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Total 34 articles, created at 2016-04-11 12:03 1 Grab a drink with Harley Quinn in the new 'Suicide Squad' trailer Check out another dose of hilarious hijinks with everyone's favourite crew of mass (2.00/3) murderers, cannibals and killers-for-hire from Task Force X, better known as the Suicide Squad. 2016-04-11 08:21 1KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 2 Corsair extends select PSU warranties to 10 years Corsair extends select PSU warranties to 10 years. Corsair has extended the 7 year warranties of four current PSU ranges to 10 years 2016-04-11 11:44 2KB feedproxy.google.com 3 IBM Maximo Asset Management solutions for the oil and gas industry As technology reaches every corner of the globe, the world becomes smaller—and smarter. With global organizations and systems that are more instrumented, 2016-04-11 08:18 1KB www.itworldcanada.com 4 Woorlds Innovative Technology Welcomed at the E- Commerce & Innovaton in Retail Conferene in Atlanta Woorlds, a cutting-edge technology StartUp from Israel, participated in the prestigious E- commerce & Innovation in Retail Conference in Atlanta which was attended by the biggest and most successful retail and e-commerce brands in the U. S, amongest them include: Home Depot,... 2016-04-11 07:41 1KB pctechmag.com 5 Looking to battle The Empire? Make your own Star Wars Ewok army You don't have to be stranded on the planet Endor to become best friends with an Ewok. Now Star Wars fans can craft Wicket the Ewok at Build-A-Bear workshops. 2016-04-11 05:49 1KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 6 BlackBerry plots to release two mid-range Android smartphones this year After launching the Blackberry Priv last year on November 6th, Blackberry Ltd. is reportedly cooking up on two mid-range Android smartphones, that are expected to be released by the end of this year. During an exclusive interview to The National website, John S. Chen,... 2016-04-11 06:29 1KB pctechmag.com 7 ​Billion-dollar ASX debut for WiseTech Global Shares from Sydney's logistics software firm WiseTech jumped nearly 10 percent on its ASX debut, pushing the company past its AU$974 million valuation. 2016-04-11 06:27 3KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 8 This Korean startup wants your saliva Average life expectancy is rising every year worldwide and Korean start-up Genoplan says it wants your spit to collect valuable data from Asia to help cure diseases. 2016-04-11 06:26 5KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 9 Facebook's secret weapon to keep your attention: Not- Facebook The social network's orbit goes beyond its 1.6 billion members. At the F8 conference in San Francisco this week, we'll get a glimpse of what's going on outside of the "Big Blue App. " 2016-04-11 05:07 4KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 10 'Fantastic Beasts' and where to find the latest trailer The latest trailer for the new Harry Potter movie has 1920s wizard gangsters in it. That's really all you need to know. 2016-04-11 08:21 1KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com

11 Kepler spacecraft goes into emergency mode NASA's planet-hunting Kepler probe has entered its lowest operational mode as NASA scientists try to determine what is wrong with it. 2016-04-11 08:21 1KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 12 Google receives threat at HQ, police say Authorities say there were no injuries. 2016-04-11 08:21 839Bytes cnet.com.feedsportal.com

13 Establish a predictive maintenance culture to optimize asset performance Many organizations may not regard maintenance practices as a primary means for optimizing asset performance. While operations managers look for ways to 2016-04-11 08:18 1KB www.itworldcanada.com 14 Man climbs rock to propose via Apple's FaceTime, gets arrested Technically Incorrect: A California man decides to scale a rock in Morro Bay, California, in order to propose. Things don't go so well. 2016-04-11 08:21 3KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 15 Buzzfeed #watermelon explosion satisfies Internet's thirst for destruction Buzzfeed tortures a watermelon live on Facebook for 45 minutes and pretty much the whole Internet tunes in to watch the mayhem. 2016-04-11 08:21 1KB cnet.com.feedsportal.com 16 Bring on the DevOps, say IT support managers Time for more DevOps? 'Sometimes the support teams are caught by surprise by changes being pushed into production as everyone else is.' 2016-04-11 04:35 2KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 17 Australian-listed Animoca Brands raises AU$6.5m for expansion Mobile games developer Animoca Brands has raised AU$6.5 million via institutional placement in a bid to expedite growth and expand both its app and games portfolios. 2016-04-11 03:27 3KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 18 Science Kombat lets you beat up Charles Darwin as Stephen Hawking This is obviously something you want to see. 2016-04-11 02:19 1KB www.pcgamer.com 19 Smartphone survival test: ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser This $199 handset is loaded with features and should satisfy any consumer on a budget looking for value in an Android phone. 2016-04-11 01:42 12KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 20 NBN FttN users increasingly opting for slower speeds As more customers are connected to the NBN's fibre-to-the-node network, the vast majority of users are going for 25/5Mbps and 12/1Mbps services. 2016-04-11 01:32 4KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 21 The great adoption bake-off Ease of use or relevance? Both are important - but is your time better spent on worrying about the ease of use, or the relevance of collaboration tools? 2016-04-11 01:04 2KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

22 Coping with the needs of dynamic security A look at how cloud platforms offer a means of maintaining cloud security 2016-04-11 01:00 2KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 23 Watch Conan O'Brien play Counter-Strike in South Korea He's not very good at it. 2016-04-11 00:57 1008Bytes www.pcgamer.com 24 Windows 10: Why These 10 New Features Matter Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 Build 14316, giving Insiders the option to try Cortana updates, Skype UWP preview, and native Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Here are 10 features worth trying out. 2016-04-11 00:06 2KB www.informationweek.com 25 Apple vs FBI: DoJ pursues Apple for new iPhone hack The Department of Justice wants Apple to help it hack an iPhone related to a New York drugs bust 2016-04-11 00:00 55KB www.itpro.co.uk 26 Huawei wants to be the next Apple Company hopes high-end P9 can put it on an even footing with the largest device makers 2016-04-11 00:00 2KB www.itpro.co.uk 27 Huawei talks up “video as basic” at Analyst Conference 2016 Video must be given as much emphasis as voice by telcos, claims Eric Xu 2016-04-11 00:00 2KB www.itpro.co.uk 28 Final Fantasy XV PC port may contain more content, if it releases at all Possible PC version won't be limited by console tech, director says. 2016-04-10 23:25 1KB www.pcgamer.com 29 Telstra picks up AU$1.6 billion HFC contract from NBN Australia's incumbent telco has picked up a deal to design and manage construction within its HFC footprint. 2016-04-10 22:43 4KB zdnet.com.feedsportal.com 30 Brian Fargo, Josh Sawyer, and Gordon Walton on the history and future of RPGs The creators of some of the PC's most beloved cRPGs, new and old, talk about how they make games. 2016-04-10 18:00 4KB www.pcgamer.com 31 Don't Starve Together leaves Early Access on April 21 Standalone spin-off now features everything from the base game. 2016-04-10 16:00 1KB www.pcgamer.com 32 Modder delivers the original Doom in VR Plus, an overhaul for Aliens: Colonial Marines and a camping mod for Fallout 4. 2016-04-10 14:30 1KB www.pcgamer.com 33 More leaks of the hardware and software that make up the HTC 10 All eyes on Tuesday 2016-04-10 13:51 2KB feedproxy.google.com 34 Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter redesigns Holmes and Watson See a younger, more energetic sleuthing duo in first game footage. 2016-04-10 13:00 1KB www.pcgamer.com Articles

Total 34 articles, created at 2016-04-11 12:03

1 Grab a drink with Harley Quinn in the new 'Suicide Squad' trailer (2.00/3) It's nice to know that even amongst all the murder and mayhem, a group of supervillains can take some time out and bond over a drink. Or, at least, that's what the new "Suicide Squad" seems to be telling us. Debuting at the end of tonight's MTV Movie Awards, it's roughly two and a half minutes of some high-octane action and, yes, a couple of laughs. So cue up the fun music -- this time it's "Ballroom Blitz", which means the film now has two songs in common with "Wayne's World" -- and serve up a liberal dose of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn sassing her teammates. Although in fairness, we do see a little bit more the enigmatic pyrokinetic and facial tattoo enthusiast El Diablo (Jay Hernandez).

New Suicide Squad trailer here to remind you that DC movies can be fun feedproxy.google.com 2016-04-11 08:21 Nic Healey cnet.com.feedsportal.com

2 Corsair extends select PSU warranties to 10 years Prior to this announcement, the PSU ranges in question had seven-year warranties, but a wide range of Corsair's PSUs now have 10-year warranties. Corsair has announced that it has extended its standard seven- year PSU warranty to 10 years on select models. Effective immediately, the move increases the warranty by three years from the current seven years and no extra registration or action is required. Not all its ranges are covered, however, but the inclusion list is fairly extensive, especially amongst its premium models. Currently, all models in the AXi, HXi, RMi and RMx ranges will see the warranty extension in place and this will include all future models in these ranges too. Here's the rest of the official press release with more information: Corsair’s commitment to PSU quality and longevity has always been at the heart of its entire PSU line-up, and is why millions of customers have chosen Corsair PSUs to power their PCs. This commitment isn’t just made at the manufacturing level – it’s also at the heart of Corsair’s customer support experience, ensuring customers who choose a Corsair PSU have faith and confidence in their purchase for years to come. It’s that confidence in the durability and longevity of Corsair’s wide range of PSUs that has allowed it to increase the warranty of all AXi range (launched in 2012), HXi range (launched in 2014) and RMi/RMx range (launched in 2015) PSUs from 7 years to 10 years, ensuring buyers a decade of peace of mind for their PC’s power supply. Customers are not required to register or provide additional information to benefit from this extra coverage. The extended warranty is granted worldwide and across all eligible PSUs sold to date and on all future sales of the eligible PSUs. With an extra three years of warranty, enthusiasts, system builders and gamers alike can be confident that their Corsair AXi, HXi, RMi or RMx PSU will provide, efficient, stable power well into the next decade and beyond. Please refer to the qualifying product list below AXi Series™ PSUs launched with a 7 year warranty. Now have a 10 year warranty. HXi Series™ PSUs launched with a 7 year warranty. Now have a 10 year warranty. RMi Series™ PSUs launched with a 7 year warranty. Now have a 10 year warranty. RMx Series™ PSUs launched with a 7 year warranty. Now have a 10 year warranty. The warranty of all other Corsair PSUs remains unchanged. You can see more information on Corsair's warranty here.

2016-04-11 11:44 Published on feedproxy.google.com

3 IBM Maximo Asset Management solutions for the oil and gas industry As technology reaches every corner of the globe, the world becomes smaller— and smarter. With global organizations and systems that are more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent than ever, the oil and gas industries now have the potential to achieve new levels of business value and optimize operations. IBM is using its technological expertise and decades of leadership to help organizations in the oil and gas industries. From exploration and production to refining and marketing, IBM offers IoT solutions for oil and gas operations. With deep industry and process expertise, IBM helps oil and gas companies to enhance operational sectors, which can improve efficiency and optimize global resources in ways that enable organizations to focus on operational efficiency and resource utilization.

2016-04-11 08:18 www.itworldcanada.com

4 Woorlds Innovative Technology Welcomed at the E- Commerce & Innovaton in Retail Conferene in Atlanta Woorlds , a cutting-edge technology StartUp from Israel, participated in the prestigious E- commerce & Innovation in Retail Conference in Atlanta which was attended by the biggest and most successful retail and e- commerce brands in the U. S, amongest them include: Home Depot, HSN, Coca Cola , Shopify , Perry Ellis, Belk , Macy’s, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Lowes Food etc. Woorlds developed a unique technology that identifies customers’ ideal moment for engagement by using their behavioral patterns in the physical world. Woorlds technology gained interest and traction at the conference which resulted in meetings with senior executives from Rakuten , Oasis, Shopify , Belk , Perry Ellis and more. “Industry professional realize immediately the premise and value of our product, and we are moving forward in anticipation of some exciting new collaborations in the near future,” said Harel .

2016-04-11 07:41 Nathan Ernest pctechmag.com

5 Looking to battle The Empire? Make your own Star Wars Ewok army Normal teddy bears are cute, but you'd rather hug a creature that's adorable and helped take down an evil empire. The 16" Ewok retails for $28 (about £20, AU$35). You can add an Ewok sound chip for an addition $7 so your plush Wicket yells "Yub Nub" if you hug him too tightly. The Ewoks played a key part in Return of the Jedi, though they remain a divisive issue among some fans. Many accuse franchise creator George Lucas of designing and featuring the Ewoks to simply sell merchandise to younger fans. And it might be best for the Ewok enthusiasts amongst us to not get too attached to their new plush pal, given the species' penchant for eating people. Remember, they didn't tie Han Solo up over a fire pit just to keep him warm -- he was a human Pop Tart to the Ewoks until C-P30 saved the day.

2016-04-11 05:49 Bonnie Burton cnet.com.feedsportal.com

6 BlackBerry plots to release two mid-range Android smartphones this year After launching the Blackberry Priv last year on November 6th, Blackberry Ltd. is reportedly cooking up on two mid-range Android smartphones, that are expected to be released by the end of this year. During an exclusive interview to The National website, John S. Chen, Blackberry CEO , said that one smartphone will sport a full touchscreen and the other will come with a QWERTY keyboard. In terms of specs, nothing else was mentioned. He further added that the phones will be priced around $300 (1,005,000 UGX) to $400 (1,340,000 UGX). First Post reports that John also spoke about the Priv and how it was “too high-end product” for the enterprise and that’s the reason as to why it has received a recent price cut. So, the price is slashed to $649 (2,174,150 UGX) from $699 (2,341,650 UGX). According to ZDNet, news of the new BlackBerry devices come after a disappointing earnings report from BlackBerry in early April. The company reported 600,000 handsets during the first quarter of 2016, below an analyst consensus of 850,000. It’s not clear how many of those devices were the high-end Priv, rather than lower-priced handsets in developing markets.

2016-04-11 06:29 Nathan Ernest pctechmag.com

7 ​Billion-dollar ASX debut for WiseTech Global Cloud-based logistics software firm WiseTech Global made its debut Monday on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), launching with an initial market value just shy of a billion dollars at AU$974 million. Within hours of debut, WiseTech shares jumped nearly 10 percent, bucking the weak trend in the broader stock market. The company raised AU$167.6 million in the IPO through a combination of a sell-down by existing shareholders and an issue of new shares sold at AU$3.35 each. However, within two hours of its ASX debut, WiseTech's shares rose as high as AU$3.67. At 1321 AEST, the stock was still up 32 cents -- or 9.55 percent -- at the AU$3.67 mark, with more than 2.6 million shares changing hands on the exchange. With a market value close to AU$1 billion, Wisetech has forecast revenue of AU$102 million and AU$13 million in net profit for the 2016 financial year. Looking forward, for FY 2017, WiseTech expects profit at AU$26.1 million, on revenue of AU$135 million. WiseTech Global was founded in Sydney in 1994, with a mission to lead the international logistics industry in technology innovation. "Our mission is to change the world by creating breakthrough products that empower those that own, enable, and operate the supply chains of the world," the company says on its website. "We strive to create products that are renowned for their productivity, functional depth, data integration, regulatory compliance, global capability, and value. " Founder and chief executive Richard White retains an approximate 50 percent stake in the company which provides software solutions to the global logistics services industry, and boasts 6,000 customers across more than 100 countries including Australia, New Zealand, China, and the US. WiseTech is the latest company in a series of home-grown billion-dollar technology firms that have expanded overseas. Cloud accounting and bookkeeping software provider MYOB returned to public trading in May last year, after an almost six-year hiatus. After its IPO, MYOB claimed a market capitalisation of AU$2.13 billion, with its previous owner United States-based private asset management firm Bain Capital, retaining a controlling 57 percent stake in the company. Enterprise software firm Atlassian also recently had its IPO, however the former Sydney startup took its business overseas, resulting in the largest ever float from an Australian company in the United States. Prior to its Nasdaq listing, Atlassian was valued at AU$5.6 billion , but the heavily oversubscribed IPO saw the tech firm reach a AU$6.01 billion valuation. Within the first 24 hours of going public, Atlassian's stock soared 32 percent, debuting at $27.67 and peaking at $28.50 before closing at $27.78. The company's closing share price put its market value at nearly AU$8 billion.

2016-04-11 06:27 Asha Barbaschow zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

8 This Korean startup wants your saliva Fitness is a big trend in IT , and the fast access and ubiquity to information that smartphones, smartwatches and wristbands offer will likely only make traditional services -- such as blood testing and check-ups -- more accessible, sophisticated and more personal, catered to your need. Genoplan founder and CEO Brian Kang. Personal health services are a big trend in the US, with companies such as personal genomics firm 23andMe , founded by entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki, ex-wife of Google founder Sergei Brin, and Counsyl , which offers DNA screening for couples planning to have a child For Genoplan CEO and founder Brian Kang, who studied genome in college with a background as a researcher in Samsung, Asia was missing out in a whole field of knowledge and services that can be made easy for consumers. "23andMe has over 1 million members. A recent statistic says that parents of around 5 percent of new born infants in US per year has gone through some kind of DNA screening beforehand," says Kang. "Just think of the value the data accumulated from those kinds of services can contribute to various fields of genome and disease studies. " "Research is of course very important, but we want to think about how to make marketable services and products that can help people," he added. Genoplan offers a package called Genoplan Fit, currently supplied to partnered hospitals later to be directly sold from the company starting in June, where a valve is given customers. They can put in their saliva and mail it to the firm for DNA analysis. After a going through its automated commercial lab in Japan, customers get a full health report via the firm's app. "We check your probability of obesity, likelihood of Yo-yo effect and metabolism rate," says Kang. "We send a full report, and offer tips on how to set your daily routine, what to eat and how to exercise, best fitted for your need, so that you can lose weight and maintain your fitness after diet. " "Using saliva is the big trend in DNA screening. Blood is inconvenient and hair requires large sample," said the CEO. Kang could not change the shape of the valve in the box -- because it is an industry standard. But he was keenly involved in design of the digital report and the box for the Genoplan Fit package, with the goal to make it attractive, accessible, and friendly to customers. "I really want the consumer to feel when they subscriber to our service and get the box that this is not a scary thing. A lot of researches and resulting services just focus on the result and effect. But making and marketing these services friendly to customers is I think just as important," he said. Kang is in talks with the hospitals, cosmetic companies, and health training industry. Under the same Genoplan product brand, the company plans to start a service that suggests the right cosmetics for consumers after DNA testing. To cater to that expansion plan, out of 19 current employees, half is in R&D, but the other half is marketing. Genoplan even has a fitness trainer. It has two labs; the one in Korea is strictly for research and the other in Japan is supplying samples to a client there. After Japan, its next goal is Southeast Asia and greater China. "The West already has well-placed services and big data on the population, used in research. They lack in data from Asia. So we want to expand in Asia to collect Asia genome data for development of cancer treatment, the right cosmetics, or obesity treatments for the Asian population. " The digital report given to customers is very open about the kind of test is conducted and why they reached a certain conclusion, more so than counterparts in the market right now, says the CEO. "Most similar companies are not completely open about the type of test and analysis technique they applied, because I guess they think its a company secret. But we want to be open as possible in that, so consumers can say 'I'll try a different test somewhere else' and generally make a more sound decision," says Kang. The report from Genoplan Fit fully acknowledges the research papers it cited, and training tips are written by certified experts. "The extreme in weight loss is liposuction, but many of them gain their weight again afterwards. We want to offer a sustained and healthy way for people to stay fit," says the CEO. "We want to help you discover yourself and maintain our health and beauty. "

2016-04-11 06:26 Cho Mu zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

9 Facebook's secret weapon to keep your attention: Not- Facebook Last week, I tried to see if I could live without Facebook. I didn't purposefully avoid it. I just wanted to figure out how much I actually use the social network that's sucked up so much of the world's time since Mark Zuckerberg created it more than a decade ago. Turns out, I couldn't stay away. I regularly scrolled through my feed in search of interesting news items I might have missed, including taking a brief look before going to sleep. And even when I wasn't using Facebook itself, I still checked Instagram and Messenger on my phone, two apps owned by the company. That's the secret behind Facebook, which has gone from shiny new thing for college kids to a $322 billion company: Even when we're not on Facebook, we're still floating in its orbit as we entertain ourselves with Not-Facebook. By Not-Facebook, I mean everything else that's not part of the news feed-driven, baby picture- filled, political rant-laced social network, known internally as the "Big Blue App. " All that peripheral stuff will likely be the focus of F8, Facebook's annual conference for software developers. The annual confab, which kicks off Tuesday in San Francisco, is where Facebook announces new products and sets the tone for the company in the coming year. "The core social network can only absorb so much," said Jan Dawson, principal analyst at Jackdaw Research. "There are other things people want to do that Facebook [the company] can help them do. " That's definitely been the case in the last few weeks. Some of the company's most interesting news has been related to products outside of Facebook. Instagram stretched the time limit for videos to one minute from 15 seconds. And there are multiple rumors that Messenger will become a hub for artificial intelligence bots and mobile payments. And those are just Zuckerberg's mobile apps. Facebook wants to double down on those Not-Facebook bets. The star of the event this year is expected to be Messenger. Facebook hopes the app can be more than just an alternative to texting, where your contact list includes all of your Facebook friends. Instead, it's hoping Messenger becomes a sort of Swiss Army Knife, allowing you to pay your roommates rent money, make phone calls and book restaurant reservations. What's driving Messenger forward? Chat bots. These aren't physical robots, but software that can perform simple tasks for you. An example: M, a digital assistant introduced by Facebook in August that's powered by artificial intelligence and supervised by a team of people. M can do things like buy tickets to a movie, book travel arrangements or have flowers delivered for you. It's still in the testing phase right now and available only to a few thousand people. Even with all the emphasis on Not-Facebook, Zuckerberg and his team are still building out the Big Blue App. And in February, Facebook blew up its world famous Like button -- a feature so iconic to the service that a picture of the thumbs-up greets visitors to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Now, instead of tapping on one button to express your thoughts about a post in your feed, you can choose from an entire gamut of emojis -- from Love to Sad to Angry. At F8, Facebook is also going to open up its Instant Articles pages to publishers everywhere. That will allow article pages by those publishers to load instantaneously on smartphones. Up until now, Instant Articles were available from only a few hundred media organizations, including The New York Times, Washington Post and BuzzFeed. But here's the thing: If I read anything interesting in any of those superfast-loading articles, I'll probably chat about it with my friends on Messenger -- or some other place that's Not- Facebook. Just not Facebook.

2016-04-11 05:07 Richard Nieva cnet.com.feedsportal.com

10 'Fantastic Beasts' and where to find the latest trailer The new trailer for the Harry Potter prequel/spin- off "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is here, and if you weren't on board the hype train already then get ready to buy tickets and check luggage. Starring Eddie Redmayne ("The Theory of Everything", "Jupiter Ascending") as Newt Scamander, the film follows the young British wizard's arrival in 1920s New York after his expulsion from a certain famous school of witchcraft and wizardry in Scotland. The new trailer doesn't offer a whole lot more information than the first one, which landed in December 2015 , but it does provide some tantalising glimpses of the wizarding world of 1920s New York, a remarkably spacious briefcase and Colin Farrell as an angry wizard cop in a trench coat. As with the books it was based on, the Harry Potter film franchise proved to be a global phenomenon -- making a combined $7.7 billion at the global box office. Purists needn't worry about the pedigree of "Fantastic Beats" though, as not only is it helmed by Potter alum David Yates, it's also Potter author J. K. Rowling's screenwriting debut. Set 70 years before the events of the Harry Potter saga, the film is the first in a new trilogy, with each title loosely scheduled two years apart. The first instalment is due for release on November 18.

2016-04-11 08:21 Luke Lancaster cnet.com.feedsportal.com

11 Kepler spacecraft goes into emergency mode The last contact previous to this check-in was on April 4, at which time Kepler was operating at capacity. Kepler was originally launched in 2009, and its mission, hunting for exoplanets, was expected to run for three and a half years. However, NASA quickly found that the mission would take more time than that, and the mission was extended until 2016. However, in 2012 and 2013, two of the observer's four reaction wheels failed, and the mission was modified to search primarily for planets around smaller, dimmer red dwarf stars. This extended K2 mission commenced in 2014. Kepler is currently over 120 million kilometres (75 million miles) from Earth, which makes communicating with the spacecraft difficult. "Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back," mission manager Charlie Sobeck explained.

2016-04-11 08:21 Michelle Starr cnet.com.feedsportal.com

12 Google receives threat at HQ, police say Police "assisted" Google security at the company's corporate campus in Mountain View, California, after a threat Friday, according to a tweet from the Mountain View Police Department. The police said there were no injuries. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

2016-04-11 08:21 Richard Nieva cnet.com.feedsportal.com

13 Establish a predictive maintenance culture to optimize asset performance Many organizations may not regard maintenance practices as a primary means for optimizing asset performance. While operations managers look for ways to reduce maintenance costs, most simply — and perhaps grudgingly — enter these costs into their accounts. Financial pressures and production schedules prevent the evaluation and adoption of more effective maintenance practices that managers could leverage for business advantage. But in recent years, operating environments have been changing. In fact, an increasingly connected world facilitated by the Internet of Things — all manner of equipment embedded with sensors and intelligence — is changing maintenance practices. Sophisticated analytics and modeling technologies can now be applied to the operational data generated by this equipment to help predict the need for maintenance. The challenge organizations now face is to convince executives, along with operations and maintenance personnel to overcome any cultural resistance to change.

2016-04-11 08:18 www.itworldcanada.com

14 Man climbs rock to propose via Apple's FaceTime, gets arrested Proposing to the love of your life is a very special thing. It's tempting, then, to make the event memorable. But you can't always control what about an event will stay in the memory most. Consider, please, the proposal of Michael Banks, performed on Thursday afternoon. You might find this a noble pursuit. You might find it slightly less noble when I tell you climbing isn't allowed there. Apparently, locals regularly contravene the ban. Still, Banks may have been slightly injudicious in the route he took to get off the rock once he proposed. You can feel trouble coming, can't you? "He couldn't go any direction, on a sheer ledge, with his feet dangling 80 feet off the ground," Gailey added. And so it was that Michael Banks had to be rescued by helicopter. Humiliation isn't the only thing the newly engaged climber was confronted with. And that's not all. After his rescue, Banks allegedly returned to the rock. There, someone reported that he was behaving erratically. Morro Bay Chief of Police Amy Christey told me that Banks was arrested on Thursday for allegedly being under the influence of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, and for allegedly being in possession of it. His bail was set at $10,000 and the investigation is ongoing. Might I offer a couple of indicators for lovers that emerge from this tale? Why propose by FaceTime? I know that the iPhone can bring people together, but isn't it always better to not only look your lover in the eye, but also hold his or her hand while you're doing it? Indeed, it's unclear whether Banks' intended accepted his proposal. The City of Morro Bay said, "We are aware that there are now conflicting reports as to whether the proposal was accepted. We have no additional details. " I worry that this proposal may not have been as romantic as Banks intended. If you're up a cliff, it's not as if you can easily go down on bended knee, is it? Moreover, as the city pointed out: "A rescue requires putting the lives of first responders at risk unnecessarily and requires the unnecessary spending of taxpayer dollars. The rock is a peregrine falcon habitat and is a sacred site for the Northern Chumash and Salinan Indian tribes. " Secondly, isn't it better to immediately consecrate your engagement with a hug rather than, say, an arrest? As the saying goes, cliffs and phones can break your bones, and unorthodox proposals can come back to hurt you.

2016-04-11 08:21 Chris Matyszczyk cnet.com.feedsportal.com

15 Buzzfeed #watermelon explosion satisfies Internet's thirst for destruction What does it take to unify more than 5.5 million people online? One watermelon and a whole lot of rubber bands. The Buzzfeed Video Facebook page went live on Friday with a streaming feed showing two jumpsuit-wearing staffers wrapping one rubber band at a time around the middle of a watermelon until the beleaguered fruit finally succumbed to the pressure. You can relive the entire 45-minute epic process, one rubber band at a time, or you can fast- forward to the end where the drama really ramps up. The watermelon is clearly straining as the melon tormenters close in on 700 rubber bands. Excitement over the seedy goings-on crossed over to social-media sites, causing the hashtag #watermelon to trend on Twitter. Spoiler alert: The climax is a beautiful, edible mess. Facebook is really pushing its Facebook Live video-streaming feature. Buzzfeed describes itself as a member of a "rush of publishers" that have "barreled in to experiment and build audiences. " Buzzfeed later confirmed it's a paid media partner. The viral success of the Gallagher-level watermelon explosion will likely encourage more Facebook Live stunts in the future. Maybe someone will take on the challenge of rubber-banding one of those hatchback- size pumpkins. I'd watch.

2016-04-11 08:21 Amanda Kooser cnet.com.feedsportal.com

16 Bring on the DevOps, say IT support managers The vast majority of IT support people say they don't have enough of a connection with the development side, save the post-release cycle. In many cases, they're simply not ready to handle the volume of new releases, fixes or features that are sent out by their development teams. This may be a ripe area for DevOps. That's the key takeaway from a new study comissioned by Atlassian with HDI, an association for technical support professional. The survey finds 73% of IT support teams are dissatisfied with their current level of involvement with development. The research team found that most tech support teams were only involved in development post-release. In fact, 99% of IT professionals report that being unprepared for releases is a challenge to their team. Limited documentation and few defined standards muddy up the support process. Only 41% actually will share any knowledge between development and IT support teams. "Sometimes the support teams are caught by surprise by changes being pushed into production as everyone else is," claims one survey respondent. This is an area where DevOps -- the alignment of development cycles with operational releases -- can make a huge impact, the survey report suggests. Already, 21% have adopted DevOps in some areas of operations and development. Those who have adopted DevOps practices see positive impacts, reporting positive impacts on support, including change management cycle time, release management cycle time, IT job satisfaction, and support's ability to help end-users. "The entire organization could benefit from support's continuous visibility and involvement in the development process from beginning to end," says Jenny Rains, senior research analyst at HDI.. "The nature of support's role, working first-hand with end users to resolve technological issues, gives them unique insight into the impact on end-users from any given release, as well as general end-user needs, issues, and expectations. "

2016-04-11 04:35 Joe McKendrick zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

17 Australian-listed Animoca Brands raises AU$6.5m for expansion Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)-listed Animoca Brands has raised AU$6.5 million via institutional placement, with approval for an additional AU$1 million to be raised by way of a share purchase plan. According to the company, the funds raised from both the placement and share purchase will be used to meet working capital requirements as well as strategic growth opportunities, which includes the development of e-books. Robby Yung, Animoca Brands CEO told shareholders on Monday the company will also use the cash injection to fund the ongoing expansion of its app portfolio and also for the future acquisition of content and intellectual property to grow its portfolio. "With this funding we're well positioned to expedite the development of our e-books in partnership with Mattel and continue to increase our app portfolio and user base as we seek further advertising revenue opportunities," he said. "We continue to seek out opportunities to acquire brand licences and technology and with this funding in place we will be able to broaden both our IP portfolio and take advantage of opportunities as they arise. " This latest funding round has seen Animoca Brands raise a total of AU$10.2 million since it listed on the ASX. Based in Hong Kong, Animoca Brands found itself publicly listed in Australia in January last year, following a reverse takeover of Black Fire Minerals. The Perth-based mineral exploration company raised AU$2.4 million to fund the acquisition, and recommenced trading as Animoca Brands Corporation Limited. It was reported at the time that Yung had said the reverse-takeover path was chosen as it allowed for the continued growth of the business and the potential for further initial public offering (IPO) raising for the licensing of more intellectual property for games. In July last year, Rival games developer, Ourpalm, sunk AU$3.1 million into Animoca Brands for an 11.11 percent stake in the company, with the deal seeing the distribution and development of Animoca's apps in China. The remaining AU$4.7 million came from shareholders in December, with the company using the funds to develop new mobile entertainment products. Last month, the company signed a distribution agreement with China's Tencent that would see the digital entertainment giant publish Groove Planet, Animoca Brand's mobile music game, across Android versions of Weixin, Mobile QQ, and Tencent App Store in mainland China. As of December 2015, the combined monthly active users of Weixin and WeChat were 697 million, while Mobile QQ had 642 million monthly active users.

2016-04-11 03:27 Asha Barbaschow zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

18 Science Kombat lets you beat up Charles Darwin as Stephen Hawking It's not uncommon for scientists to have their disagreements, but usually they do so in the pages of impenetrable periodicals and journals. Science Kombat, a free browser game you can play right now , imagines it otherwise: it's the only opportunity you'll ever get to witness Stephen Hawking bash Charles Darwin on a sandy 16-bit beach. So you'd better take it! Playable characters include Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Alan Turing and Pitagoras, so there's lots of amusing what-if scenarios to play around with. I only played it for roughly 10 minutes, and while it's unlikely to give any other fighting game a run for its money, it's a fun little distraction. As Hawking, I pretty much spammed my attack button and took Darwin down without so much as a fist to the face, so don't expect Street Fighter levels of complexity. The game is in Portuguese, but the user interface is pretty straightforward. Thanks to PC & Tech Authority for the heads up.

2016-04-11 02:19 Shaun Prescott www.pcgamer.com

19 Smartphone survival test: ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser After I published my list of smartphones I was going to use for the Smartphone Survival Test , I caught a lot of flak from readers and other observers that I was somehow disingenuously "loading the deck" to set up Android for failure in this experiment. Swapping my iPhone 6s for a $200 Android handset After swearing off the platform four years ago, are we still sick of Android? We're about to find out. I was told these devices could not possibly stand up to a flagship device like the iPhone 6S or iPhone SE, that I could not possibly be satisfied with such sub-par phones. Well, they were wrong. When it comes to Android phones, regardless of price, you need to look closely at the BOM, or Bill of Materials, because not all Android devices are the same at identical or similar price points. One of the biggest and most common complaints against Android is that it is more resource- intensive than Apple's iOS, that the Dalvik/ART virtual machine (JVM) and the user-space processes eat up a lot of memory by comparison. This is not an accusation that is completely unfounded, this is the truth. An iOS phone with 1GB memory is much, much more responsive than an Android phone with 1GB of memory. You could also argue that even 512MB iOS phones are more resource-efficient than an Android with 1GB of memory. Current generation iPhones such as the 6S, 6S Plus and SE have 2GB of RAM, whereas the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have 1GB of RAM, The 5S has 512MB of RAM. There are other architectural considerations regarding how iOS and Android behave and affect overall performance, such as how certain types of processes are prioritized, but memory utilization is the big one. So how do you mitigate this problem? You buy a phone with more memory. Guess what, memory is cheap. The first phone I picked for the Survival Test is the ASUS ZE551KL , which was released late last year during the holiday season. I chose it specifically because I wanted a baseline device to compare to at a specific price point that had as many features in it as possible. As a consumer, you would be hard pressed to find as much Android phone as this for $200- $230. I actually spent $199 for this phone when it was onsale at Amazon only a few weeks ago. If you can find this phone for $199 it's a very good deal. There's a lot of like about it. First, the memory and storage. 3GB is plenty of breathing room for Android to run with quite a few apps running in the background. It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to general OS and application responsiveness. I would argue that for most applications in my workload, as well as those for most end-users, memory is much more important than processing speed. The device also comes with 32GB of flash storage as well as an microSD card slot that can accept up to 128GB cards. If you shoot a lot of photos and video this is a great inexpensive device to take on vacations and other trips. No frequent searching for Wi-Fi hotspots needed. Second is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 , which is not on the high-end of what SoCs are being put into Android smartphones these days but is not at the low-end either. It's a good mid- range chip package with decent performance for the price. It's an octa-core chip that uses the big. LITTLE principle of using four smaller cores with four larger cores to balance power consumption based on the actual application workload demand. Third I'll point out is the battery. which is 3000mAh and removable. I had no problems using this phone all day without running out of juice before having to plug it in for the night. So what do you miss with this phone over a more expensive device like a iPhone SE or iPhone 6S? Well, first of all, there's no denying that the A9 in the iPhone SE/iPhone 6S is a much, much more powerful chip than the Snapdragon 615. If you're used to the instantaneous response of a high-end iPhone you need to scale back your expectations considerably. And if you use a lot of CPU-demanding apps such as 3D arcade games this phone is not going to deliver. Also, while the 13MP rear-facing camera with dual LED flash and laser autofocus on this device is surprisingly good, it's nowhere near the quality level in terms of low-light performance and optics quality that you're going to get on a $400-$500 iPhone SE. The Wi-Fi is strictly 2.4Ghz and single antenna, so no connecting to faster 802.11ac networks -- I was able to cap out at about 30-35Mbps download speeds on my 802.11ac Wave 2 router on my 100Mbps broadband connection. Here comes the end of Apple as we know it The company faces tough competition from Asia, which will erode its iPhone market share. That's a far cry from what the iPhone SE and iPhone 6S can do, which can max out the connection when on 5Ghz 802.11ac. The 4G LTE transceiver in the Zenfone 2 Laser ZE551KL is rated for LTE Cat4 150/50 versus the LTE Advanced Cat6 300/50Mbps in the iPhone SE/6S. I was able to reliably get about 45Mbps on AT&T on it with five bars in an unsaturated coverage area. Your mileage is going to vary greatly with any device depending on your carrier, how saturated the network conditions are in your coverage area, current atmospheric conditions and what radio bands you actually lock on in your coverage area. The phone supports LTE bands 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 17(700), 20(800) so you will want to check your carrier for compatibility. In my case every AT&T LTE band is supported with the exception of Band 12 , which is fairly new. There's no NFC, so no Google Wallet support. And the display, while very nice for the money, is no comparison for a $400 or $500 device's screen. However, let's look at this in perspective. If you're looking to outfit your kids with smartphones, do they really need such a theft magnet or something that you're gonna regret when they eventually drop the thing? No. If you shop smart, you can buy two of these things for the price of a 16GB or 32GB, not memory expandable iPhone SE. And fairly decent protective cases like the one I bought go for under $10. Do you need the iPhone's best-of-breed camera sensor and lens package for the type of shots that are most typically taken by the average person and posted on Instagram? No. Do you need the fastest CPU in the world to run your line of business email app, Twitter, Facebook and Candy Crush? Absolutely not. Is 802.11n 30Mbps speeds over 2.4Gz Wi-Fi and LTE Cat 4 more than adequate for most applications? Totally. All of my core apps run perfectly fine with BOM in this phone's hardware. I have no complaints when it comes to that. So when it comes to the Survival Test, can this run my application workload? It's a pass. Big time. Aside from the overall value in BOM, there are some design elements of this inexpensive phone I like a lot, which I think its more expensive competitors should closely examine. Despite the low price, the build quality of the phone is excellent, it uses a combination of plastic and metal and doesn't feel junky at all. It has a nice solid heft to it. Additionally, ASUS chose to put the power button center top of the phone casing and the volume rocker on the back of the device below the lens. This results in a button configuration that despite the 5.5" size, allows you to easily use the phone one-handed. Because of this comfortable configuration I often find myself reaching for this device first despite having other Android devices and my iPad Pro nearby. So what about the OS and software overall? So I've had to opportunity to use both Marshmallow, the latest Android release, version 6, on two devices we have here in-house, the LG Nexus 5X and the ZTE Axon Pro, versus the Lollipop 5.0.2 that is on the Zenfone 2 Laser. Is Marshmallow "better" than Lollipop? Hard to say. There aren't enough Marshmallow-optimized apps out yet to make a difference yet and the improvements are mostly around security, not visual or UX changes. Most of the major UI changes occurred when Lollipop was introduced with Material Design, and a lot of applications are still catching up to that. Most of the core applications I use such as Facebook, GMail, Outlook, Plume and RadarScope take advantage of this now. Some have spoken to the issue of UI enhancements versus a "Pure" Google experience on the Nexus, which gets much more frequent software and security patch updates and whether that is actually worth paying more money for. I think it depends how much money you're paying for it, how many years of use you plan to get out of the device, and how much additional value you're getting in the BOM. I also think the issue of running a "Pure" Google UI experience versus the UI changes most Android vendors make is overblown and I don't think it factors much into user acceptance. You can change your Android launcher program to the default Google Now one at any time, and turn off apps that you don't want to use, which is what I did. Yes, there will still some differences in the way the UI works from a "Vanilla" Android, but not enough to care about. Certainly if you're comparing the Zenfone 2 Laser for $199 versus the LG Nexus 5X at $199 promotional pricing if you are willing to test out Project Fi (which has now been extended through May) it's worth considering, although there are hardware BOM differences that may weigh into your decision making. The ZE551KL has more RAM and more flash at that price point, and has a removable battery, two SIM slots and an SD card slot, whereas the Nexus 5X has a fixed battery, 1GB less RAM, one SIM slot, half the amount of flash and no SD expansion. However, the LG Nexus 5X has a somewhat faster processor, somewhat sharper screen at the same resolution (the display is also smaller), more comprehensive wireless band support (it supports CDMA networks as well) and has 802.11ac 5Ghz Wi-Fi capability, Category 6 300/50 LTE support and NFC, and also a fingerprint reader. The cameras on both are more or less the same although the video capture resolution on the Nexus 5X is higher. I think I would definitely appreciate it if the Zenfone 2 Laser got the same timely updates as the Nexus 5X, but for me it isn't a deal-breaker and I suspect for most end users, as long as a phone actually runs the apps they want to run and it runs well, it's not a deal-breaker that it doesn't yet run Marshmallow. OS updates and patches are important, but it's hard to sell the value of these things to consumers when generally speaking, they tend to be reactive to issues related to security and patching rather than proactive. The device is supposed to be getting its Marshmallow update before the beginning of the summer, in the next 2 or 3 months. That's going to be welcome indeed. I would say to companies like ASUS and some of the others whose phones I am looking at over the next few weeks that while slow roll-outs of security patches and Android version updates are not necessarily deal breakers today, as it is generally hard to sell updates and software upgrades to consumers at a premium (which is what Google is doing with Nexus) it's going to be harder and harder to justify not being on the ball when the iPhone SE is $400 at its new entry point. While not every phone can be a Nexus, companies like ASUS might wish to consider partnering with CyanoGenMOD -- which has a very frequent update process. We originally had a CyanoGenMOD phone on our list to look at, the Lenovo ZUK Z1 , but it had radio compatibility issues in the US that prevented us from using it outside of Wi-Fi. Still, we liked what we saw. I think as our benchmark device, the ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser ZE551KL is a good example how it's possible to build an inexpensive phone with a good feature set and considerably better than acceptable levels of performance. It's also apparent to me that the gap between inexpensive and premium is closing rapidly and that within a few years that gap is going to be very small indeed, particularly when you see the economies of scale related to the volume manufacturing and integrated supply chains Chinese companies are going to be able to materialize in the near future.

2016-04-11 01:42 Jason Perlow zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

20 NBN FttN users increasingly opting for slower speeds Over one-fifth of all NBN fibre-to-the-node (FttN) services are sitting on the slowest speed tier available: 12Mbps down and 1Mbps up. The stastics were revealed by the company responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN), in response to Questions on Notice from Senate Estimates. According to NBN, in January this year, FttN customers were opting for 12/1Mbps plans 15.5 percent of the time; 25/5Mbps plans made up the vast bulk of users at 71 percent; 25/10Mbps barely registered with 0.1 percent; 50/20Mbps racked up 4.7 percent of users; and 100/40Mbps was purchased by 8.7 percent of customers. By March 3, the percent of users on the lower two tiers had jumped to 89 percent, according to more detailed numbers provided by NBN. The 12/1Mbps tier increased to 22 percent, 25/5Mbps recorded 67 percent, 25-50/5-20Mbps held 4 percent of users, and 25-100Mbps/5-40Mbps plans were used by 7 percent of customers. Following the Coalition's election at the end of 2013, NBN moved away from Labor's full fibre-to- the-premises (FttP) rollout to the present so-called multi-technology mix (MTM), which proposes to cover 20 percent of the population with FttP; 38 percent with FttN and fibre to the building (FttB); 34 percent with hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC); 5 percent with fixed wireless; and 3 percent with satellite services. For the other technologies used in the NBN, FttP users went with 12/1Mbps 33.6 percent of the time, 45 percent chose 25/5Mbps, 25/10Mbps represented 1 percent of customers, 50/20Mbps was in use by 4.7 percent of customers, and 100/40Mbps was selected by 15.7 percent of users. One-fifth of FttB users went with 12/1Mbps, 62 percent chose 25/5Mbps, only 0.5 percent of users had 25/10Mbps, 50/20Mbps held 3 percent of customers, and 100/40Mbps was purchased by 14.5 percent of FttB users. The MTM NBN is expected to cost up to AU$56 billion in peak funding , and is due to be completed in 2020. At the end of February, NBN said it had 23,232 FttN services activated. In December last year, almost a full 14 months since NBN announced construction work would begin on FttN, Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield proudly announced that in 51 days, 1,000 customers had signed up to FttN services. Looking ahead, according to data provided at March 1, NBN said it expects to have 1.8 million premises set to be served with FttN covered by a build contract, and 3.4 million issued with contract instructions for design by June 30. By September 30, the numbers are set to increase to 2.4 million premises under build contracts for FttN, and 3.8 million premises covered by design contracts. NBN noted that these numbers are updated daily. For the HFC rollout, NBN confirmed the 10,000 HFC premises ready by its HFC launch date on June 30 will be confirmed to the Redcliffe trial area . Earlier today, Telstra announced it had signed a AU$1.6 billion HFC contract with NBN to provide design and management services within its HFC footprint. "All design, program management, construction management and scheduling activities will be undertaken by Telstra," Telstra said. "Construction is split into two areas -- field construction activities will largely be performed by NBN's MIMA [Multi-technology Integrated Master Agreement] partners, while in-exchange construction activities and limited upstream in-field activities will be undertaken by Telstra. " On Friday, Australian Opposition Leader Bill Shorten confirmed in a speech that Labor is looking towards a hybrid NBN policy with more fibre.

2016-04-11 01:32 Chris Duckett zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

21 The great adoption bake-off Adoption is fundamentally the number one deliverable of any collaboration solution. It is very hard to justify ongoing focus and investment in collaboration if it is not actually used. In my last post we had a look at the importance of business requirements. These underpin both the technology decisions, as well as the motivation for change and adoption in the user base. As concluded, they are not optional. In deployments my focus is always upon relevance as being the most effective method to generate adoption. Many look to 'ease of use' as a panacea, but the basic principle of 'ease of use' is eroding over time. For example, you could take someone who's been using one smartphone for a few years and switch them to a different operating system, and watch the sparks fly. Both devices are engineered to be easy to use, and if you've never used a smartphone before, both would be. But because of previous experience with a similar device, they're simply not easy to use at all. Business requirements provide the platform to obtain relevance for end users. If a new way of collaborating is framed as beneficial, such as a way of avoiding a previous pain point, then your people will engage with the change. And the right solution will then be proposed and adopted. Training of course needs to play a role. But not just 'off the shelf' training that comes with the product - people need to understand the change within the context of how they worked with the previous solution. If your business case is to succeed, it is likely that people also need to understand the change within the terms of collaborating in completely new ways. In short, people need to understand the reason for the change if adoption is to be high - and relevance beats ease of use every time. In my next post we'll take a brief deep-dive into Telstra's new world of analytics and automated support of adoption. For more Collaboration visit Telstra Exchange .

2016-04-11 01:04 Stuart Kirkby zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

22 Coping with the needs of dynamic security Your organisation lives on information. All your intellectual property is tied up in it and any value attributed to the business comes from that information. Electronic information is physically held as data - and this data needs to be safe in order for information to be secure. And yet some organisations still believe that they are the best entities to manage basic security. This means managing the technical and physical security of all IT assets and the data centre itself. Someone (or a group) within the organisation has to track what is happening in the data security world. Hackers, Trojans, worms, DDoS attacks, Ransomeware, APTs - you name it, all of these have to be considered as table stakes in the world of data protection. Bring in the failure of Safe Harbor, the move to Privacy Shield, the EU GDPR becoming law in 2018 and the need for continuous assessment against ISO 27001 and the management of information security begins to look a little daunting. It is an organisation's responsibility to recognise the processes required to stay up to date - but having to understand the nuts and bolts behind it all makes the issue even more complex. If the data centre and IT equipment are owned by the organisation, then all the physical and technical security responsibilities lie on the organisation's shoulders. Consider instead a cloud platform. Cloud providers have to understand all aspects of security to the nth degree - their very survival depends on it. Outsider threats, secure data storage and movement and the physical security of the facility itself are all dealt with by the provider. The organisation can then focus on its information processes and how to add value through differentiating at this level. Cloud platforms offer a means of keeping up with the dynamic nature of data security. Cloud providers will be able to secure an organisation's data against hackers far more effectively than the majority of organisations could do themselves. It's a matter of priorities: an organisation should put its information first. A cloud provider can supply the underlying data security required.

2016-04-11 01:00 Clive Longbottom zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

23 Watch Conan O'Brien play Counter-Strike in South Korea For some reason Conan O'Brien recently visited South Korea in order to visit a PC bang, ie, a local variant on a 24 hour internet gaming cafe. While he's there, he offers some devastating critiques of South Korean snack food and plays some Starcraft and Counter-Strike. As you can probably imagine, based on Conan's previous attempts to play video games , he's not very good at either. It's not exactly an exhaustive look at South Korea's gaming scene, but the video sets out to be amusing and in that regard it succeeds. Also, check out the 1:00 mark for a true Larry David stare moment (embedded below for your reference / enjoyment).

2016-04-11 00:57 Shaun Prescott www.pcgamer.com

24 Windows 10: Why These 10 New Features Matter At its annual Build developers conference , held last week in San Francisco, Microsoft execs highlighted new and updated products and services relevant to its developer audience. The introductory keynotes on day one started with some major news for Windows 10. In July 2016, Microsoft will roll out a Windows 10 Anniversary Update to bring new features to consumers and developers alike. In the eight months since Windows 10 officially launched, Microsoft claims its newest OS has more than 270 million active users. It says it aims to reach one billion of them by the anniversary date in 2018. [Will Surface Phone arrive in 2017? Sources are saying yes.] Microsoft made Windows 10 generally available on July 29, 2015, so there's a good chance we can expect the anniversary update on or around that date. Before it releases this major update, Microsoft will give Windows Insiders the chance to try features being developed as part of the upgrade. Many of these changes, which include updates to Cortana and an early version of the Skype universal app, recently arrived for Insiders as part of Preview Build 14316. Testers will be happy to learn this build also includes a few key fixes, also detailed in Microsoft's blog post. As with any preview build, 14316 also has a few bugs worth noting before you download. Large downloads in Edge may get stuck at 99% completion, turning on Developer Mode may crash Settings, and the Visual Studio emulator will fail, so Microsoft encourages developers to wait for this build to hit the Slow Ring before downloading. Here, we take a closer look at some of the features in Build 14316 you'll likely be most excited to try, and one that's on its way. Will you be downloading the newest preview build? Which of these features would you most appreciate? (All images from Microsoft Corporation)

2016-04-11 00:06 Kelly Sheridan www.informationweek.com

25 Apple vs FBI: DoJ pursues Apple for new iPhone hack 11/04/16: The US Department of Justice has asked Apple to help it hack into an iPhone thought to be related to a criminal case in New York. A letter filed by the DoJ to the courts said the government, "continues to require Apple's assistance," to help it bust a drugs-related case in the city. Jun Feng, who owned the iPhone, pleaded guilty to taking part in a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy last year and although has apparently been convicted, the DoJ wished to use information from the iPhone in the ongoing investigation. The case was put forward in February, but the letter was only made public last week. At the time, the judge ruled Apple could not be forced to provide the data the the authorities, so the government lodged an appeal against the decision. Meanwhile, a similar request was put forward regarding the extraction of data from an alleged drugs gang member's iPhone in Boston. The request was put forward in February by US Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler, but it was only unsealed last week and the judge involved ruled it was "reasonable" for the DoJ to ask for Apple's help by extracting data. It's thought the FBI's methods of hacking into iPhones would not work to unlock the devices involved in these latest cases as they are a different model to that used by San Bernardino attacker Syed Farook's phone. 08/04/2016: The FBI has revealed the hack it used to break into the San Bernardino attacker's phone isn't particularly useful for those outside of the investigatory agency. FBI director James Comey told a gathering at Ohio's Kenyon College the tool it used to break into Syed Farook's iPhone 5c is extremely limited in its scope of use and will only work on an iPhone 5c running iOS 9. “This doesn’t work on [an iPhone] 6s, doesn’t work in a 5s, and so we have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones,” Comey said in the question and answer session with students and professors . It means that anyone not using an iPhone 5c can be sure they are safe from the FBI's hack, which was achieved using third party software - at least for the moment. However, the FBI isn't necessarily going to tell Apple how it managed to break into Farook's iPhone because it thinks the company will then close the vulnerability that allowed it to hack into the device in order to protect its customers. “We tell Apple, then they’re going to fix it, then we’re back where we started from,” he said. “We may end up there, we just haven’t decided yet.” He's also pretty sure the third party software provider won't reveal its secrets to Apple either. “I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it, and their motivations align with ours,” he added. 07/04/2016: Apple's sales could drop as a result of the FBI breaking into the San Bernadino attacker's iPhone, according to a report by Fortune . The publication surveyed more than 2,000 registered voters in the US and almost a third of respondents said they were unlikely to buy an iPhone folowing the news that iPhones could be hacked by the FBI, while 21 per cent said they were unsure whether they would buy an iDevice after the news broke. The majority of those saying they wouldn't buy the next iPhone were aged over 65, the survey revealed, while younger respondents, aged between 18 and 29, were undecided whether the news would affect their next smartphone purchase. However, one outcome of the hack by FBI officials was that almost half of those questioned said they were more concerned about their privacy. The ease with which the FBI managed to break into the iPhone 5c alarmed a high proportion of Apple customers, demonstrating how easy it could be for non-governmental parties, as well as officials, to access their data. 04/04/2016: The FBI's method for hacking into the locked iPhone 5c may soon be exposed, claim senior Apple engineers, threatening to make it useless in the future. Once the way the FBI managed to break into the phone is revealed, experts say, Apple will set about fixing the encryption issue in order to assure users that their devices can not easily be hacked. Further legal battles involving locked phones will likely compel the FBI to reveal its method - claimed to have come from a third party source - and this will then reveal it to Apple in the process. "The FBI would need to resign itself to the fact that such an exploit would only be viable for a few months if released to other departments," Jonathan Zdziarski, an independent forensics expert, told Reuters . "It would be a temporary Vegas jackpot that would quickly get squandered on the case backlog. " A senior Apple engineer added: "Flaws of this nature have a pretty short life cycle. Most of these things do come to light. " 31/03/2016: The FBI has reportedly agreed to help prosecutors in an Arkansas murder trial hack into an iPhone 6 and iPod for the purposes of gaining access to evidence, reports the LA Times. The FBI's Little Rock field office agreed to help prosecutors gain access to the Apple devices owned by two suspects in the case, according to Cody Hiland, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas' 20th Judicial District, although an FBI spokesman in Washington declined to comment. The issue with gaining access comes from an iPhone running on iOS 8 or later automatically encrypting data present on the device. This news comes just days after the FBI decided to drop its court case against Apple regarding encryption of an iPhone 5c belonging to a terrorist who along with his wife had murdered 14 colleagues at the Department of Public Health in December 2010, having gained access through a third party. 29/03/2016: Hours, after the FBI dropped its court case against Apple, technology, security and privacy organisations, are warning that many questions still remain regarding the case and its repercussions. The court battle revolves around an iPhone 5c, owned by San Bernardino County in the US but used by Syed Rizwan Farook, a terrorist who worked for the county's Department of Public Health before he and his wife murdered 14 of his colleagues in December 2010. Following the attack, the iPhone became locked and the FBI claimed it had no way to access the data stored on the phone other than for Apple to create a custom version of iOS with an encryption backdoor that would allow the data to be extracted. The FBI had told the court that Apple engineers were the only people with the technical abilities to hack into the phone and that it had "exhausted all other practical options". But last week it said an "outside source" - reported to be Israeli mobile data forensics firm Cellebrite - had come forward and demonstrated a method to extract the data safely. Drawing the case to a close now has advantages for both sides: the FBI will not be forced to face difficult questions about privacy and security in Congress while Apple's engineers will not be forced to break their own encryption, something that could have cast a long shadow over consumer confidence. But this abrupt end to the case also raises a number of questions. The most obvious of these is "How did they do it? " - if the case had progressed in court, Apple's lawyers said they would have demanded to talk to the mysterious third party and find out everything they could about the exploit. With the whole case being vacated (i.e. withdrawn), however, the FBI has apparently made the method used to crack the phone "classified", according to the Guardian. This effort is ostensibly to keep iPhones secure from criminal hackers, but also to keep Apple or any security researchers from reverse-engineering it and then creating a patch. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has expressed concern on this issue. Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker told IT Pro : "EFF is pleased that the Justice Department has retreated from its dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to force Apple to subvert the security of its iOS operating system. However, this new method of accessing the phone raises questions about the government's apparent use of security vulnerabilities in iOS. " He said there should be "a very strong bias in favour of informing Apple of the vulnerability" under the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP), although if the Guardian 's report is correct, it would seem they will not be taking that course of action. Independent security researcher Graham Cluley also told IT Pro this is "not the end of the story". "The FBI will want to get into other iPhones, for which this method won't work. They will try to compel Apple's software engineers to write code that they don't want to write, that they believe will put the privacy and security of millions of innocent users at risk," Cluley said. "Alternatively, it will be a different technology company having demands made of it - perhaps a company which doesn't have as much of a backbone (or the legal funds) that Apple did. And a precedent will be set," he added. 28/03/2016: The FBI has announced it has dropped its iPhone hacking case against Apple, as it has managed to get into the device in question by other means. Apple and the FBI had been involved in a months-long court battle, with the law enforcement agency trying to force the Cupertino company to build a custom version of iOS in order to get into a locked iPhone 5c used by Syed Farook, one of two shooters who killed 14 people in December 2015. The FBI has not yet released details of how it managed to get into the iPhone in question, although last week it said it had procured help from an "outside source" - rumoured to be Israeli mobile data forensics firm Cellebrite - to help it get into the device. 24/03/2016: FBI director James Comey has slapped down assertions made by the Wall Street Journal that the agency's court tussle with Apple is part of a wider strategy to establish a legal precedent forcing phone makers to break their own encryption. "The San Bernardino case was not about trying to send a message or set a precedent; it was and is about fully investigating a terrorist attack," Comey wrote in a letter responding to the WSJ's editorial , in which the paper accused the FBI of "[fibbing] by saying the Apple case is about one phone". Referring to claims by the FBI that it had "exhausted all other practical options" to get into the iPhone 5c at the heart of the dispute, the WSJ said: "Now we learn the FBI, far from exhausting all other practical options, had been pursuing such non-Apple leads all along. " Comey issued a strong rebuttal, saying the WSJ was "simply wrong to assert that the FBI and the Justice Department lied about [their] ability to access the San Bernardino killer's phone". He claimed that the case had prompted "creative people around the world to see what they might be able to do" to aid the FBI. "I'm not embarrassed to admit that all technical creativity does not reside in government," Comey said. "Lots of folks came to us with ideas. It looks like one of those ideas may work and that is a very good thing. " The court case between Apple and the FBI was suspended earlier this week when the FBI said it had found an "outside party" that may be able to crack into the phone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, without Apple's help. It was claimed yesterday that this helping hand is Israeli data forensics firm Cellebrite, although this has not been confirmed by either party. Lawyers from the Department of Justice are due to return to court on 5 April to state whether or not they wish to pursue the case. 23/03/2016: Israeli company Cellebrite is the "outside party" helping the FBI break into the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, according to reports. The FBI and Apple have been caught up in a legal dispute over an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters who killed 22 people in December 2015. The law enforcement agency claims the device may contain important intelligence about potential terrorist threats to the USA. It has asked Apple to create a custom version of iOS to break into the device after it became locked, allegedly after somebody in the San Bernardino County government reset the associated Apple ID in an attempt to gain access. Apple has so far refused to comply with court orders to comply with the FBI's wishes, however on Tuesday the agency asked for a postponement of the latest court hearing, saying "an outside source" had demonstrated a way to break into the device without Apple's help. Today, Israeli website Ynet News reported that Cellebrite, a company based in Petah Tikva specialising in data extraction, transfer and forensic analysis for mobile devices, is this third party, citing "experts in the field familiar with the case". The company has an existing relationship with the FBI to provide decryption technology as part of a contract signed in 2013, Ynet reported. A Cellebrite spokesman and a spokesman for the FBI both declined to comment when approached by IT Pro . IT Pro also contacted Apple but had not received a response at the time of publication. 22/03/2016: Less than 24 hours after Tim Cook used his iPhone SE launch keynote to reaffirm Apple's commitment to the security and privacy of its customers, its court date with the FBI has been postponed after the law enforcement agency announced it may not need Apple's help to crack into the San Bernardino attackers' iPhone after all. In the court filing requesting the postponement, the FBI said: "an outside source" had demonstrated a way to get into the locked iPhone at the centre of the legal battle without need for Apple to custom write a new OS for this purpose. "Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone," the filing said, adding: "If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple. " US Department of Justice spokeswoman Melanie Newman told BBC News the government was "cautiously optimistic" the third party's method to unlock the phone would be successful. 21/03/2016: Tim Cook used the Apple iPhone SE launch event to comment on Apple’s feud with the FBI, claiming that Apple has “a responsibility” to oppose the government. The statement came ahead of the company’s high-profile court clash, which begins tomorrow after a lengthy series of hearings and public back-and-forths. He said that Apple’s executives “owe it to our customers, and we owe it to our country” to fight for encryption. The company’s legal battle is an "issue that impacts all of us", Cook said, and added that Apple “did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government. " 21/03/2016: Proximity of court case to Apple Event leads to speculation Apple CEO Tim Cook may address the company's ongoing battle with the FBI over the locked iPhone court case, with tonight's Apple Event taking place the day before witnesses are called. Apple is widely expected to launch the smaller, cheaper iPhone SE and the iPad Air 3 during it's March 21 press conference at the Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. On March 22 two Apple employees, chief privacy engineer Erik Neuenschwander and global law enforcement manager Lisa Olle, will speak for the company in a requested cross-examination of witnesses from the government. The fact that the two events are separated by mere hours has led to speculation as to whether Cook will mention the ongoing controversy surrounding iOS encryption alongside the launch of Apple's latest devices, with the timing not thought to be a complete coincidence. 21/03/2016: Witnesses called to locked iPhone hearing Apple and the US Department of Justice will present witnesses for cross-examination tomorrow in the ongoing locked iPhone court case, according to Reuters . The witnesses have already given written declarations on the legal briefs filed, an Apple lawyer speaking on a conference call told the publication, adding that the government made a request to cross-examine witnesses working at Apple last week. Two Apple employees – chief privacy engineer Erik Neuenschwander and global law enforcement manager Lisa Olle – will speak for the iPhone maker. FBI electronics engineer Stacey Perino and supervisory special agent Christopher Pluhar will be called up by the government. Statements from Pluhar and Perino expand on the FBI’s attempts to recover data from the locked iPhone through the iCloud service, via its automatic backup. The agency attempted to gain access, but reset the account, meaning the latest data on the device was not uploaded into the cloud, as it would usually have been. However, Perino stated in her declaration that the FBI would not have been able to access the phone’s data regardless of whether the reset occurred or not. The case will resume tomorrow, hours after Apple’s spring press conference today, where it is expected to announce a new iPhone. 18/03/2016: Apple engineers may refuse court order, report claims Apple engineers may quit or refuse to comply with a court order to hack an iPhone, if the US Department of Justice succeeds in its battle with Apple, according to the New York Times . Apple has said in a court filing that it would require between six and 10 engineers to create what it has dubbed ‘GovtOS’, a version of iOS that does away with a security barrier that wipes a handset's data after 10 incorrect password attempts. These engineers would be drawn from a number of divisions, the tech giant said. It is unclear whether the US Department of Justice has accounted for a situation where key Apple members refuse to follow the court's instructions in the event it wins the case, but former federal prosecutor Joseph DeMarco told the New York Times the outcomes would likely not be good for Apple. “If – and this is a big if – every engineer at Apple who could write the code quit and, also a big if, Apple could demonstrate that this happened to the court’s satisfaction, then Apple could not comply and would not have to,” he said. DeMarco added that if the engineers refused to code the OS but did not resign, Apple could be held in contempt of court. Riana Pfefferkorn of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society explained that iPhone maker could then face daily fines if a judge took the opinion that it was deliberately avoiding compliance. 17/03/2016: Steve Wozniak backs Apple in ongoing fight for data privacy Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has sided with his former company in its ongoing battle with the FBI and US Department of Justice. The former Apple executive was asked for his thoughts on the case during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Tuesday and said the right to data privacy should not be relinquished. “You know what, I have things in my head, some very special people in my life that I don't talk about, that mean so much to me from the past. Those little things that I keep in my head are my little secrets. It's a part of my important world, my whole essence of my being,” he said. “I also believe in honesty. If you tell somebody, ‘I am not snooping on you,’ or, ‘I am giving you some level of privacy; I will not look in your drawers,’ then you should keep your word and be honest.” Wozniak explained that undermining the iPhone’s encryption with the new code would inevitably fall into malicious hands. “I come from the side of personal liberties,” he said. “But there are also other problems. Twice in my life, I wrote things that could have been viruses. I threw away every bit of source code. I just got a chill inside. These are dangerous, dangerous things, and if some code gets written in an Apple product that lets people in, bad people are going to find their way to it, very likely.” Read Wozniak's full comments here . 16/03/2016: FBI's arguments are "an exercise in wishful thinking", says Apple Apple has blasted the US government's legal arguments as "an exercise in wishful thinking" in the final court filing before its court battle with the FBI. The company said that the government's interpretation of the All Writs Act of 1789 - the legislation law enforcement is using to strong-arm Apple into complying with its requests - "is not statutory interpretation". "The government seeks an order here that is neither grounded in the common law nor authorized by statute," the brief read, explaining that for the All Writs Act to apply, an appropriate parallel must have been established by common-law rulings. As the government wishes to apply it, Apple contended, the act would have "no limiting principle". It also claimed that the government had yet to explain how there would be any difference between "GovtOS today, and LocationTrackingOS and EavesdropOS tomorrow". The filing claimed that the FBI and the DOJ are also attempting to use the All Writs Act to circumvent CALEA, a pre-existing piece of legislation that limits the government's ability to conduct surveillance on civilian communications networks. The government, in turn, has been making veiled threats about requisitioning Apple's source code and signing key. This would essentially allow it to crack into any Apple product at will. The company has said that this warning highlights "the government's fundamental misunderstanding or reckless disregard of the technology at issue and the security risks implicated by its suggestion". 11/03/2016: Apple accuses FBI of smear campaign Apple has reacted angrily to the latest court filing from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in its ongoing attempt to get the Cupertino company to help it break into a locked iPhone 5c. In its filing, which can be read here , the DoJ said: "Apple and its amici [those who have filed amicus briefs] try to alarm this Court with issues of network security, encryption back doors, and privacy, invoking larger debates before congress and in the news media. That is a diversion. " It went on to accuse Apple of wishing to make its products "warrant-proof" and having "deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and an iPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans". The DoJ also accused Apple of using "rhetoric [that is] not only false, but also corrosive", and of "extolling itself as the primary guardian of Americans' privacy". It also raised the fact Apple has co-operated with the demands of other nations, singling out china in particular. In response, Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and SVP of legal and government affairs, told a press conference that the filing "reads like an indictment". "In 30 years of practice, I don't think I've ever seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less focused on the real merits of the case," Sewell said, according to Business Insider . "For the first time ever, we see an allegation that Apple has deliberately made changes to block law enforcement requests for access. This should be deeply offensive to everyone that reads it. An unsupported, unsubstantiated effort to vilify Apple rather than confront the issues in the case. "We are going before court to exercise our legal rights. Everyone should beware because it seems like disagreeing with the Department of Justice means you must be evil and anti- American. Nothing could be further from the truth," Sewell concluded. The case continues. 10/03/2016: An Apple executive fears that the FBI could eventually secretly spy on your phone camera and microphone if it succeeds in forcing Apple to help weaken an iPhone's security. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, told broadcast Univision ( Business Insider received an English transcript from Apple): “When they can get us to create a new system to do new things, where will it stop? “For example, one day [the FBI] may want us to open your phone’s camera, microphone. Those are things we can't do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that’s very bad.” The significance of unlocking the single encrypted iPhone at the heart of the dispute has been played down by the FBI. Cue, however, claimed that it is the equivalent of giving them a key to the back door of everybody's houses. "Since we don't have the key, they want us to change the lock," Cue said. "When we change the latchkey, it changes for everyone. And we have a key that opens all phones. And that key, once it exists, exists not only for us. Terrorists, criminals, pirates, all too will find that key to open all phones.” He stressed that Apple engineers are constantly working to make its devices more secure. The current case, he suggested, should not be viewed as Apple versus the government, but instead an example of Apple’s attempts to keep citizens safe from criminals and other malicious agents. “It’s Apple engineers against terrorists, against criminals. They are the people we are trying to protect people from. We are not protecting the government," he said. "We want to help. They have a very difficult job, they are there to protect us. So we want to help as much as possible, but we can not help them in a way that will help more criminals, terrorists, pirates.” He added that Apple would appeal the current case to the US Supreme Court if necessary. 07/03/2016: US Justice Dept asks New York court to overturn pro-Apple ruling The US Justice Department has asked a New York court to reverse a pro-Apple ruling that could threaten the FBI's position in the ongoing encryption dispute. US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled in late February that the tech company was not required to open an iPhone involved in a routine narcotics case. In a 45-page brief, the Justice Department asked a federal court in Brooklyn to overturn the decision, stating that it sets "an unprecedented limitation" on its judicial authority. In both Orenstein's drugs case and the investigation into the San Bernardino shootings, which is at the centre of the FBI's request for Apple to help it break into the device, the government has attempted to use the All Writs Act to compel Apple to divulge information kept on the devices. However, while federal judges have sided with the FBI regarding the San Bernardino case by ordering the company to render "reasonable technical assistance" to investigators, Judge Orenstein has not. Instead, he ruled that using the All Writs Act to force access to the device would "thoroughly undermine fundamental principles of the Constitution". The government has also argued that while the San Bernardino case would involve Apple writing custom software to bypass security features, the New York drugs trial involved pre-established data extraction methods that have already been used in previous cases. 07/03/2016: FBI wants us to turn back the clock on security, says Apple VP Apple has accused the FBI of trying to undo years of security advancements for the iPhone. Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at the tech giant, said that by returning to iOS 7 security standards, hackers would be well-poised to hack into people's iPhones. In a comment piece for the Washington Post , he said: “Our team must work tirelessly to stay one step ahead of criminal attackers who seek to pry into personal information and even co-opt devices to commit broader assaults that endanger us all. “That’s why it’s so disappointing that the FBI, Justice Department and others in law enforcement are pressing us to turn back the clock to a less-secure time and less-secure technologies. They have suggested that the safeguards of iOS 7 were good enough and that we should simply go back to the security standards of 2013. “But the security of iOS 7, while cutting-edge at the time, has since been breached by hackers. What’s worse, some of their methods have been productised and are now available for sale to attackers who are less skilled but often more malicious.” Since iOS 8, Apple has included device-specific encryption methods but claims the FBI would erase this by rolling back to a previous operating system. The law enforcement agency wants Apple to assist it in removing a security barrier on the iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the people responsible for killing 14 people in San Bernardino last year. Apple - and other Silicon Valley firms - believe that setting such a precedent would harm American citizens, and is fighting the case in a California court and Congress. Federighi added that while Apple’s software engineers are not always perfect in their work, “identifying and fixing those problems are critical parts of our mission to keep customers safe. Doing anything to hamper that mission would be a serious mistake". Meanwhile, the judge overseeing the court battle between the two organisations has heard that criminals have been switching to the newer iPhone models as their “device of choice” to commit offences thanks to the tough encryption present in each handset. The US Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and two other bodies said in a court filing that they were aware of “numerous instances” of criminals who previously used throwaway ‘burner phones’ switching to iPhones, Reuters reported. No specific instances were listed in the documents the group presented. However, it cited a prison phone call recorded by New York authorities in 2015, where an inmate called Apple’s encrypted operating system a “gift from God”. 04/03/2016: DA claims iPhone was "cyber pathogen" trigger The iPhone at the centre of the Apple-FBI dispute may have been used to release a " cyber pathogen" on the infrastructure of San Bernardino, according to the District Attorney for the county. A court brief spotted by Ars Technica , and filed by San Bernardino DA Michael Ramos, read: "The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure. " The iPhone 5c is owned by the county, which issued it as a work phone to Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters responsible for killing 14 people. Apple is fighting back against the FBI's demand that it create an alternative operating system for the iPhone, so the agency can try as many passwords as possible on the phone without triggering the device's in-built security barrier that wipes its data after 10 incorrect password attempts. However, the DA did not refer to any proof to back up his suspicions, and the county told Ars that it had nothing to do with filing the brief. An iPhone forensics expert, Jonathan Zdziarski, told Ars : " This reads as an amicus designed to mislead the courts into acting irrationally in an attempt to manipulate a decision in the FBI's favor. " The news comes after the UN High Commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said the FBI's efforts to compel Apple to bypass the iPhone's security barrier could harm millions of people. He said in a statement : " In order to address a security-related issue related to encryption in one case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandora’s Box that could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security. " " A successful case against Apple in the US will set a precedent that may make it impossible for Apple or any other major international IT company to safeguard their clients’ privacy anywhere in the world,” the UN human rights chief added. “It is potentially a gift to authoritarian regimes, as well as to criminal hackers. "There have already been a number of concerted efforts by authorities in other States to force IT and communications companies such as Google and Blackberry to expose their customers to mass surveillance.” Earlier today, dozens of Silicon Valley tech firms backed Apple's stance against the FBI, saying its request to bypass security would harm American citizens. 04/03/2016: Apple vs FBI: Silicon Valley stands firm behind Apple Google, Microsoft, Box and dozens of other tech giants have backed Apple in its battle against the FBI over weakening iPhone security. The Silicon Valley giants filed a legal brief yesterday to call on a judge to support Apple’s refusal to bypass a security feature that wipes iPhone data after 10 incorrect passwords. The FBI wants Apple to help it access the iPhone 5c that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Facebook, Dropbox, Cisco and Yahoo also signed the legal brief, which their lawyers submitted to the district court of California, ahead of a hearing on 22 March. It read : “[These firms] here speak with one voice because of the singular importance of this case to them and their customers who trust [them] to safeguard their data and most sensitive communications from attackers. “[They are] united in their view that the government’s order to Apple exceeds the bounds of existing law and, when applied more broadly, will harm Americans’ security in the long run.” Various other amicus briefs – which allow outside persons to comment on legal cases - came from other tech firms and privacy campaigners, while relatives of San Bernardino victims filed legal briefs opposed to Apple’s stance. The FBI wants Apple to write a new version of its operating system that would mean the iPhone would not wipe its data after 10 incorrect password attempts. Both sides made opening speeches to Congress last week, with the FBI comparing the security barrier to a “vicious guard dog”, while Apple claimed that bypassing the feature would weaken the security of all American citizens. The FBI admitted it had asked the California county to reset the password on Farook’s phone, meaning that the device did not send a fresh data backup to Apple’s servers though the FBI claimed it would not have got all relevant data from the device. Box founder Aaron Levie was the latest to call for a public discussion of the issue, saying after the legal briefs were filed: “Asking Apple to break or weaken its security features undermines our collective trust in technology in the digital age. Instead, we need an open, public dialogue focused on helping us collectively strike the right balance between privacy and security. " Amazon, which also signed a legal brief against breaking the iPhone's encryption, has dropped encryption support from its latest Fire OS. 02/03/2016: Apple vs FBI: Conflict moves from courts to Congress Apple and the FBI have butted heads in Congress as the feud over a shooter’s locked iPhone has grown into a debate about national security versus civil liberties. The opposing sides made their opening remarks to a congressional judiciary panel on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported . “We’re asking Apple to take the vicious guard dog away and let us pick the lock,” FBI director James Comey told the panel, referring to the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernadino shooter Syed Farook, who helped kill 14 people. “The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products,” Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell responded later that afternoon. “Is it the right thing to make our society overall less safe in order to solve crime? That’s the issue that we're wrestling with.” Comey admitted the FBI had made a mistake just after the San Bernardino attack when it asked the county – which owned the phone – to reset the password for the perpetrator’s iCloud account. That data, stored on Apple servers, held backups of the phone. Had the password not been reset, the phone may have made a fresh backup available to investigators for further inspection. “The experts tell me there's no way we would have gotten everything off the phone from a backup,” Comey added. Tuesday’s hearing moved the debate from the courts to Congress, where both sides agree the larger policy deliberation belongs. However, in the past month, judges have issued conflicting opinions on whether or not companies should help law enforcement break encryption. On Monday, a federal judge in Brooklyn, US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, said the government could not force Apple to help it gain access to a phone in a drug case, saying that relying on the ancient All Writs Act would produce “impermissibly absurd results”. But in California, Judge Sheri Pym, instructed Apple to help the FBI crack the locked iPhone used by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings, last December. Apple filed an appeal against this ruling late on Tuesday night. Following these two conflicting rulings, Comey said Congress must address the wider collision between privacy and public safety. 29/02/2016: New York case could set tone for California rematch In a significant turn of events, a judge in New York has ruled Apple cannot be forced to unlock an iPhone, deeming that such an action under the All Writs Act would likely be unconstitutional. The case, which involves an iPhone retrieved as part of a drugs investigation, is similar to the one Apple is currently fighting in California, where judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LA ruled Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to FBI investigators who want to gain access to the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. In both cases, the government has used a catch-all piece of legislation known as the All Writs Act to attempt to compel Apple to break its own security protocols. In the case of the San Bernardino iPhone, this means writing a custom version of iOS. However, while judge Pym in LA has looked favourably on the FBI's request, judge James Orenstein in New York has not. The Electronic Frontier Foundation campaign group said of the ruling: "It's a significant rejection of the government's interpretation of the All Writs Act, which prosecutors have advanced in multiple jurisdictions across the country. " "While the government has argued that its extraordinary invocation of the All Writs Act is not intended to set a precedent, judge Orenstein properly recognises what is at stake. In particular, he casts shade on the very constitutionality of the government's interpretation, describing it as virtually unbounded," it added. It is unclear, however, what effect, if any, the New York ruling will have on the California case. Amicus briefs are set to be filed within the next 72 hours in LA, with oral evidence being heard within the coming weeks. 26/02/2016: Microsoft has become the latest company to announce its support for Apple in its fight against the FBI's demands the company unlock an iPhone belonging to San Bernardino killer Syed Farook. At a hearing on Thursday, Microsoft's chief legal officer said the company will file an amicus brief - also known as a friend of the court brief - next week in support of Apple, according to Bloomberg. The news outlet also said Alphabet - Google's parent company - and Facebook plan to file a separate brief, citing "people familiar with the matter", while Twitter has publicly said it will also be filing an amicus brief. Bloomberg reports that during Thursday's hearing Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, told the court: "Every case has implications for others. " Microsoft is itself embroiled in a court battle with an unnamed US law enforcement agency, thought to be the FBI, which is seeking to access email data held in the company's Dublin data centre. In a mirror image of the iPhone case, Apple came out in support of Microsoft, along with a number of other tech giants. Microsoft's move to support Apple is, however, in contrast to statements made by Microsoft co- founder Bill Gates on 23 February, where he claimed: "nobody's asking for a backdoor". 25/02/2016: Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the FBI wants his company to create "the software equivalent of cancer". The tech giant is currently embroiled in a fierce battle with the agency over the iPhone of San Bernardino killer Syed Farook, which Apple has been court-ordered to help the FBI gain access to. In an interview with ABC News , Cook reiterated his claims that Apple has "passed all of the information that we have on the phone". He stated that the only way to get any further data "would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer". "We think it's bad news to write," he said. "We would never write it. We have never written it. " The proposed software, he warned, would be "bad for America", and went on to say "this case is not about one phone... this case is about the future. " "If a court can ask us to write this piece of software, think about what else they could ask us to write," Cook explained. "Maybe it's an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability for the law enforcement to turn on the camera". "I don't know where this stops. But I do know that this is not what should be happening in this country. " "Some things are hard, and some things are right, and some things are both," he said. "This is one of those things. " 25/02/2016: Apple wants Congress to decide iPhone dispute Apple will tell a US federal judge this week that its argument with the FBI over cracking a locked and encrypted iPhone should be decided by Congress, rather than the courts, according to a report by The Associated Press. Apple will also contest that the court order for it to help hack the iPhone, which belonged to one of the San Bernardino attackers, is invalid under the 1789 All Writs Act, which has been used in the past to compel companies to provide assistance to law enforcement. Judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LA ordered Apple last week to create specialised software to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone used by one of the perpetrators of the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, last December. Apple has not yet made any filings in the case because the US Justice Department asked the magistrate to rule before Apple had an opportunity to dispute. However, according to the AP , the company intends to argue in its legal papers that the 1789 law has never been used to coerce a company to write software to assist the government. Michael Zweiback, the former chief of the cybercrimes section of the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles and a former prosecutor, told the AP it was very unusual for the US government to ask Apple to give the FBI specialised software that would weaken the protections on the iPhone. “There’s a significant legal question as to whether the All Writs Act can be used to order a company to create something that may not presently exist,” Zweiback said. Speaking about the implications on data privacy the case could have, he added: “We are not the only ones who are asking for encryption keys," he said. "The Chinese government has made similar demands upon them, the European Union has made similar demands upon them, so the implications are really not even national. They’re international in scope.” However, Josh Earnest, a spokesman for The White House, said: “Sending complicated things to Congress is often not the surest way to get a quick answer. In fact, even asking some of the most basic questions of Congress sometimes does not ensure a quick answer.” 23/02/2016: Apple vs FBI: Bill Gates calls for calm in iPhone encryption row Bill Gates has dismissed claims the FBI wants a backdoor into Apple's iPhone as overblown. Apple has defied a court order demanding the company help the FBI unlock the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people and injured 22 in a shooting in California. The Microsoft founder has now called into question Apple CEO Tim Cook's claims that creating software to bypass a security barrier on the phone would set a "dangerous precedent", and called for a sensible discussion around the issue. "Nobody's talking about a backdoor", Gates told the Financial Times. "This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case". He likened the case to government agents requesting access to phone or banking records, stating "there's no difference between information". A fierce debate has been ignited over whether or not Apple should comply with the FBI's requests. Silicon Valley has largely closed ranks around the company, with multiple prominent industry figures speaking up in the company's defense. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have both offered varying degrees of support for Apple's position, with the latter stating at MWC 2016 that his company is "sympathetic with Apple. " Gates' own Microsoft has also indicated that it sides against the government on this occasion. Multiple spokespeople pointed to a statement from the Reform Government Surveillance group - of which Microsoft is a member - that backs Apple up. The group demands that limits are set to the US government's capacity to collect data and that it operates under better oversight and accountability. 22/02/2016: Tim Cook calls for data privacy discussion in internal memo Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an internal email to staff reasserting his refusal of a federal court order to assist the FBI in cracking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino gunmen. The FBI had obtained the court order to force Apple to help it bypass a security barrier that would have wiped the data on the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people in a suspected terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December, after 10 incorrect attempts. In the memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News , Cook thanked Apple employees and the public for the support the company has received in the days since its refusal hit the headlines. He said that though Apple has no sympathy for terrorists, “the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people” is what is at stake, and would set “a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties”. “Apple is a uniquely American company. It does not feel right to be on the opposite side of the government in a case centering on the freedoms and liberties that government is meant to protect,” Cook wrote. The CEO called on the US government to withdraw its demand under the All Writs Act and has encouraged an open discussion between intelligence, technology and privacy experts on the implications for national security, privacy and personal freedom. Cook added that Apple would gladly participate in such a discussion. According to him, members of congress want Apple to backtrack its data protection to iOS 7, undoing significant encryption changes it established with iOS 8. “Starting with iOS 8, we began encrypting data in a way that not even the iPhone itself can read without the user’s passcode, so if it is lost or stolen, our personal data, conversations, financial and health information are far more secure. We all know that turning back the clock on that progress would be a terrible idea,” Cook wrote. In tandem with the internal memo, Apple has today published a Q&A to answer questions people may have about its case with the FBI. In the Q&A, the company underlines its commitment to protect its customers' data and also refutes arguments by the FBI claiming that unlocking the iPhone is not a big deal. Apple is required to provide a formal response to its court order by the end of the week. 19/02/2016: McAfee offers to unlock iPhone for FBI in three weeks Maverick cybersecurity legend John McAfee has offered to his services in helping the FBI unlock an iPhone that was used by one of the San Bernardino killers. In an op-ed in Business Insider , McAfee said that the FBI doesn't "have the talent" to crack the iPhone. "They don't have the personnel. And how could they? We're talking people with purple mohawks, face tattoos. They smoke weed all day long! Things that could keep them from working with the government," he said. McAfee insisted that he was on the side of Apple in its fight, but said his actions wold help both sides. "I have friends," he said. "They can tell you what the operating system is doing, in short order. " "They are all prodigies with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75 percent are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact. He said he would offer the services of his team free of charge. "We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks," he said. "If you accept my offer you will not need to ask Apple to place a backdoor in its product, which would be the beginning of the end of America. "If you doubt my credentials, Google 'cybersecurity legend' and see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million. " 18/02/2016: Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns FBI's iPhone backdoor would set a "troubling precedent" Google CEO Sundar Pichai has backed Apple’s refusal to help the FBI bypass the iPhone’s built-in security. Apple boss Tim Cook plans to fight a court order he argues would compel his firm to build a backdoor into the iPhone. The FBI obtained the order to get Apple’s help cracking an iPhone 5c belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people in a suspected terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December. But Google’s Pichai said Cook is right to challenge the court order, saying creating a backdoor into the iPhone’s encryption could create wider risks to data protection. In a series of tweets calling such a move a “troubling precedent”, he said: “Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy. “We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders. But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data.” The technical assistance the FBI has asked for would enable it to remove the iPhone’s ability to wipe its data after 10 failed password attempts. Cook called for a public discussion about the issue, claiming such a move would threaten Apple customers’ security. Whatsapp’s founder, Jan Koum, also came out in support of Apple’s stance, writing in a Facebook post that “we must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set”, saying it would put people’s freedom and liberty at risk”. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) applauded Apple’s defiance of the court order and accused the US government of trying to create a “master key” to Apple devices that goes beyond the scope of needing access to a single iPhone. “Once that master key is created, we're certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security,” an EFF statement read. Read more about why the FBI's request for a backdoor could spell trouble for your privacy here 17/02/16: Apple defies order to unlock San Bernardino shooter's iPhone Apple has been ordered to disable some of the key security features of an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters by a judge in Los Angeles. However, the Cupertino-based company is refusing to comply. Judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LA ruled Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to FBI investigators working on the San Bernardino case , which saw 14 people killed and 22 others injured by Syed Rizwan Farook, to whom the iPhone belonged, and Tachfeen Malik, his wife. Such technical assistance includes helping the FBI to guess Farook's passcode and removing the device's auto-erase function, which kicks in when the wrong passcode has been entered 10 times. Prosecutors acting on behalf of the FBI said: "Apple has the exclusive means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily. " Despite the ruling, however, Apple continues to refuse to comply. In an open letter to customers , CEO Tim Cook said: "The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand. "This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake. " Cook went on to explain the need for strong encryption, saying that "compromising the security of our personal data can ultimately put our personal safety at risk". In direct reference to the San Bernardino case, he said Apple has "no sympathy for terrorists" and has aided the FBI both in the immediate wake of the attack and provided data subsequently to the agency that was in the company's possession in response to what it describes as valid subpoenas and search warrants. "We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them," said Cook. "But now the U. S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. " He continued: "Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features... in the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. " Cook contends that the implications are far-reaching and could undermine "the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect". "The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control," he said. The case is very reminiscent of an ongoing court battle in New York between Microsoft and an unnamed US law enforcement agency - widely thought to be the FBI - regarding email data held in its Dublin datacentre. Both Apple and Microsoft have also been strongly opposed to attempts in the UK to undermine data security through the Investigatory Powers Bill - commonly known as the Snooper's Charter . The case continues.

2016-04-11 00:00 Jane McCallion www.itpro.co.uk

26 Huawei wants to be the next Apple Huawei wants its consumer devices to be premium items that can compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple on the global stage. Speaking at the company’s annual analyst conference in Shenzhen, rotating CEO Eric Xu said Hauwei intends to “leverage its technical expertise to build a premium, high end brand [of smartphones].” “We are committed to building an ecosystem with customers at the centre to build our reputation and loved brand,” he said. Xu’s comments come less than one week after the launch of the Huawei P9 smartphone , a device that’s intended to penetrate the premium market and which the company compared directly with the iPhone 6s Plus . In February, at MWC, Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, was reported as saying the company wanted to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, leapfrogging Apple and Samsung, within two-to-three years. However, during a Q&A session at this week’s conference, Xu clarified that Yu’s comments referred to the Chinese market alone, claiming his colleague had been misquoted. However, Xu added: “Having said that, it’s definitely a firm strategic choice we have made to put Huawei device as a high-end device across the world. Up until today, China has not produced a high-end brand yet, therefore one can see that’s a target we’re reaching and in the next five-to- ten years we can possibly [overtake Samsung and Apple], but we are not sure whether that can be achieved.” Huawei Analyst Conference is taking place in Shenzhen from 11 to 12 April. IT Pro’s Senior Writer, Jane McCallion, will be reporting live across both days of the conference.

2016-04-11 00:00 Jane McCallion www.itpro.co.uk

27 Huawei talks up “video as basic” at Analyst Conference 2016 Telcos must place the same premium on video services as they do voice in order to succeed in the future, delegates at Huawei Analyst Conference 2016 heard today. During his opening keynote, Eric Xu, Hawei's rotating CEO, said carriers have been very focused on data transfer speeds so far, but not in a way that has been that noticeable to consumers. Video and, increasingly, virtual reality are the things that are important to end users and telcos are in prime position to offer these services. The best way for them to take advantage of this, he said, is for Video over LTE to become as fundamental a part of telcos' business strategies and customer offerings as Voice over LTE. In order to enable this, telcos must move towards "full cloudification", which is to say migrating to full public cloud, with the network becoming software defined and as much automation introduced as possible. Touching on the company's existing partnerships with Deutsche Telecom and Telefónica, Xu said for its global strategy in this vertical Huawei is only interested in partnering with partners that already have strong relationships with enterprises to be able to drive cloud take-up in these large businesses worldwide. Ultimately, Xu said, the 2016 strategy for Huawei is to help drive full cloudification for telcos and enable digital transformation within them, which they in turn can use to drive digital transformation and cloud uptake in enterprises on the one hand, and satisfy the thirst for visual media among consumers. Huawei Analyst Conference is taking place in Shenzhen from 11 to 12 April. IT Pro's Senior Writer, Jane McCallion, will be reporting live across both days of the conference.

2016-04-11 00:00 Jane McCallion www.itpro.co.uk

28 Final Fantasy XV PC port may contain more content, if it releases at all Final Fantasy XV , or as I like to call it, Roadtrippin' Boy Band Simulator 2016, hasn't been officially announced for PC but it almost certainly will be. Game director Hajime Tabata has already explained that the absence of a PC version is a matter of development logistics, but in a new interview he indicates that the PC version might even have more content than the console versions. Speaking during an interview with Jeuxvideo, which has been translated by Final Fantasy fansite Nova Crystallis , Tabata's comments on a PC port sound promising. "I’m quite positive about the idea of developing a PC version, but I would like to make a very different project if possible," he said. He also said that a possible PC version would not only look better, but it might also contain material the studio had to cut due to the consoles' tech limitations. "The reason I’m interested is that a PC version would propel the game to another technical level," he said. "I have in mind a version of Final Fantasy XV that is more technically developed. This version could incorporate things that we were forced to abandon because of the limitations of home consoles. With the PC, this would be an opportunity to release a version far superior in terms of quality and tech. That said, if we choose to develop this project, the development will start from scratch by doing research of what would be the best technology to use. It might not be a simple port of the console version. " Cheers, PCGamesN.

2016-04-10 23:25 Shaun Prescott www.pcgamer.com

29 Telstra picks up AU$1.6 billion HFC contract from NBN The company responsible for deploying the National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia has signed Telstra to provide design and management services within its HFC footprint. In an announcement to the ASX this morning, Telstra said the deal would run until the end of the NBN build, currently slated for the end of 2020. "All design, program management, construction management and scheduling activities will be undertaken by Telstra," Australia's largest telco said. "Construction is split into two areas -- field construction activities will largely be performed by NBN's MIMA [Multi-technology Integrated Master Agreement] partners, while in-exchange construction activities and limited upstream in-field activities will be undertaken by Telstra. " In December, NBN signed a memorandum of understanding with Telstra that saw Telstra pick up design, engineering, procuring, and construction within its HFC network, as well as undertaking to upgrade the HFC network to DOCSIS 3.1. NBN said at the time that it would have been too difficult for NBN and Telstra to coordinate on each building out the HFC network, with services possibly disrupted due to the necessary node splits, with NBN therefore taking a step back and handing over management work to Telstra. HFC will connect four million premises in total, with 3.6 of these coming from the old Telstra HFC network. At the same time, Telstra signed two contracts with NBN worth AU$80 million in first-year revenue that would see the company repair faults on the copper network and other NBN services. Last week, NBN revealed it was spending AU$60,000 a day on external lawyers , with a total of AU$8,694,204 spent between September 14, 2015, and January 31, 2016. On Friday, Australian Opposition Leader Bill Shorten confirmed in a speech that Labor is looking towards a hybrid NBN policy with more fibre. "We won't rip up everything that Mr Turnbull has done," Shorten said. "We will do a hybrid of some of what he's done, but we will have in our announcement -- which we will be putting out pretty soon -- a greater proportion of the use of fibre, and we will also look at the proportions of fibre, and we think we can provide more of that to more Australians. " Communications Minister Mitch Fifield labelled this statement a backflip from Labor's previous stance on the NBN. "For two and a half years, Labor has attacked anything other than a network that built fibre to the premise, and attacked any use of the existing copper network. Last night, Mr Shorten confirmed that Labor would adopt the Turnbull government's multi-technology mix. " Telstra and NBN signed an amended AU$11 billion definitive agreement in December 2014, that saw NBN take on ownership of Telstra's legacy copper and HFC networks. In response to today's announcement, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said while Telstra had the expertise to speed up the rollout of the NBN, it was still worried about the impact on competition. "We have raised several concerns with Telstra and NBN Co, including that Telstra may receive a competitive advantage if it has access to better information than other service providers or if it is able to use infrastructure built for the NBN network before that infrastructure becomes available to other retail service providers," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said. Sims also said it was important that Telstra did not gain a head-start to selling retail services on the NBN. NBN said it was mindful of "perceived issues" when it structured the deal, and included additional measures on monitoring and reporting back to the ACCC. "This agreement is not subject to ACCC approval," an NBN spokesperson said. "As we are an open access wholesale only, non-discriminatory operator, we have every incentive to make sure all internet providers have the same opportunities to access our network as quickly as possible. "

2016-04-10 22:43 Chris Duckett zdnet.com.feedsportal.com

30 Brian Fargo, Josh Sawyer, and Gordon Walton on the history and future of RPGs Brian Fargo (Wasteland, Fallout), Josh Sawyer (New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity), and Gordon Walton (Ultima Online, Star Wars: TOR) are veterans of the videogame business and have, between them, worked on some of the most beloved RPGs ever to grace the PC. Fargo and Walton got their starts all the way back in the 1980s, and all three have more recently been at the forefront of the crowdfunded RPG renaissance: Fargo at the head of inXile Entertainment, which is currently working on Torment: Tides of Numenera and The Bard's Tale IV ; Sawyer as the game director and lead designer on Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity ; and Walton as the executive producer of ArtCraft's upcoming MMO Crowfall. Instead of talking to each of them individually about their careers making RPGs, I decided to rope them together at this year's GDC and get them to talk to each other. They shared stories about how they make games and their years of experience in the industry. The resulting interview was a long talk about the past, present and future of PC RPGs. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. JS: I don’t know. That’s just kind of what I’m drawn to doing. I didn’t do a bunch of story development. I only wrote one character in the game, which is Pallegina. So I tried to avoid being really super deeply involved in a lot of the area design and things like that, because I just didn’t have the time for it. I was the only system designer, and I designed 90 percent of the lore and everything. But then most of the rest of what I was doing—It was an interesting team dynamic, because we had people who had been working on the original Infinity Infinity Engine games, folks that I worked with back at Black Isle, and then we had people that had been at Obsidian for five or six years and so they were pretty experienced with the type of games that we made in general, RPGs in general, and then we had a bunch of new people. And so getting the old folks back up to speed with making this style of game took a little bit, but we got back into the groove pretty quickly. Then people who had made other Obsidian games, they got some of the basic principles but working within an isometric 2D rendered environment, that took a little getting used to. Designing levels is a different sort of thing there. And then for the new folks it was a very very different experience. Thankfully, we had a lot of fans in the group, so even though they had not worked on games like that, they had played them, and so they were very familiar with a lot of conventions. And it is collaborative too. I was the guy that wrote it, but I was frequently asking questions of other people to get their opinions or ideas and things like that. So trying to do it completely by myself, well, one, it would have been much more difficult, and two, you want the people working with you to be invested in it, and so getting their ideas and opinions is really valuable. So I have to say, ‘let’s make sure that you can open up any place on the map at the same time and go there. You’re gonna get your ass handed to you. We think that’s a rewarding experience for you and for the guys that want to try to get that extra weapon.’ So I’m almost more on the philosophical and psychological side of these things than actually writing the words, because I’m not a writer. I know writers, they can write like mad. With Wasteland 2, I did the first map. I actually designed it, I put it in, I put the encounters, but I would put in, ‘This guy says something to this effect,’ because I don’t even think for a second that I could write like a writer can, and then they’ll come in and they fill it in. I did the same thing with the Bard’s Tale comedy. So most of my time is really focusing on the push points of what is important, or, in the case of Wasteland 2 from Wasteland—we wanted to make the core audience happy, but we also wanted to have new people to be able to experience it too, so what are the things that could come across, what are the inside jokes. And then I do sometimes roll up my sleeves and get into some of the individual stuff that I think that, as a gamer, I will totally get off on, and so I will pick my little battles of stuff that have to be in there. But for the first part I’m coordinating the entire effort of everybody coming in, and making sure the creativity is happening on all fronts, and that I’m letting the egos get out of the way and the best ideas are rising to the surface etc etc. So it’s it’s different than his involvement, probably Gordon’s too for that matter.

2016-04-10 18:00 Wes Fenlon www.pcgamer.com

31 Don't Starve Together leaves Early Access on April 21 Don't Starve's multiplayer-focused spin-off Don't Starve Together is currently in Early Access. That's a sentence I will no longer be able to utter truthfully on April 21—as Klei has announced that's when DST will release for real. Don't Starve Together takes the single-player Don't Starve and whacks in the ability to play with other humans. It's been expanded over its Early Access period with Reign of Giants and Caves— two expansions from the original game—although it doesn't sound like the recently released Shipwrecked will be playable with chums any time soon. Of that, Klei says that "we don’t have any concrete plans right now. Shipwrecked was built without DST in mind, and we’re going to need to evaluate how much is needed if we were going to do this. We would all love to go sailing with our friends! " If you were worried that the official release of Don't Starve Together means that development is about to stop, don't be. "We get that there’s still a lot more to develop," Klei says in the release date blog post, "from longer play sessions, to better modding tools, to improving the state of PvP and exploring the lore—there’s always more to do than we have hands, but thankfully we’re here for the long haul, as long as you are, too. "

2016-04-10 16:00 By Tom www.pcgamer.com

32 Modder delivers the original Doom in VR This week on the Mod Roundup, you can experience the original Doom in VR, thanks to a mod that lets you play with the Oculus Rift. We've also got a mod that adds camping to Fallout 4, complete with tents, campfires, and a special sleeping bag for Dogmeat. And, a modder has decided to overhaul Aliens: Colonial Marines, fixing everything from AI to weapon balance. Here are the most promising mods we've seen this week. Perfect for a little relaxation between adventures, this mod adds craftable tents and sleeping bags, campfires and lanterns, and a cooking pot. There's also a beacon you can drop to mark your camp's location on your map. It even comes with a new bed for Dogmeat, which he'll sleep in—complete with custom snoring sounds—until you wake him up. The wasteland just got a little more cozy. The granddaddy of first-person shooters, playable in VR? This is a mod for GZDoom , which is a source port based on ZDoom , which is an enhanced port of the official Doom. Modception! GZ3Doom allows you to play Doom with an Oculus Rift. There are a lot of instructions to get it working, as you might expect, so head here to find out more. Aliens: Colonial Marines was a disappointment in more ways than one , but modders have always been willing to embark on salvage missions. This mod, by Templar GFX, is an attempt to fix a number of problems by improving both human and xenomorph AI, weapon mechanics and ballistics, animation, lighting, and other engine features. It's still a work in progress, but worth checking out if you own ACM.

2016-04-10 14:30 Christopher Livingston www.pcgamer.com

33 More leaks of the hardware and software that make up the HTC 10 HTC has an official event on 12 April where it's expected to unveil the HTC 10 flagship for 2016 - but at this rate it might as well not bother. We already know pretty much everything there is to know about the premium handset. There's still time for a couple of noteworthy leaks before Tuesday though: first up some fuzzy shots of the HTC 10 in white , plucked from Chinese social network Weibo. The pictures would seem to confirm the HTC logo has indeed been removed from the front of the phone, and there's also a shot of the 12MP camera in action. When you've enjoyed pouring over those, there's a sneak preview of the HTC Sense 8 software to take in via another Chinese source. The modified Android OS is expected to launch at the same time as the new HTC M10 handset. The leaked UI grabs mention a "freestyle" layout that lets you place "apps, widgets and stickers" wherever you want on your home screen - enough to make you switch from an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy? Or a gimmick of little real value? Based on all the official and unofficial teases we've seen, we're expecting a significant camera upgrade, a chamfered edge design and a slightly curved back. Around the front we should see a physical home button complete with fingerprint sensor, with USB Type-C thrown in for good measure. A Qualcomm 820 CPU is tipped to be inside. All that remains is for HTC to confirm all of this speculation and then we can see whether it's got a chance against the likes of the Galaxy S7 and the LG G5. The event on 12 April starts at 5AM PT/8AM ET/1PM GMT and we'll of course bring you live updates as it happens. Article continues below

2016-04-10 13:51 By David feedproxy.google.com

34 Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter redesigns Holmes and Watson Creepy Watson is no more. The steely-eyed, middle-aged sidekick from Frogware's increasingly good Sherlock Holmes games has been replaced with the veritable hunk you see above. Both Watson and Sherlock have been reimagined as younger, more dynamic sleuths for The Devil's Daughter —the latest in the interactive story/adventure series, out May 27. I was rather attached to the Sherlock and Watson of the previous games, and their voice actors, but I can understand why Frogwares might want to update them to attract a bigger audience. As you can see from the first footage, below, the rest of the game seems largely unchanged from Crimes and Punishments. We'll still cross-examine suspects and gather clues via rudimentary minigames, and using seemingly exactly the same interface, too. We'll even revisit some of the same locations, including that pub where Holmes entered into an intolerable arm-wrestling match in Crimes and Punishments. It's a shame that game didn't ask much of the mind, and I'm hoping for a few more exercises that will engage the old grey matter in The Devil's Daughter. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. (Ta, Destructoid .)

2016-04-10 13:00 By Tom www.pcgamer.com Total 34 articles. Created at 2016-04-11 12:03