit some roadblocks in its attempt to create an LTE-connected smartwatch, and Bloomberg says that it was all because of battery life worries. Specifically, Apple wants the second-generation Watch to come with a battery that lasts longer than on the first model, but that’s quite a big challenge, given the fact that it’ll also offer a GPS sensor - GPS is usually the biggest battery hog on wearables, so Apple needs to offer a bigger battery and state-of-the-art optimizations to deal with this. And by coming up with LTE support on the Apple Watch 2, the company would have had another reason to worry about when it comes to battery life, and it appears that Cupertino actually decided to hold back this feature for a future model after getting in touch with several carriers. Of course, nobody can tell for sure when cellular support could land on the Apple Watch, but for the moment, it becomes more obvious that the second generation won’t have it. 2016-08-19 10:54 Bogdan Popa
16 iPhone 7’s Camera Will Still Be a Big Deal, Even Without Dual Lens Coming via NWE , this screenshot compares the camera module of the latest iPhone models and of the upcoming model, showing that the version prepared for the standard iPhone 7 will adopt technology that was previously available on the Plus. And the most obvious addition is optical image stabilization, a feature that was exclusively offered on the Plus and that will now be provided on the standard iPhone too. If you analyze the iPhone 6s Plus camera closely, you can see four different cutouts around the lens, and these are being used specifically for mechanisms that improve the stabilization and allow the camera to shoot better pictures and videos when you don’t have a steady hand. The existing iPhone 6s camera module, on the other hand, has only two such cutouts, and it’s believed that, by adopting the 6s Plus design, the iPhone 7 will benefit from huge improvements in terms of stabilization. The boring side of the iPhone 7, however, is the design, as the existing leaks have shown only small visual changes, such as antenna lines moved to the top and bottom of the device and the camera cutout closer to the left corner. Certainly, while hardware upgrades might be compelling for some, the very small design differences will make many delay their purchases, at least until next year, when Apple is expected to introduce a bigger overhaul of the iPhone lineup with a completely new design and bigger hardware upgrades. 2016-08-19 10:49 Bogdan Popa
17 Traditional malware falls as mobile malware rises in July The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July, but mobile malware now accounts for nine percent of the total -- up 50 percent from June. These figures come from threat prevention company Check Point based on intelligence drawn from its ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map. During July, Check Point detected 2,300 unique and active malware families attacking business networks, the first time in four months it has seen a drop in the number of unique malware families. However, the total number seen still matches the second all-time highest number recorded in a calendar month this year. Conficker was the most prominent family in July accounting for 13 percent of recognized attacks. In second place JBossjmx accounted for 12 percent, and third placed Sality was responsible for eight percent. The top ten families accounted for 60 percent of all recognized attacks. Mobile malware families had eighteen entries in the top 200 overall. The top three mobile families being HummingBad, Android malware that establishes a persistent rootkit on the device; Ztorg, a Trojan that uses root privileges to download and install applications on the mobile phone without the user's knowledge; and XcodeGhost, a compromised version of the iOS developer platform, Xcode, altered to inject malicious code into any app developed and compiled using it. "Businesses should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the slight drop in the number of active malware families during July. The number of active families still remains at near record levels, highlighting the scale of the challenges businesses face in securing their network against cyber- criminals. Organizations must continue to secure their networks vigilantly," says Nathan Shuchami, head of threat prevention at Check Point. "Organizations need advanced threat prevention measures on networks, endpoints, and mobile devices to stop malware at the pre-infection stage, such as Check Point's SandBlast and Mobile Threat Prevention solutions, to ensure they are adequately secured against the latest threats". You can view the live ThreatCloud map displaying cyber attacks in real time on the Check Point website. 2016-08-19 10:39 By Ian
18 Windows Defender Demo App Lets You Try Out a Modern Windows 10 Antivirus And because a concept released recently and imagining a modern look for Windows Defender was really successful, reddit user grigby has decided to go one step further and create a demo app that helps us try out this new interface ourselves. He thus built an application that has no features but comes with a modern UI of Windows Defender, showing us exactly what the antivirus solution would look like with the new interface. There are no features, just a UI demo, and you can try it by sideloading the app on your system. “I created a UWP ‘app’ that showcases their concept for Windows Defender. The app has four theme combinations available and is fully scalable with window size. While the UI is mostly in place, there is no backend code here; most buttons do nothing. It is simply a UI demonstration,” the developer explains. Microsoft hasn’t said anything about a potential makeover of Windows Defender, but there’s no doubt that users want it, so with a little luck, Redstone 2, due in spring 2017, will bring some changes in this regard. 2016-08-19 09:55 Bogdan Popa
19 Apple's macOS beta timings hint at later Sierra launch So how long have we got to wait for the next version of Apple's desktop operating system to turn up? Well, we know that macOS Sierra is due to pitch up in the autumn, but new speculation is pointing to the middle of October as the likely arrival date. And we should stress that this is purely speculation, but Computerworld has thought things through based on the pace with which Apple released preview versions of macOS Sierra, compared to the buildup proceeding the launch of El Capitan last year. Essentially, with Sierra, Apple is around two weeks behind where El Capitan was at this point in 2015. That's based on the fact that the sixth preview version of macOS Sierra emerged at the start of this week for devs, and the sixth beta of El Capitan hit home on August 3 (with previous versions of both more or less mirroring this fortnight gap). Hence if we add that two-week lag onto the release date of El Capitan, which was September 30, we end up with a probable mid-October launch for macOS Sierra (most likely the week ending October 16). That would be just less than two months away, and it seems a perfectly realistic landing date. Apple released the first public beta of macOS Sierra back on July 7 , allowing the general computing public at large to get a taste of the upcoming operating system, which brings Siri to the desktop, along with a number of other new features like picture-in picture mode and a Universal Clipboard (allowing for the likes of direct cutting and pasting between iOS and macOS devices). Another point worth noting is that Sierra is more demanding than El Capitan – you can check out the hardware requirements for the new OS here . Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:55 By Darren
20 Samsung and Android Saw Increased Market Share in Q2, Gartner Reports The Gartner report reveals that 5 out of the top 10 worldwide mobile phone vendors increased their sales in the second quarter of 2016 while the global sales of smartphones grew 4.3% year-on-year and totaled 344 million units in the second quarter of 2016. However, overall sales of mobile phones contracted by 0.5%, with only 5 companies recording growth, more precisely, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, BBK Communication Equipment, and Samsung. It was somehow to be expected that the demand for premium smartphones would slow in the second quarter of 2016, considering that consumers waited for new launches scheduled in the second half of the year, Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, has stated. In the second quarter of 2016, Samsung saw a market share 10% higher than Apple, which suffered a 7.7% decline in the second quarter of 2016. It seems that Apple sales dropped in North America and Western Europe, two of the biggest smartphone markets. Sales declined even in China and Asia Pacific regions, by 26%, but it wasn't all gloomy for Apple, as it seems that sales grew by more than 95% year-on-year in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Apple shouldn't worry about its sales in the next quarters, since the company is expected to release the next iPhone soon. Samsung will also see increased sales following the launch of its latest flagship, the Galaxy Note 7. When it comes to smartphone operating systems, Android overcame iOS by achieving an 86% share in the second quarter of 2016. Android continued to see an increased demand for mid- to lower-end smartphones in emerging markets, as well as from premium smartphones, which recorded a 6.5% increase in the second quarter of 2016. 2016-08-19 09:48 Alexandra Vaidos
21 Gartner: Public Sector CIOs Need Digital Transformation Vision CIOs in the public sector have the opportunity to harness digital disruption and bring about a revolution in citizen services, but organizational hurdles and a lack of a compelling vision could be stumbling blocks to realizing these goals, according to a new report from Gartner. The Aug. 17 report noted that public sector leaders, including CIOs , should focus on creating a culture that is less averse to change and more unified in its vision and direction -- one that can manage change more effectively over longer time frames. "The role of the CIO will be much broader than just technology. In a world where uncertainty abounds, stability lasts a few months at best and IT systems are produced through agile deployment based on the concepts of adaptation and change, a comprehensive view of the enterprise is needed," Elise Olding, research vice president at Gartner, told InformationWeek in an email. "CIOs are well positioned to understand the profound impact of digital disruption across the business units in an organization and have a voice at the strategy table," Olding added. Noted leaders, Olding explained, often expect employees to change, but seldom examine and take actions to change their own behaviors. She added that leadership in times of uncertainty will be very different, especially for leaders at government agencies. "An essential step is for the CIO is to examine their own leadership practices and make needed changes," Olding wrote. "As well, the CIO needs to hold his or her IT leadership team accountable for the new leadership behaviors. Employees will be more open to change when they see their leaders behaving differently. " Leaders would need to learn to listen more, ask more questions, engage employees in dialogue, and solicit all employees to help to solve tough problems. " In the public sector , many employees have been taught to stay in their boxes and do their jobs," she explained. "Encouraging employees to contribute, making it safe for them to change and recognizing progress will be important actions for leaders to take to build the trust and collaboration needed. " [ Read about hiring plans for the rest of 2016.] The Gartner report noted government agencies and departments continue to operate in silos, creating a barrier to delivering cross-cutting (or horizontal) services that are now made possible by digital technologies and data. In addition to the governance, policies, standards, and financing that must be arrayed to take advantage of these digital capabilities, the Gartner report suggested government should also increase its ability to use advanced analytics to predict what is likely to happen in any given situation and prescribe the best course of action when the event occurs. "More often than not, it isn't the CIO who needs to be convinced about the tremendous potential of digital transformation," Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner, wrote in an email to InformationWeek. "Government CIOs, in particular, are keenly aware of how CIOs in the private sector are combining the capabilities of cloud, mobile, social and analytics -- and, increasingly, data from the internet of things -- to create entirely new business and service models. " Howard explained that, instead, government CIOs must overcome, or compensate for, the absence of a sustained business vision that is fully supported by their executive peers. "Governments struggle with technology-enabled innovation because innovation requires a higher tolerance of risk," he noted. "What's needed is digital leadership at all levels of government. " 2016-08-19 09:05 Nathan Eddy
22 SD Times GitHub project of the week: FastText For humans, writing posts on social media just comes naturally. Humans understand each word that’s said or typed, but for machines, it’s not that easy. Understanding the meaning of words is one of the biggest challenges that artificial intelligence researchers face today, and this week’s GitHub project named fastText aims to solve that challenge. Automatic text processing is a part of everyday interactions with computers, and it generates plenty of online data. With all of this data, specific tools are needed to understand the content of large datasets. To address this challenge, the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab is open-sourcing its fastText library to help build scalable solutions for text representation and classification. According to FAIR, “FastText combines some of the most successful concepts introduced by the natural language processing and machine learning communities in the last few decades. These include representing sentences with bags of words and bags of n-grams, as well as using subword information, and sharing information across classes through a hidden representation.” FAIR also employs a hierarchical softmax that takes advantage of unbalanced distribution of the class, which speeds up computation. Each of these concepts are used for different tasks: efficient text classification and learning word-vector representations. FastText helps solve the problem of deep neural networks, which can be slow to train and test, according to the research team. FastText uses a hierarchical classifier instead of a flat structure, and categories are instead organized in a tree, which reduces time for training and testing text classifiers. With fastText, the research team was able to cut training times from days to seconds and achieve “state-of-the-art performance on many standard problems, such as sentiment analysis or tag prediction,” said FAIR. The tool has been designed to work with languages like English, German, French, Spanish and Czech. FastText takes advantage of the languages’ morphological structure and uses a simple way of including subword information. The team hopes that other developers will help build better, more scalable solutions for text representation and classification by using this open-source tool. The Facebook AI Research lab is sharing its research relating to fastText, and it’s available here through the Cornell University Library. Also, fastText is available on GitHub today. Top 5 projects trending on GitHub this week #1. webpack-dashboard : A CLI dashboard for webpack dev server. #2. Weight-loss : Using machine learning to lose weight. Your actual weight, that is. #3. Recharts : A redefined chart library built with React and D3. #4. Top Deep Learning : A list of GitHub projects related to deep learning. #5. React-server : A React framework that loads pages really fast. 2016-08-19 09:00 Madison Moore
23 Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile Finally Available for Download Today, however, Facebook is officially releasing the Windows 10 Mobile client for all users, as it has finalized work on the beta, and the stable client is available for download. What’s important to know is that Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile is an iOS ported, so you’ll get the exact same features as on iPhones. And this is a good thing after all, given the fact that Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone users have often been left behind by developers bringing only some features from Android and iOS on their devices. Facebook, however, hasn’t ported its client from iOS to Windows 10 Mobile using Project Islandwood, which is Microsoft’s very own set of tools created specifically in this regard, but with Osmeta, a platform that has the exact same role and that is developed by the social network. This is once again welcome news because pretty much every single update that Facebook makes to the iOS client can be brought easily on Windows 10 Mobile, so users on the platform should always have a fully up-to-date client that lacks no functionality when compared to clients on other mobile OSes. 2016-08-19 08:54 Bogdan Popa
24 Microsoft Seeking “Curious Minds” to Try Out New Android App And today, the company is expanding on these efforts with a new private testing program that will involve “20- 50 curious minds” willing to try out a new Android app created by Microsoft Garage. Codenamed Sourcerer, the new app is supposed to be a productivity solution that could be considered part of the Office suite at some point in the future. Its purpose is to help students and researchers improve their projects, but the company doesn’t specifically say how this will happen. “Introducing Sourcerer, an early version of a brand new app, brought to you exclusively by the Office Insider program in affiliation with Microsoft Garage, the central hub for experimental projects from Microsoft. We've been working with Microsoft Garage to build an app that makes the research process easier for students. Our goal is to offer an app that helps students save time and makes research quick and intuitive,” the company says in a brief announcement on the Community forums. Microsoft explains that those who are interested in participating in this private beta program need to have an Android 4.0 or later phone and be students or full-time researchers who are working on a research project in August and September. Testers need to run the app for a full month on their device and send feedback to the company, with Microsoft explaining that it really doesn’t matter where they live as long as they comply with all the other requirements. You can find the entire announcement in the box below, and if you want to participate, you’d better hurry app because the number of seats is super limited. 2016-08-19 08:40 Bogdan Popa
25 NVIDIA 354.99 Quadro and Tesla Packages Are Up for Grabs As far as the supported OSes are concerned, the Quadro release is suitable for both 32- and 64-bit variants of Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 platforms, while the Tesla packages are available only for the 64- bit versions of Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Server 2008 R2, and Server 2012 R2 operating systems. Regarding the Quadro files, even though both desktop and notebook configurations are supported, bear in mind that notebook systems aren’t compatible with Windows Vista anymore. In addition to that, Quadro desktop configurations also benefit from an additional package that is suitable for the 64-bit architecture of Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2 platforms. When it comes to installation, first ensure that your configuration is valid for this update, save and run the appropriate package for your computer, and follow all instructions displayed on the screen for a complete and successful upgrade. Last but not least, once finished, it would be best to reboot your computer to make sure all changes take effect properly. If this isn’t requested automatically, it would be a good idea to perform this step manually to avoid any unwanted problems. 2016-08-19 08:25 Iulian Pascal
26 China wants to monitor and control all live streams in real time China's overarching control of the internet, technology, and its people in general is nothing new. The Great Firewall of China is famous for placing huge restrictions on what citizens are able to access online, and recently the government banned the use of social media as a news source. The latest target for the Chinese government is the increasingly popular activity of live streaming. The proposal includes a requirement for all live streamed content to be monitored around the clock. The Cyberspace Administration of China is looking to wipe out what it sees as inappropriate online content, and live streaming is being targeted because of its massive popularity, particularly with Chinese youth. Chinese newspaper the People's Daily reports that the Cyberspace Administration of China wants to introduce a couple of new measures. As well as forcing websites offering live streaming options to monitor the streams around the clock, sites would also be required to have a commenting system in place that appears over the top of video. It's all part of a drive to "strengthen security evaluation of new products like live broadcast", but it will be seen as the government's continuing project to control the internet and purge it of anything that "harms social morality". Photo credit: Blablo101 / Shutterstock 2016-08-19 08:16 By Mark
27 TransUnion's Tech Overhaul Reaps Cultural Rewards Changing the tires while the car is driving down the road is an apt description of how TransUnion has transformed its infrastructure over the past three years. In the process, the company has implemented a new analytics structure, deployed unified communications tools designed to improve collaboration, experienced a dramatic shift in its ability to hire top- notch tech talent, and completely gutted its office space to create a modern working environment. TransUnion's efforts to modernize its data analytics structure earned it the No. 6 spot on the 2016 InformationWeek Elite 100. The undertaking, known as the Shared Analytical Processing Environment (SHAPE) , was part of a broad transformation that involved rebuilding infrastructure from the ground up. "We had an infrastructure that was really antiquated, with old big mainframe technology, out- of-date servers, platforms that weren't scalable," said Brian Parchem, TransUnion's SVP of global technology, in an interview with InformationWeek. "We pretty much gutted our whole infrastructure, built a new data center, built out our Mulitprotocol Label Switching [MPLS], and kept the whole business running at the same time. " TransUnion has worked to expand its mission beyond its roots as a credit reporting agency. Its tagline, "Information for good," reflects its goals of applying analytics to products and services offered to consumers and business customers. The Chicago-based company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2015. It has operations in more than 30 countries. Key to its emphasis on analysis is the SHAPE initiative, described in a prepared statement as the backbone of TransUnion's new IT organization. The analytics and research environment allows the company to put all of its data, tools, and capabilities into one shared location, from which they can be studied and used by analysts, data scientists, product developers, and quantitative analytics experts. What used to take four to six weeks is now available on a self-service data basis from 100% of the data (versus sample data). Customer analysis and insights can be generated in days rather than weeks. [Even the best intentions can go horribly wrong. Read 10 Ways to Doom Your Next Mobile App.] In the process, SHAPE has become the product innovation hub of TransUnion, used to generate new solutions and services for its customers. For example, the work on SHAPE led to the introduction in March 2016 of Prama , a new product for TransUnion customers. SHAPE is part of the broader TransUnion technology transformation story. Prior to the overhaul, Parchem said, "everything was very waterfall, a very linear, very serial approach to things. To really drive and change the culture [we had] to bring that fresh, new, [agile] IT delivery mentality to the organization. " The effort went well beyond implementing new processes. The company gutted its old office building to change from what Parchem described as "everyone has an office with a window" to a modern open floor plan. "That culturally changes the dynamic of an organization. " Parchem's team also implemented a unified communications system throughout the organization. "Global collaboration and unified communications have been very similar to things we're doing with big data," he said. "The machine learning and capabilities to find trends and analytics [with SHAPE] is the same thing we're doing with people. We're tying people together to be innovative. " A Polycom RealConnect telepresence system was tied in with Microsoft Skype for Business to enable video collaboration in a variety of formats, well beyond the typical video conference room available at most companies. "We can videoconference one-to-one, one-to-many. People can use it from home and tie into video conferences in our conference centers," said Parchem. The tools enable knowledge sharing, mobile meetings, and virtual meetings, making it easy for employees to collaborate no matter where they are in the world. The tool had the unintended consequence of encouraging a more casual workplace. "You can't expect people to be at the end of that video conference at home and not expect them to be in a baseball hat or t-shirt," said Parchem. At the same time, it also provided flexibility not previous available to workers, particularly in the company's Chicago headquarters. "There was this legacy way of working at TransUnion in Chicago," said Parchem. "People catch the train. They show up by 9 a.m. Then they have to catch the train to get home. It just wasn't working. If we weren't going to enable people to work from home and get mobile fast, we weren't going to be able to deliver on value to our shareholders and our customers. People didn't have the luxury of working remotely before. Now they do. They work longer hours, you can work globally, and you can leverage your knowledge capital around the globe at any time. " To prepare for the rollout, he said, "we had to build infrastructure from the ground up. A lot of companies try to take solutions and what they try to do is bolt on things to make it work. We were lucky, or unlucky, that we had to build it from the ground up. We needed to purchase network bandwidth and circuits. We had to look at difference suppliers, different strategic partners. " Parchem's team was selective at the outset, because the members knew at the end that the tools needed to be easy to use, at the click of a button, or employees wouldn't use them. "One thing that surprised me the most was how hard it is to get these video solutions to work when it's one-to-many or many-to-one," said Parchem. "When you're talking about telepresence-to-desktop, or desktop-to- telepresence, those solutions aren't plug-and-play. You really need to understand networking. " A wireless network was already in place, but Parchem said when dealing with video conferencing, Quality of Service (QoS) requires special attention. "We didn't have an MPLS, so we had to implement that to begin with. We had a lot of static routing, so step one was delivering that MPLS, and we did that very fast. We also had to buy and implement an RMX [Rich Media Exchange] and all the pieces of hardware and software that tie into that. Network bandwidth wasn't an issue, we had network bandwidth, but in smaller countries we had to spend some time working on bandwidth. " Still, the technology was ultimately not the challenge. As with so many technology changes, the real transformation had to take place on the cultural level. "We rolled out globally and, except for a small pilot, we rolled out in big-bang fashion," said Parchem. "It took about six to eight months to have the majority of the environment built and delivered and rolled out to 3,000-plus employees at the time. Now, we have about 4,700 users on the system, and there are consultants and some other folks using it as well. " Having senior leaders who embrace technology was a key factor, said Parchem. The company's CEO, James M. Peck, and its chief information and technology officer, Mohit Kapoor, drive the technology vision at TransUnion, and have created a culture that has begun to attract top tech talent. "At TU, we want you to fail and fail fast," said Parchem. "The more you do that, the better the ideas that come to the forefront. Everybody has a voice. Jim Peck holds breakfasts with computer operators, and everyone feels comfortable talking about those ideas and bringing ideas forward. It's not a hierarchy, it's a true collaborative environment from the top down. " Since he joined the company in late 2012, Parchem said, TransUnion has moved from being perceived in tech circles as a stuffy financial institution to one that is attracting IT job applicants from the likes of Google and Amazon. "I've probably hired a dozen people that I knew previously in the IT world who would have never come here before," said Parchem, "and the difference they made has been tremendous. " 2016-08-19 08:06 Susan Nunziata
28 SlackEX Linux Live Now Powered by Linux Kernel 4.7.1, Based on Slackware 14.2 SlackEX is currently based on the Slackware 14.2 operating system, but Arne Exton is always bringing you the latest GNU/Linux technologies and software releases. As such, SlackEX Build 160817 is the first of its kind to run the latest and recently released Linux 4.7.1 kernel , along with the Nvidia 367.35 proprietary graphics driver for Nvidia GPUs. "I’ve upgraded all included Slackware 14.2 packages to the latest version by 160817. The kernel has been changed to version 4.7.1 released 160816," says Arne Exton in the release announcement. "VirtualBox (not in Slackware’s repositories) has been upgraded to version 5.1.4 and Nvidia’s proprietary Graphics driver to version 367.35. " Of course, the most important change added in the SlackEX Build 160817 release is the replacement of the Slackware 14.1 repositories with those from Slackware Current so that you can always get the newest security and software updates. But Arne Exton continues to add applications that aren't available in the Slackware repos. For example, SlackEX Build 160817 features the Google Chrome 46.0.2490.86 web browser, VirtualBox 5.1.4 virtualization software, GParted 0.24.0 partition editor, GIMP 2.8.10, which was installed from sources, and many more. Other updated apps include Mozilla Firefox 48.0.1, Mozilla Thunderbird 45.2.0, Samba 4.4.5, and GCC 5.4.0. 2016-08-19 02:00 Marius Nestor
29 ReactOS 0.4.2 Operating System Lets You Mount and Read Various Unix Filesystems ReactOS 0.4.2 is here three months after the release of the first maintenance version, ReactOS 0.4.1, and brings various updated components, among which we can mention Wine and UniATA. It tries to improve the overall user experience of the system by adding various enhancements to the file manager and graphical shell. However, the most interesting feature of the ReactOS 0.4.2 release is the ability for users to mount and read (write support is not available at the time) data from various Unix and Linux filesystems, including but not limited to EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, ReiserFS, and UFS. More such filesystems will be supported in the next updates. "Native built-in support for these filesystems should make for considerably easier interoperability than the current out-of-box experience provided by Windows, and there is more to come in the future," reads the announcement. "The project is reaching a point where rapid releases are viable, where disruption from introduction of major components or restructuring has been greatly reduced from the tumultuous early years and even as recently as the late 0.3.x series. " That being said, ReactOS 0.4.2 is now available for download if you want to take it for a test drive on your personal computer, and as you can see, the development cycle has been accelerated, so we should expect to see more such releases in the coming months, which will bring additional improvements and updated components for a much more user-friendly Windows-like computing experience. 2016-08-19 01:05 Marius Nestor
30 Brit Hacks Pokemon Go Servers to Create Bot So Players Don't Have to Walk Around In an interview with local UK newspaper The Basingstoke Gazette , the developer said he created his bot after he discovered vulnerabilities in Niantic's Pokemon GO servers. He used these flaws to create a website where users could play the game without leaving their house. His is just one of the many Pokemon cheating tools available today, mostly advertised via Reddit topics. This is part of the huge wave of hacks and cheating tools that are plaguing the game. Niantic, the software company in charge of Pokemon GO for Nintendo, announced last weekend that it would start permanently banning Pokemon GO cheaters. Gore has admitted that he's facing legal pressure to take down his website, but he has no such plans. Other projects, such as NecroBot or MyGoBot.org, had to shut down. "If you look at the age bracket of people playing this game, it’s not all teenagers playing. There are a lot of people who work all day and don’t have the time to spend hours each day going out and catching Pokemon," Gore told the Gazette. "They can run it for two hours a day at home and still have the same levels and therefore can take over gyms and compete with others to make it more fun. " The 25-year-old developer said he received thousands of pounds in donations. He said that around 24,000 users access his website on a regular basis. In recent weeks, Niantic has been cracking down on all the tools and services that allow people to play on non-supported devices and using automated tools. It's only a matter of time until Niantic identifies the exploit Gore's using to power his site. Despite being out for under two months, the game is still very popular and racking up new users with every passing day. 2016-08-19 00:56 Catalin Cimpanu
31 Ubuntu Budgie Remix 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) ISO Coming Soon with New LightDM Greeter According to the project's developers, a lot of things have happened since the release of budgie-remix 16.04.1 back on July, which brought full-disk encryption and support for installing Snap packages, along with all the software updates and security fixes from the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system. One of the most important components updated recently is the in-house built Budgie Welcome App, which has just received more user-friendly panel resets and the ability to switch your desktop from the clean and simple Arc GTK theme to a gorgeous material design style that includes both a system theme and an icon set (check out the video below for more details). "budgie-remix 16.04.1 has been released and we’ve updated a lot of different components. Most of the bugs have been resolved, but if you encounter new one, feel free to report it back. We are also launching new website, which should be ready for its debut in the following days. Optimized for both mobile and tablet clients so you can easily browse the website," says Udara Madubhashana. There are also many improvements implemented in the Budgie desktop environment, such as the addition of the nautilus-share, policy-desktop- privileges, ppa-purge, bash-completion, acpi-support, gvfs-fuse, and GNOME System Monitor packages. The budgie-screenshot-applet has received some fixes as well and should work better now. The highly anticipated Ubuntu Budgie Remix 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system is in the works now, but it looks like an ISO image is yet to be seeded to public beta testers. It will include all the latest GTK+ 3.20 and GNOME Stack 3.20 packages that landed upstream in the Ubuntu 16.10 repos, along with a new LightDM display manager you can see below. 2016-08-19 00:13 Marius Nestor
32 MPSA Online Services At-a-Glance: Software Licensing Simplified The Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) At-a-Glance allows customers to purchase not only licenses, but also License and Software Assurance (SA), and online services like O365 under one agreement—enabling a more elastic setup. One of the main draws to having all these license and subscription options in one place is having one agreement to manage and one site to view and review licenses. This site is called the Business Center, and in it customers have the ability to quickly provision subscription-based products like O365 —and instantly access them—all while having them co-term to the anniversary date. But wait, there’s more. Customers can also work with a dedicated Account Manager to order licenses. Typically they can then access them in the O365 Admin Portal within 24-48 hours. The MPSA program enables fast, flexible, purchasing options—like upfront and annual options—to easily add any number of users and services at any time via Provision Services. Customers can choose from monthly (short term) and purchase subscriptions for the online services for less than 12 months and align it to the first Purchasing Account Anniversary. Imagine how useful this will be for organizations that want to buy licenses for short-term projects or who have a seasonal business! Finally, multi-year subscriptions enable customers to purchase subscription to an online service and receive price protection for the duration of that subscription. Price protection shields customers from online service prices increases when making an incremental order. Orders for online services or package subscriptions are billed with full payment at the time of ordering, or in advance annual installments on the Purchasing Account Anniversary or order anniversary. Pricing for additional subscriptions are the same as the initial order, unless there is a more favourable promotion at the time of ordering. This is key when deciding between annual or upfront payments for these multi-year purchases. Additionally, if customers initially purchase a subscription for greater than one year, they will also benefit from a reduced online service price on incremental orders. What are you waiting for? The new MPSA is much simpler and has exactly what customers need now and in the future. For more than 30 years, the PC Connection family of companies has been trusted to provide and transform technology into complete solutions. For more information, drop us a line. 2016-08-19 00:00 Josh Sutelman
33 Pandora may finally launch on-demand streaming After years of resistance, it looks like Pandora is about ready to jump on the on- demand streaming wagon. According to a report from the WSJ , Pandora is in the process of signing deals with record companies in order to launch a $10/month on- demand streaming tier, giving users unlimited access to any song on the platform. Pandora also plans to tweak it’s existing $5/month Pandora One tier (which is an ad-free version of its internet radio) to include more perks, like skipping more songs and offline listening, the report says. Pandora was one of the first to bring radio to the internet, launching on the scene in 2000. But times have changed rapidly with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, who dominate the space by offering on-demand streaming for around $10/month. Though Pandora has failed to continue growing — the user base has stagnated around 80 million free users and 4 million paid users — the company has also kept costs relatively lower by not offering on-demand listening. Pandora shares dropped after poor performance last quarter , following the alleged rejection of an acquisition offer from Sirius XM owner Liberty Media for $15/share. Since Pandora users can only listen to “stations,” as opposed to listening to Katy Perry’s new single on repeat, they only have to pay internet radio licensing fees (instead of inking deals with individual record labels). Plus, Pandora has only operated in markets where it gets automatic licensing as an internet radio company: the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The WSJ also writes that Pandora is interested in launching in new markets. However, record labels are concerned that they won’t have control over which songs play on Pandora’s free tier. The report claims that Pandora will launch this new on-demand tier as soon as next month. Pandora did not immediately respond to request for comment. 2016-08-19 00:00 Jordan Crook
34 YouTube opens a Creator Store retail shop at Google’s London offices There’s more than one way to monetize your online video content. Sure, you can go the old fashioned route, making ads and clicks and such — but just wait until your preferred platform opens a one-off store front where you can pedal your wares for the real money to roll in. Following the recent unveiling of a space in the UK that provides YouTube stars with a place to record and edit video attached to its King’s Cross headquarters in London, the service is will also be Creator Store. High Profile YouTubers will be able to sell merchandise at the gift shop, including swag like t-shirts, books, mugs and the like. Profits from the shop will go directly to the creators, and the store will also be used to house book signings and product releases, according to Business Insider. In addition to the store and record facilities, the spot also includes a coffee bar and a community accessible gathering spot for the public where people can gaze admiringly at YouTubbers. 2016-08-19 00:00 Brian Heater
35 Tickets to Startup and Hardware Alley at Disrupt London 2016 are now available Listen up, startups in the U. K. and around the world. Disrupt London 2016 is right around the corner, and we’re happy to announce that tickets to display your company in Startup and Hardware alley are now available. You can get your hands on Startup and Hardware Alley tickets here . For just £800, you’ll get two tickets to display your company in Startup Alley on Monday, December 5. Or for £650, you can partake in either Startup Alley or Hardware Alley on Tuesday, December 6. That price gets you two general admission passes to the Disrupt conference, which you’ll be able to use to attend all of the interviews and fireside chats with our amazing lineup of speakers on the day you’re not in the Alley. You’ll also, of course, get to peruse the show floor and chat with the dozens of startups in the Alley that day, and check out the early-stage startups competing in the Startup Battlefield. And, of course, you’ll get to attend all the wonderful parties and after-parties that take place the week of Disrupt, so you can keep the good times going long into the evening after the show floor closes for the day. All Startup Alley companies must be less than two years old and have secured less than US$2 million in funding. We’d especially like to invite all you international startup organizations to apply for a country pavilion in Startup Alley at Disrupt, one of our favorite Startup Alley staples in recent years. Over the past several Disrupt shows, we’ve featured promising startups from all corners of the world — places like Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and the Middle East. As long as you meet the criteria identified above, drop our events team an email with details about your organization and what country your startup is from. After reviewing your submission, we’ll reach out with additional information about how to secure your spot in the Alley. The Startup Alley at Disrupt is one of the best ways to get your company noticed by tech enthusiasts who could turn into top employees, members of the press who can get your company the coverage it needs and investors who could bring the funding to take your startup to the next level. We hope you and your companies will join us at Disrupt London 2016, which takes place December 5-6 at London’s Copper Box Arena. 2016-08-19 00:00 Matt Burns
36 Will the Internet of Things make us superhuman? We often highlight our frailties when we fail — we are, after all, only human. However, technology is quickly redefining what it means to be human. There is no denying that we are considerably different from the people who came before us, not only in that we successfully wield technology to overcome a range of challenges, but we also utilize it to enhance our current condition. From artificial skin, limbs and organs to touchable holograms and gesture- controlled devices, the trend is quite clear: Transhumanism will very likely be the next stage of human development. Every element of human physiology — the senses, organs (including the brain), skeleton and muscles — will be enhanced. These improvements will be primarily driven by advances in wearables and the Internet of Things. Transhumanism is the “theory and intellectual movement that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations by means of science and technology.” Its origins may be shrouded in the mist of sci-fi, but just as computers have become a part of everyday life, the ideas put forward by transhumanism will soon be commonplace. We already accept some of its tenets, such as the incredible rise in elective plastic surgery and the race to quantify and connect our world with the Internet of Things (IoT ). Wearables and the Internet of Things are pushing the boundaries to enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities. While it cannot be denied that technology can make our lives better, we also need to address the serious ethical issues raised by modifying the human body. Is transhumanism what Francis Fukuyama called “the world’s most dangerous idea,” or are we scaling the heights of a new Golden Age? First, it is important to understand the nature of the enhancing technologies, as wearables and the IoT depend on advances in a range of fields, such as materials engineering and quantum mechanics. We are still far from the on- demand cybernetic implants or body parts envisioned by futurists, but a number of companies are developing exoskeletons to augment strength and allow an individual to safely move heavy objects. A host of medical devices and technologies are already enhancing the human experience. For example, while only researchers and clinicians can take advantage of the newest diagnostic wearables, consumers have access to haptic shirts, smart athletic gear and shoes and wrist trackers. These products allow for a degree of self-quantification above and beyond how an individual feels while exercising. They allow the user to measure athletic progress and highlight potential health issues. Some wearables capitalize on the power of the ubiquitous cell phone ( 64 percent of U. S. adults have one — compare that to the stats for the UAE, where there are two cell phones per person ), which is also undergoing an evolution. Samsung and Apple have patents on holographic technologies that use lasers, micro lenses and sensors to project 3D interactive holographic displays from the mobile devices. Japanese researchers have developed touchable holograms, called Fairy Lights , which are made using a type of laser that can excite physical matter to emit light in 3D form. The laser produces high-frequency pulses (1,000- 200,000 pulses per second) to create holographic images that respond to touch. Instead of being chained to a device, users would have greater freedom of movement, access to high-quality images for engineering projects and may even be able to see how they would look in a new outfit without the hassle of trying it on. There are any number of devices that are eager to supplant your mouse and keyboard, and some of them border on the magical. Gesture-based controllers or wired gloves include depth-aware cameras or radar to detect movement. For example, the Myo Gesture Control Band offers the remote control of computers, drones and other vehicles with the sweep of an arm. Leap Motion and other ring-based technologies offer the ability to manipulate the digital world with conductor-like majesty. One of the highest uses of technology lies in serving those who suffer from physical challenges. One company, Cambridge Bio-Augmentation, has developed a universal adaptor for prosthetics. These adaptors reduce the pain of using the prosthetic device while allowing for the natural processing of neural, muscle and bone signals to the prosthetic. The natural progression from external 3D projections is certainly a modified field of vision. One company has developed a cataract surgery technique that can give patients eyesight three times better than 20/20 vision. Although not currently available commercially, these “bionic lenses” can be implanted in about 8 minutes. The future of connecting biology to technology is becoming a reality. Advances in wearables and associated technologies are not limited to the realm of handheld devices or prosthetics — cybernetic creatures offer a whole new world of opportunity. Researchers at Harvard have created a tissue-engineered robotic stingray that is light activated; the creation contains both artificial and natural elements. Growing and enhancing living tissue is not a brand-new technology: Scientists are hard at work creating organs to save the lives of thousands waiting for a donation. While the lifesaving ability of an artificial organ is easily understood, what about artificial brains? Researchers in Singapore have successfully developed part of the brain in the laboratory; not only can these achievements give us insight into one of the most complex parts of the human body, but they may one day be able to help individuals who suffer from brain damage, help us become smarter and perhaps even allow us to better interact with one another. One need not get a new brain for that, though, because Freer Logic’s contactless EEG/ECD can read and monitor brain activities of people without having a device on them — their next generation device will be able measure brain activity remotely. That means we will be able to measure abnormal brain activity at airport security checkpoints for potential threats, identify the cognitive load of a customer in a retail store to assess interest or monitor the focus of train engineers to help avoid accidents. Although modern devices tend to be stiff agglomerations of sensors and circuits, that will soon change. One of the newest breakthroughs in material technology involves the creation of a liquid metal that can move itself. One can only imagine some of the possibilities, such as flexible circuits or even safety suits that can alter shape to better protect the wearer. However, transhumanism challenges our ethics and values. Enhancing the body and mind through technology raises a number of questions, touching on the very essence of what it means to be human. While it is clear that helping individuals overcome challenges is a beneficial aspect of technology and wearables, we enter a gray area when we begin discussing enhancements that create “super powers.” Some of these battles over values are already being waged over the booming plastic surgery industry, which not only restores the appearance of a burn victim, but also creates living dolls with artificial faces. Francis Fukuyama is one of many voices raised about the potential dangers of technological enhancement. Concerns about the differences between the wealthy and the poor, who gets to control access to the technology and visions of technologies gone awry all have some merit and must enter into the marketplace of ideas. The profound, complex questions of humanity, values and ethics must be addressed. What will we become when we evolve through technology? We are about to find out. 2016-08-19 00:00 Scott Amyx
37 GuestReady provides Airbnb hosts with the services to professionalize their rental In the sharing economy, who services the servicers? In the case of Uber, your driver could soon be a machine — but there is a growing ecosystem that caters specifically to sharing economy services. One such example is GuestReady , a new company that wants to help Airbnb hosts manage their property more easily and efficiently. London-based GuestReady officially opened its doors this week, launching its service in six cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong. The idea is simple: provide all manner of services that an Airbnb host could need for management — be that cleaning, laundry, or check-in and out services. “We think the sharing economy has seen incredible growth but to professionalize it there aren’t many companies out there to help,” GuestReady CEO Alexander Limpert told TechCrunch. “Staying at an Airbnb is always a great experience but sometimes it is not as professional as we’d like it to be. Sometimes it is the small things, like waiting for someone to let you in or an apartment that isn’t really that clean.” “We want to be the underground hands and feet that can run the sharing economy machine,” he added. Limpert said that GuestReady is “focused” on Airbnb because it is the category leader, but also offers services to home owners using HomeAway, Booking.com and others. The company has been quietly operating for a few months, with the goal of providing services within 48 hours of requests from hosts. For now, it is sticking to these launch markets to prove out its model first. “The focus is on these six cities, which are all big cities with lots of tourists,” ex-Foodpanda executive Limpert said. “This is a business that needs on the ground operations, so we’re in a good position for the moment and have [no plans to expand until] we see we have good scale.” The challenge for GuestReady even if it can attract attention from Airbnb hosts, is walking the fine line between having a large enough ‘fleet’ of workers to carry out jobs and being selective enough to only hire trustworthy individuals. After all, you can’t just hand anyone a person’s house key and ask them to front their business. Limpert said the company has built its “freelancer” network using people with a background in hotels and hospitality. That isn’t just limited to students, although they are a group that tends to have the most flexible schedules and a keenness to earn money. “We use thorough selection [methods] and keep our circle of workers tightly- knit,” he explained of GuestReady’s hiring. “This is not the type of business with lots of people involved because it involves trust, but we have a broad network and a company that can help us in peak times — but that’s rare.” For now, GuestReady operates a web-based booking platform to manage requests and schedules. There are plans for mobile apps in the future, but that’ll take some time, the company said. To help it get going, the company — which is founded by a number of ex-Rocket Internet employees — raised an undisclosed round of funding from the Swiss Founders Fund. 2016-08-19 00:00 Jon Russell
38 38 Ticwatch 2 team clarifies which apps its Kickstarter smartwatch will initially support The team beyond Ticwatch 2 , the Chinese smartwatch project that has crossed $1.5 million on Kickstarter , has confirmed which apps and services its wearable device will initially support. Mobvoi, the Google-backed company behind the project , uses its own modified version of Android to power the $139 watch rather than Android Wear. That means that it cannot support all the regular apps you might expect from an Android watch, despite the company initially saying it would offer full Android Wear support. On the plus side, its own system lets it offer useful voice command support and other bespoke integrations. Writing in response to concern from some of the projects near-8,000 backers, Mobvoi this week issued a lengthy update to clarify app support, apologize for any misinformation, and provide further details: Since Mobvoi operates a dedicated app store for its OS, it expects this list to grows as more developers make their services available for the Ticwatch 2. Many backers had also asked about warranty status for the device even though — as we’ve stressed many times — backing a Kickstarter is not the same as buying a product. Backers must make concessions for backing an idea and accept that, in some circumstances, there may be unforeseen issues. Nonetheless, Mobvoi has pledged it offer a one-year warranty: The update was well received by most backers. The project has now passed $1.5 million with six more days left for others to join. As a reminder, we were impressed by the original Mandarin version of the watch , which features a more intuitive user interface than other watches, some nifty gestures and integrations with China’s top services — such as ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing. The Ticwatch 2 is Mobvoi’s first effort at making an international version of the watch. Mobvoi co-founder Yuanyuan Li told us last month that the Kickstarter edition is very much a beta version which the company hopes to refine and improve with feedback from its community of backers. 2016-08-19 00:00 Jon Russell
39 Watch NASA astronauts spacewalk to install a new dock for the International Space Station NASA astronauts are venturing out into space to install a component key to the future of commercial crew mission. The International Space Station is getting a new dock, which will be used in 2017 by Boeing and SpaceX to start ferrying crew to and from the station, marking the first time private companies have been able to do so, and ending the current Russian monopoly on ISS astronaut transit. The spacewalk will be done by NASA’s Kate Rubins and Jeff Williams, and begins at 8:05 AM ET. It’s not as simple as putting an IKEA coffee table together, however – the installation is set to take six and a half hours in total, and a lot of the work has been prepped in advance on the international docking adapter to be installed, which was delivered by SpaceX on July 20, and which was unpacked on August 17. For Rubins, it’s a first – this is her inaugural spacewalk. Williams will be doing his fourth trip walking around outside the ISS. 2016-08-19 00:00 Darrell Etherington
40 UK Police Arrest Sage Employee at London Airport "A 32 y/o woman has been arrested in relation to the ongoing fraud investigation from the business firm Sage," City Police wrote on Twitter, with no other additional details. London police announced the suspect's arrest six days after Sage detected a data breach on its servers and started notifying clients. Sage, a Newcastle-based IT firm that makes accountancy software for over 300 companies, said the breach occurred via unauthorized access using an internal login . The breach most likely exposed accounting and payroll data from the affected companies but also exposed the personal details of employees at those businesses as well. The woman police arrested is now out on bail, according to a BBC report. She remains the main suspect in the investigation. Sage didn't say if the login used to access the data in the breach was used with malintent, or was utilized by a third-party after compromising the employee's account. This is a big win for UK police, who managed to track down and arrest the main suspect in less than a week after the breach occurred, and a mere one day after the news made headlines in the international press. 2016-08-18 23:55 Catalin Cimpanu
41 macOS Sierra release date, news and features With iOS 10 apparently serving as Apple's flagship operating system, it's easy to overlook Apple's latest desktop offering. However, macOS Sierra ought not to be ignored, as it's evidently jam-packed with new features and improvements. The highly-anticipated OS X 10.12 was officially revealed as macOS Sierra at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2016. As we experienced in the move from OS X 10.10 Yosemite to 10.11 El Capitan , Sierra isn't just bug fixes and performance updates—it's a full-fledged follow-up to last year's update. With that in mind, what can you expect from macOS Sierra? Fasten your seatbelts and follow along, and we'll tell you exactly that. When it comes to releasing new software, Apple has gotten into an annual release cycle. To no surprise, we saw the reveal of macOS Sierra in June at the WWDC, the Worldwide Developers Conference, with a private beta issued to developers that same day. A public beta , released on July 7, 2016, brought Siri, picture-in-picture mode and more to a broad audience of Mac users for the first time in Apple history. Since then, the macOS Sierra public beta has received four separate updates, with the first having been seeded on July 20. Of course, in order to take advantage of the new Continuity features like Universal Clipboard, you'll also need the iOS 10 beta installed on a compatible iPhone or iPad. Apple Pay, on the other hand, won't be ready for the limelight until macOS Sierra's hard launch later this year. The biggest new feature slated for macOS Sierra is the inclusion of the Siri virtual personal assistant. Siri was launched on iOS back in 2011 and, surprisingly, Macs are the last in a long list of platforms that support it. Just as with the virtual assistant on iPhones, users will be able to simply command Siri and ask it questions with their voice. However, being on the Mac opens up a greater swath of options such as file searching, storage inquiries and even the ability to toggle settings on and off. At WWDC, SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi showed audiences how Siri could prove beneficial on Mac while remaining distinct from other Apple platforms. The personal assistant software can respond to complex requests such as, "Show the files I worked on last week about the off-site. " From there, users can narrow down their search based on tags. Siri can even access other parts of macOS including applications like iTunes, effectively making her your personal DJ. Moreover, the AI is compatible with Safari as well, allowing it to act on web searches. And, with Apple having issued as SDK for developers to make their own apps work with Siri, it will be interesting to see where that goes. Maybe we'll see the day when Siri can access your Spotify library, upload files to Google Drive or help you organize spreadsheets in Excel. Since 1985, Apple has remained complacent with its Hierarchal File System, or HFS. With macOS, however, that all changes thanks to the new APFS, or simply Apple File System. Starting with the company's 2017 MacBook lineup, all of Apple's computers will support the new filesystem on its bootup drive. Unfortunately, the new filesystem is limited to transferring files back and forth on a non-startup drive in its present beta state. Once Apple's hardware begins to support the new standard, it won't be long before we start to reap the benefits. These include improved flash memory optimization, faster Time Machine backups and improved space allocation letting two APFS-formatted disks act as one combined storage drive. Unfortunately, for legacy Mac users this means HFS support will be ousted in the next 25 years, though it would be a miracle if your computer could still boot up by then. Continuity between Mac and iOS is a big deal for those engulfed in Apple's hardy ecosystem. Ever since its introduction, users have been able to pick up calls and text conversations from their phones and conveniently pull them up on their Mac computers. With macOS Sierra, not only will you be able to access your computer from outside devices including your iPhone, but if you need to quickly move something from one device to another, this is made even easier than AirDrop thanks to the Universal Clipboard function. Fortunately, if the public beta is anything to go by, it's as seamless as Command-C, Command-V. And, while TouchID isn't coming to Mac anytime soon, a similar feature called Auto Unlock is. As the title implies, this new feature will let you unlock your Mac from other Apple devices merely by being in close proximity to an Apple Watch or iOS device. What's more, Apple Pay has expanded beyond the restraints of a 4.7-inch screen and onto PCs by way of macOS. Making an effort to compete with e-commerce services like PayPal, a "Pay with Apple Pay" button will soon be integrated in your browser with TouchID on a nearby iPhone or iPad serving as a means of quick authentication. Finally we have the Photos app getting an overhaul in iOS 10 , and because of the way Continuity works, the incoming features also apply to Mac. These include a new "Memories" tab for a more magazine-like viewing mode as well as an AI that automatically sorts photos either by people or topics. Likewise, if you're a skilled multi-tasker interested in watching videos while you work, you'll be delighted to know that macOS Sierra's picture-in-picture mode allows users to take their video windows with them even as they rotate between desktop screens. Though we can assume that most of macOS Sierra's features were revealed at WWDC, there are still a handful of discoveries being made hinting at what we can expect from the operating system's official launch in the Fall. One such discovery, as reported by 9to5mac , was made by a developer on Twitter who somehow managed to activate a more ubiquitous Dark Mode color scheme on his Mac. Although you can already enable a dark menu bar and Dock in the macOS Sierra public beta, this newly proposed feature would ostensibly extend across a catalog of applications, like Safari. While it's yet to be confirmed by Apple, the prospect of a true Dark Mode is undeniably an exciting one. Nevertheless, there's bound to be an assortment of rumors, true or otherwise, leading into macOS Sierra's September release frame. Article continues below 2016-08-18 20:17 By Kevin
42 42 UK tech salaries continue to grow Salaries for tech jobs in the UK are still rising in the second quarter of the year, despite the fact that the number of jobs in the industry is slowly declining. This is according to a new report by Dice , the online career site for the technology community. Together with Watch, it lists the most wanted jobs and skills in the industry. The two companies say cloud and security skills are still most wanted, both in permanent and contract roles. Most wanted skills in Q2, for permanent roles, were agile software development, SQL, JavaScript,. NET, C#, Java, CSS, Linux, project management, and ASP. Net. Among contract workers it’s similar, with the addition of SQL Server. The number of agile software development positions rose by 14 percent in the second quarter, while Java rose up to the third most desirable skill for contract roles, with a 13 percent year-over-year jump. Linux, also, rose 18 percent in a year. "It’s unsurprising to see such a dramatic increase in demand for cyber- security expertise amidst a slight overall market reduction from Q1. We can see the importance of businesses investing in safeguarding sensitive data", says Jamie Bowler, marketing director at Dice Europe. "Cloud skills are also in demand, as the trend to find more robust and efficient data storage solutions continues. Software developers are still hot property as digital evolves at a rapid pace". In the second quarter of the year, a total of 90,000 new and permanent tech jobs were advertised, with the majority (41 percent, or 31,000) being in London. South East was second with 16,973, followed by East of England (6,602). Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Tatiana Popova / Shutterstock 2016-08-18 19:25 By Sead
43 43 Cisco will cut 5,500 jobs According to reports, Cisco Systems is planning a mass jobs cull with 5,500 jobs in danger -- or around seven percent of its global workforce. Cisco, the world’s biggest networking equipment company, is expected to announce more details of any potential cuts in the next few weeks a part of an ongoing transition to a more software and cloud-orientated strategy. As of 30 April, Cisco had around 70,000 employees globally and less than a year ago opened new offices in London, bringing its UK employee headcount up to around 7,000. Following a decrease in spending by telecom carriers and enterprises on network switches and routers -- Cisco’s primary business -- the company has been investing in more in data analytics and cloud-based tools for data centres. But it’s not the only company to have announced significant job cuts over the last 12 months or so. Towards the end of 2015 HP revealed that it would be axing up to 30,000 employees and in April Intel announced it would be saying goodbye to 11 per cent of its workforce as part of a global restructuring plan. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Gang Liu / Shutterstock 2016-08-18 18:45 By Sam
Total 43 articles. Created at 2016-08-19 18:01