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48 articles, 2016-04-25 18:01 1 News News for the Open Source Professional 2016-04-25 18:01 480Bytes www..com 2 Venture capital in Europe needs to diversify according to Balderton’s newest venture partner In this episode of the 20 Minute VC, we catch up with James Wise, a longtime contributor who is making his bow with us as Balderton Capital's youngest early.. 2016-04-25 18:01 1KB feedproxy.google.com 3 Kamcord bags $10M led by Time Warner to tackle live- streaming like a media business Today is a big day for Y Combinator graduate Kamcord, after the San Francisco startup announced a $10 million Series round led by Time Warner, and a move.. 2016-04-25 18:01 6KB feedproxy.google.com 4 After struggling with rising costs, Sequoia-backed PepperTap pivots from grocery deliveries to e-commerce logistics Times are getting tougher for food delivery startups in India. Over the weekend, PepperTap—which has raised more than $50 million from backers including.. 2016-04-25 18:01 4KB feedproxy.google.com 5 Retail giant Central Group is buying Zalora’s businesses in Thailand and Vietnam Zalora, the fashion-focused e-commerce site backed by Rocket Internet, is selling its businesses in Thailand and Vietnam to retail giant Central Group,.. 2016-04-25 18:01 4KB feedproxy.google.com 6 Bitcasa pulls out of consumer cloud storage Bitcasa is pulling out of consumer cloud storage to focus on its platform business, giving users a month's notice to move their data elsewhere -- and.. 2016-04-25 18:01 3KB feedproxy.google.com 7 Augmedix nabs $17M to ‘rehumanize’ doctor/patient relations using Google Glass Google Glass has turned away from marketing itself to consumers, but its enterprise business continues to pick up pace, and today one of the more.. 2016-04-25 18:01 7KB feedproxy.google.com 8 Baidu head of comms and China tech figure Kaiser Kuo is leaving the firm to return to the U. S. China's tech scene is losing one of its most recognizable and influential faces after Baidu head of comms and all-round nice guy Kaiser Kuo announced he is.. 2016-04-25 18:01 1KB feedproxy.google.com 9 Mozilla gives WebAssembly a parallelism boost By using parallelization in its Firefox browser, the company has reduced startup times 2016-04-25 18:01 3KB www.computerworld.com.au 10 Weekend tech reading: A year with the Apple Watch, have smartphones peaked? About a year ago, Apple announced and released its first Apple Watch. The long-rumored product was Apple’s first all-new product category since the iPad and its first under CEO Tim Cook. To say that expectations were high would be an… 2016-04-25 17:01 8KB www.techspot.com

11 Firebird Database Version 3.0 Released Programming book reviews, programming tutorials,programming news, C#, Ruby, Python,C, C++, PHP, Visual Basic, Computer book reviews, computer history, programming history, joomla, theory, spreadsheets and more. 2016-04-25 16:53 3KB www.i-.info 12 Data management: Five decades of prospecting for business value Data management and business intelligence have been at the heart of business value creation for decades. Read how Computer Weekly has tracked their promise and tribulations. 2016-04-25 14:41 2KB www.computerweekly.com 13 How do you solve a problem like blockchain? Fausto Jori and Matthew Coward of Reply talk through approaches to overcoming some of blockchain's shortcomings,Applications ,Bitcoin,blockchain,Etherium,Cyber security,Internet of Things 2016-04-25 14:40 865Bytes www.computing.co.uk 14 Microsoft cloud strength highlights third quarter results REDMOND, Wash. — April 21, 2016 — Microsoft Corp... 2016-04-25 16:58 8KB news.microsoft.com 15 A hands-on guide to Windows 10's Anniversary Update Start menu Microsoft has implemented lots of changes to Windows 10 in readiness for the big Anniversary Update due for release in July. If you’re a Windows Insider then you’ll likely have already played around with new features such as Windows Ink, Bash on , Extensions on Edge,... 2016-04-25 12:16 3KB feeds.betanews.com 16 Download ready-to-use Linux virtual machines from OSBoxes VirtualBox is a great tool for trying out some new Linux distro, but you’ll usually have to spend a while finding a download and setting up your VM and , first. VirtualBox is a great tool for trying out some new Linux distro, but you’ll... 2016-04-25 12:15 1KB feeds.betanews.com 17 Raspberry Pi camera gets an 8-megapixel Sony upgrade The Raspberry Pi itself has been refreshed several times since it first launched in 2012, but the 5-megapixel camera module has remained unchanged since it was introduced three years ago. The Raspberry Pi itself has been refreshed several times since it first launched in 2012, but... 2016-04-25 12:11 1KB feeds.betanews.com 18 store, and 'over a million' Android apps, are heading to Chromebooks Google is preparing to offer "over a million apps and games on Google Play to install and use on your Chromebook", and we're likely to find out more at its I/O developer conference next month. 2016-04-25 11:36 2KB feedproxy.google.com 19 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner A federal court judge has sentenced the SpyEye malware creators to almost 30 years behind bars for their crimes. The pair of cybercriminals were... 2016-04-25 05:30 21KB feeds2.feedburner.com 20 Globalscape delivers faster enterprise file transfers With increased cloud usage and more demand for remote working, the ability to move large files around efficiently has become more and more important. With increased cloud usage and more demand for remote working, the ability to move large files around efficiently has become more and more... 2016-04-25 11:17 3KB feeds.betanews.com 21 Restrict your PC to run only specific apps with Secure Lockdown Secure Lockdown ($14.95-$29.95) is a quick and easy way to turn your computer into a Secure Lockdown ($14.95-$29.95) is a quick and easy way to turn your computer into a “kiosk PC”, a system which... 2016-04-25 11:06 2KB feeds.betanews.com 22 Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx wants YouTube to pay artists more royalties YouTube is not paying artists enough in royalties for music videos, and Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx has had enough. He says that the Google-owned video site pays just a fraction of the likes of Apple and Spotify. YouTube is not paying artists enough in royalties... 2016-04-25 11:03 1KB feeds.betanews.com 23 Why DDoS is far from dead Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that are carried out by a botnet (a network of compromised computers) to overwhelm the processing power of the victim computer, effectively taking it out of commission, have been around for a while. Distributed Denial of Service... 2016-04-25 11:01 3KB feeds.betanews.com 24 Elon Musk: Tesla self-driving cars "almost twice as good" as human drivers If you use a Tesla's self-driving feature, you're 50% less likely to get into an accident according to the company's founder, Elon Musk. If true, this could pave the way for autonomous vehicles. 2016-04-25 10:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 25 A regsvr32 hack is all it takes to bypass Windows' AppLocker security A security researcher has discovered a way to get around Windows' AppLocker security system. Casey Smith found that it was possible to use Regsvr32 to call up a remotely hosted file that could be used to run any application -- malicious or otherwise --... 2016-04-25 10:01 1KB feeds.betanews.com 26 New Windows 10 updates causing massive problems for some users One of the big changes Microsoft introduced in Windows 10 was mandatory updates. It’s easy to see why the software giant believed this was a good idea -- reducing the number of unpatched systems is great news for everyone -- but it does mean when... 2016-04-25 09:25 1KB feeds.betanews.com 27 Microsoft announces cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions for every developer SAN FRANCISCO — March 31, 2016 — Thursday at Build 2016, Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group... 2016-04-25 09:43 6KB news.microsoft.com 28 Commercial notebook shipments return to growth Commercial notebook shipments have returned to growth in the first quarter of 2016, new figures by market analysts IDC say. New form factors, guided by the ever increasing desire for mobility, aided by the new Windows 10 operating system and the Skylake processors were key drivers... 2016-04-25 09:15 2KB feeds.betanews.com 29 Microsoft’s excellent Windows Phone keyboard is now available for iOS The new iOS version will let you tap or swipe to type out words and intelligently predict words for sentences, The Verge reports. 2016-04-25 09:13 1KB www.cnbc.com 30 Tech leader to establish roots at uCity Square: Microsoft Innovation Center comes to Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA — (April 4, 2016) — A new Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) will open to the public at uCity Square... 2016-04-25 08:35 7KB news.microsoft.com

31 UDOO planning to bring Arduino-compatible maker board to market In a move away from its original ARM-based boards, UDOO is launching an Intel-based maker board compatible with Arduino 101 shields and capable of running Linux, Windows or Android. 2016-04-25 08:28 3KB feedproxy.google.com 32 The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC: new Gwent faction and screenshots revealed New images and information regarding The Witcher 3’s second and final piece of DLC, Blood and Wine, have been revealed. As well as showing more screenshots of the Southern France-style area of Toussaint, CD Projekt Red has announced that a… 2016-04-25 07:30 2KB www.techspot.com 33 10 Big Data Books To Boost Your Career People with big data and data science skills are some of the most sought after professionals because demand is outstripping supply. Here are 10 books that can help you learn everything about the emerging field and the tools you will need to conquer it. 2016-04-25 07:06 2KB www.informationweek.com 34 Mexico's voter database containing the records of over 80 million citizens leaked online Earlier this month, it was reported that hackers had infiltrated the Philippines’ Commission on Elections database and leaked the personal information of up to 55 million people. Now, Mexico has become the latest country to have its entire voter database… 2016-04-25 06:15 3KB www.techspot.com 35 OpenStack by the numbers: Who’s using open source clouds and for what? IT vendors and telecos are the heaviest users of the open source cloud software, bi- annual survey data shows 2016-04-25 03:46 5KB www.infoworld.com 36 Feds seek public input on the future of IoT Coming soon: Potentially the largest knowledge dump ever about automation and the Internet of things 2016-04-25 03:39 4KB www.infoworld.com 37 US no longer requires Apple's help to crack iPhone in New York case The government said 'an individual' had given it the passcode to the phone used by the accused in a drug investigation 2016-04-25 03:36 3KB www.infoworld.com 38 Indonesian internet users turn to smartphones to go online Organisations with a cyber footprint in Indonesia must understand most internet users in the country access online content and services on smartphones 2016-04-25 00:00 3KB www.computerweekly.com 39 Big data analytics a useful security tool, says analyst The majority of companies using big data security analytics report a high business benefit, according to the Business Application Research Center 2016-04-25 00:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com 40 A Comparison Between Amazon Redshift and Azure Data Lake - Developer.com Read through a comparison study of Amazon Redshift and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. 2016-04-25 00:00 4KB www.developer.com 41 Working with Java Archive Files - Developer.com Delve into some of the key concepts of working with archive files by using Java programming. 2016-04-25 00:00 4KB www.developer.com

42 Contract-to-Hire IT Staffing Are you increasing your IT staff? Have you considered contract-to-hire IT staffing? It’s a win-win approach to increasing your workforce. 2016-04-25 00:00 3KB www.pcconnection.com 43 The future is the trust economy As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful.. 2016-04-24 20:16 6KB feedproxy.google.com 44 Tribeca’s Storyscapes projects used technology to explore blindness, solitary confinement and more As the Tribeca Film Festival winds down in New York City, we're highlighting one of the most tech-driven parts of the event — Storyscapes, which showcased.. 2016-04-24 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 45 You never forget the pain, so try to avoid it They say once you’ve had frostbite, you never forget the cold. A founder who has suffered a bad board, or board member, never forgets that, either. I took.. 2016-04-24 20:16 8KB feedproxy.google.com 46 INNOVATE2016: Tech’s revolutionary promise hinges on strong government relationships 1776, Washington DC’s leading incubator of technology start-ups, describes itself as “where revolutions begin”... But that revolution will only begin in.. 2016-04-24 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 47 How Facebook Connect changed the consumer internet When Facebook opened its API, the platform spawned a completely new way of distributing apps on the web. Developers now had unprecedented access and deep.. 2016-04-24 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 48 Sirin Labs blasts into the secure smartphone space with a $72 million seed round A new high-end smartphone manufacturer Sirin Labs has raised a $72 million seed round from Singulariteam founder Moshe Hogeg, Kazakh businessman Kenges.. 2016-04-24 20:16 6KB feedproxy.google.com Articles

48 articles, 2016-04-25 18:01

1 News Brought to you by The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortium enabling collaboration and innovation through an open source development model. Learn More © 2016 The Linux Foundation 2016-04-25 18:01 www.linux

2 Venture capital in Europe needs to diversify according to Balderton’s newest venture partner From its roots in the private equity world of the 1980s, venture capital in Europe has always operated somewhat differently from its counterparts in the U. S. In this episode of the 20 Minute VC, we catch up with James Wise, a longtime contributor who is making his bow with us as Balderton Capital’s youngest early stage venture partner, and who has plenty to say about how venture capital in Europe needs to evolve. Of the 500 funds operating across Europe today, Wise says many of them still think like the private equity firms from which they sprang. An approach, he says, that’s ill-suited to venture’s early stage risk-taking. The financial modeling at the heart of a financier’s skillset in private equity or banking can’t be applied to nascent companies that are little more than an idea. Rather, Wise argues that venture firms across Europe need to create a more diverse team if they’re going to be successful company builders and partners with the entrepreneurs they back. Wise also argues for diversity in a fund’s investment strategy as well as its personnel. While individual investors may specialize in a particular segment, a fund needs to be broadly diversified, says Wise. It’s an insight that flies in the face of the recent fragmentation of the venture business in the U. S. and Europe where firms are segmenting themselves by stage, geography, and industry. 2016-04-25 18:01 Harry Stebbings

3 Kamcord bags $10M led by Time Warner to tackle live- streaming like a media business Today is a big day for Y Combinator graduate Kamcord , after the San Francisco-based startup announced a $10 million Series C round led by Time Warner, and a move that expands its streaming focus from mobile games to any app. Kamcord last raised money in December 2014 when it scored $15 million from Chinese internet giant Tencent, billion-dollar Japanese gaming firm GungHo and others. Kamcord co-founder Adi Rathnam told TechCrunch that the entire round was still in the bank when Time Warner approached the startup, and the timing was right because it had just begun early talks about raising again. Alongside Time Warner, existing backers Tencent, TransLink Capital, XG Ventures, Plug & Play Ventures and Wargaming participated in the round, which values the four- year-old company at more than $100 million. “It’s a tough climate [right now,] but one thing people don’t talk about as much [is that] big VCs have big funds [and are] sitting on them and only investing in companies that don’t need the money,” Rathnam said. Kamcord is particularly keen to work with Time Warner group managing director Rachel Lam , he added, since she played a prominent part in scaling Maker Studios, the YouTube network that was sold to Disney for $500 million in 2014, and understands the needs of YouTube stars, which Kamcord targets with its mobile-focused streaming service. Added to that, he’s impressed by the value that Time Warner can add. Unlike other strategic investors which promise synergies but take time to deliver, he said that Kamcord is already having “early dialogue with operating divisions” at Time Warner over ways to work together. And that leads to the second part of the company’s news today — Kamcord is launching a new feature called ‘app casting,’ which allows live broadcasts from any app on a smartphone. Until now, Kamcord has focused on mobile games, and in particular hugely popular titles like Clash Of Clans. Today its one million users can start a broadcast from anywhere on their phone — be it Facebook, a news app, or web browser — mixed in with a live-stream from a standalone camera or, if on mobile, their front facing camera. It’s tempting to draw parallels with Facebook or Twitter-owned periscope, which are trying to popularize mobile live-streaming. But Ratham said Kamcord is taking a very different approach for many reasons. “These companies are all making the same mistake,” he said. “Thinking about live like it’s a social network. “Live-streaming is really hard to do. “What do I say? How do I try to be funny?” It needs to be treated like a media business. We’re going to enable creators to make the most compelling content via app casting.” Ratham believes that the challenge of live-streaming can be offset by offering apps as a prompt. In provides some context to a broadcast, and is a prop of sorts. For example, in the case of Time Warner, he envisages that Kamcord can “work with [its] publications or a sports league to help build a brand in front of our teen audience.” That might be a sports analyst reviewing a clip in real-time, or shows offering specific live-content on a regular basis on mobile. Some of the projects in the works include a live-stream of Y Combinator president Sam Altman reading tech news on his phone, and a popular dating blogger live-streaming her usage of Tinder. Kamcord is very much betting on bringing existing broadcasters to mobile rather than ’empowering’ anyone in the world to live-stream like others are. “There’s only a small-subset of people that can be entertaining enough to command an audience for multiple minutes or hours, not everyone will create content but we believe [consumption] can be mass-market,” Rathnam said. Meerkat, which is in the process of pivoting away from live-streaming , landed huge names like U2 and Madonna on its service but still failed, and the Kamcord co-founder believes that therein lies the issue. “Celebrities are great and very interesting, they can give you that one-day spike. But, in the case of Madonna, she might live-stream once in a while, but she won’t come back regularly. What happens to the audience she drove [to a live-streaming app] the next day?” “Live-streamers [on YouTube or Twitch] can stream many times a week, they get how hard it is. You can’t stare at a camera and be interesting, but we think app casting can make you interesting,” he explained. In February, Kamcord introduced monetization for live-streamers via in-app purchases that viewers can buy. Rathnam said that’s “fast approaching” a $2 million annual recurring revenue, with purchases growing at 40 percent each month. It isn’t just for those with a huge audience either. Two teenage twin boys who live-stream games from their bedroom in Australia are on track to make “well over six figures” from fans buying virtual goods on Kamcord. Yet their account — XtremeGamez — has just 10,000 followers on the service. Ultimately, this move will live or die based on the content that Kamcord can lure to its platform. So far, with Twitch staying away from mobile with its focus on hardcore games and YouTube still known for being a video repository, Kamcord does offer something different, something built specifically for mobile. The pitch to streamers is simple: Kamcord doesn’t want to replace YouTube or Twitch, it instead wants to offer a better way to interact with audiences in real-time and on mobile — and there’s money that can be made there, too. “Have you ever seen a YouTube comment section?” Rathnam said, in what could probably be a one-line pitch to any broadcaster. 2016-04-25 18:01 Jon Russell

4 After struggling with rising costs, Sequoia-backed PepperTap pivots from grocery deliveries to e-commerce logistics Times are getting tougher for food delivery startups in India. Over the weekend, PepperTap —which has raised more than $50 million from backers including Sequoia Capital and SAIF Partners—announced that it will shut its grocery delivery business and switch to e-commerce logistics. Snapdeal, one of India’s largest online marketplaces, is also an investor and strategic investor in PepperTap. The Economic Times reported that 150 workers will be laid off. TechCrunch has contacted PepperTap for more information. In a detailed post-mortem on PepperTap’s blog , founder and CEO Navneet Singh wrote that PepperTap will focus on building an e-commerce logistics for smaller Indian cities instead. That’s an industry Singh is already familiar with—before launching PepperTap, he started Nuvo Ex , which manages supply chains for some of the country’s largest online retailers. Singh claims that by October 2015—about a year after its launch—PepperTap was one of the top three grocery delivery services in India with 20,000 orders fulfilled daily, and that it was “the only business in town to be operating on a 100 percent inventory-less model.” But the company faced a cornucopia of competitors that ranged from other well-funded startups like Grofers to relative veterans like Bigbasket , which has operated since 2011 but raised $150 million last month to expand and speed up deliveries. PepperTap was forced to walk away from food deliveries after facing three major problems. The first one was the difficulty of integrating PepperTap’s app with existing inventory management systems at their retail partners. Some small stores needed to install software for the first time, while data from larger partners had to be updated at least three times a day. Secondly, the company had to offer deep discounts to build customer loyalty. “This was not hugely problematic—we had money in the bank and investors were on board with this plan,” Singh wrote in his post, but PepperTap also had to ensure that its logistics network was always ready to fulfill its promise of two-hour deliveries, even when orders were slow. “Compounded with the necessity for discounts, this meant that the cash we were burning on every single order was increasing rather quickly with no immediate end in sight,” Singh explained. PepperTap first cut operations in a few cities before finally deciding to abandon grocery deliveries in favor of e-commerce logistics. Heavy spending for very little return (at least in the near term) is not just a problem for PepperTap. Other food delivery startups in India coping with similar issues include Foodpanda, TinyOwl, Grofers, and Zomato. In the United States, companies with similar business models— even those with plush funding like Instacart —are feeling the pressure of tight margins. PepperTap will now switch gears to solve a major headache for Indian e-commerce companies —ensuring timely shipments to smaller cities that aren’t covered by major logistics providers. Singh claimed that an order sometimes take up to 30 days to deliver to those places, which the technology PepperTap developed while handling grocery orders can potentially shorten. “We began to test some of these ideas at Nuvo earlier this year and the results were exciting enough for us to pitch to our existing investors as an alternative way to use the capital we have already raised,” he wrote. To be sure, there are already many startups focused on last-mile deliveries, like Delhivery, Ecom Express, and Blue Dart, and all of them face financial and technical challenges as they scale up to cover the entire country. The growth rate of India’s e-commerce market , however, and the willingness of its largest players (including Snapdeal) to invest heavily on their logistic networks mean that it is likely a much more sustainable industry than on-demand consumer food delivery. 2016-04-25 18:01 Catherine Shu

5 Retail giant Central Group is buying Zalora’s businesses in Thailand and Vietnam Zalora , the fashion-focused e-commerce site backed by Rocket Internet, is selling its businesses in Thailand and Vietnam to retailer Central Group , according to multiple sources close to the deal. We reported the planned sale earlier this month and have since confirmed that Bangkok- headquartered Central Group is the buyer. The deal is said to be agreed in principle and currently subject to paperwork and red tape. A Zalora spokesperson declined to comment. Central Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Central Group may not be a name well known outside of Southeast Asia, but it is one of the region’s largest retail players with a huge footprint in Thailand and forays into Vietnam , Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries. The group’s assets, which include multiple shopping malls and national department store chains, are worth close to $10 billion and it employs some 70,000 people across its operations. The group has been tipped to enter the online commerce space for some time, and our sources say that it has struck a deal to buy the country businesses from Zalora for around $10 million each. Online is estimated to account for around three percent of all commerce in Southeast Asia and, while that figure has grown in recent years and stands to increase as the internet becomes more widely accessible throughout the region, it remains a nascent segment that few offline retailers have stepped into. The low level of online commerce has been a challenge for Rocket Internet’s e-commerce startups, which started out with overly-ambitious targets, missed their projections for profitability, and have required significant capital to continue. Lazada received a $500 million investment from Alibaba this month after running out of cash , while Zalora remains unprofitable. Rocket Internet’s latest financial results show Zalora’s revenue rose 78 percent to €208 million ($234 million) in 2015, but its net loss increased 36 percent to €93.5 million ($105 million.) One comparison to Central Group’s move comes by way of Indonesia’s Lippo Group, a conglomerate with $15 billion in assets across a range of sectors that include retail. The group created MatahariMall , an online version of its department store, with its first move into online commerce last year. There are also parallels in China, where Alibaba has invested in physical retailers InTime and Sunning to explore the potential of combining offline and online commerce. While Lippo Group pledged to invest hundreds of millions in its e-commerce venture, it is unclear what sum Central Group has set aside. What’s more certain is that the Thailand-based group is getting a running start with the acquisition of assets from four-year-old Zalora. Zalora doesn’t publish business figures per country, but it claims 10 million downloads of its mobile apps and 1.4 million transactions per year across 10 countries in Asia Pacific. Sources close to Zalora suggest that the company is selling the businesses in an effort to streamline its costs and move towards becoming profitable. Last week we reported that two of the companies managing directors have left the firm over apparent fallings out with Global Fashion Group , the $3.5 billion-valued entity that manages Rocket Internet’s five emerging market fashion brands. Tension apparently circles around GFG’s prioritization of investment in more developed markets, like the Middle East, over parts of Southeast Asia which it deems to be less capable of returning value. Zalora raised over $200 million from investors prior to becoming a GFG business unit in November 2014. Now its money comes from GFG, which raises capital centrally for all of Rocket Internet’s fashion sites. 2016-04-25 18:01 Jon Russell

6 Bitcasa pulls out of consumer cloud storage Bitcasa is pulling out of consumer cloud storage to focus on its platform business, giving users a month’s notice to move their data elsewhere — and providing the perennial reminder that if you don’t own the infrastructure your data is at the mercy of the entity that does. Users of the discontinued Bitcasa Drive cloud storage product have until May 20 to download their data. After 11:59pm PST on May 20, 2016, the company notes that all accounts and storage data will be permanently deleted. It confirmed the pivot out of consumer cloud storage in a very short blog post last last week, writing: Back in fall 2014 Bitcasa nixed its unlimited consumer cloud storage offering, and appeared to be shifting focus towards the b2b space even then. Although it continued in the consumer space with more pricey storage plans. It’s now evidently rethought the value of offering even higher priced consumer cloud storage — doubtless as a consequence of fierce competition in the space with tech giants including Google, Dropbox, Microsoft and Amazon all duking it out to onboard as many consumers as possible. Last year, for example, Google switched on a free and unlimited photo storage offering for consumers, applying more pricing pressure to an already fiercely competitive space. Meanwhile Bitcasa had already discontinued the unlimited storage feature it began with, as a startup back in 2011. Bitcasa’s pitch now is to ‘make public cloud storage simple’, by offering a series of Cloud Storage Platform APIs and branded applications enabling developers to add file storage, access, and sharing to their applications. It says its platform business offers licensee companies infrastructure, applications, and administrative controls to support them to offer their own secure, branded cloud storage solutions. In one example of its new business focus, in fall last year it inked a licensing agreement with flash storage device maker SanDisk for the development of SanDisk-branded cloud storage solutions using its cloud storage platform — with Bitcasa CEO Brian Taptich taking the moment to talk up the potential for cloud storage to “ultimately become disaggregated, creating a huge opportunity for Bitcasa and our partners”. So tl;dr, battling some of tech’s biggest brands in the consumer cloud space is a very tough ask. Bitcasa’s bet now is to help smaller brands battle those bigger entities instead. Investors in Bitcasa include Horizons Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Samsung Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. 2016-04-25 18:01 Natasha Lomas

7 Augmedix nabs $17M to ‘rehumanize’ doctor/patient relations using Google Glass Google Glass has turned away from marketing itself to consumers , but its enterprise business continues to pick up pace, and today one of the more promising companies developing medical services using Google’s connected eyewear is announcing a significant investment in its technology, which aims to “rehumanise the interaction” between doctors and patients by pulling physicians’ faces away from their computer screens, according to its CEO. A ugmedix , a startup out of San Francisco that has developed a platform for doctors to collect, enter and recall patient data in real-time, has raised $17 million in a strategic round. The investment is significant because of who is making it: it comes from five of the biggest healthcare providers in the U. S. — Sutter Health, Dignity Health, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), TriHealth Inc., and a fifth that is remaining unnamed for now. Together, these groups — which operate hospitals and other facilities, and in other aspects compete against each other for business in the healthcare industry — cover about 100,000 doctors. The idea will be for Augmedix to supply these physicians and other staff with their connected eyewear. This investment, coming after a Series A but before a full Series B (which CEO Ian Shakil said in an interview is not being raised right now), brings the total raised by Augmedix to $40 million. After its last round of $16 million , Augmedix was valued at around $100 million , and while Shakil is not disclosing the valuation of the company, he told me that this was a “healthy up- round.” From what I understand, the valuation is between $120 million and $160 million. One of the big criticisms of Google Glass (among other wearables) has been that devices that you put on your face can alienate you from people you are interacting with — both because they put people off, and because they distract you, the wearer, from focusing on the person in front of you. Ironically, it seems that the exact opposite of this is the reason behind Augmedix’s growth to date. Skakil noted that o ne of the big problems today in U. S. medical systems is the amount of data that doctors and others on the medical team are required to reference and input for each patient. “W hen you are with doctors without Glass, they are charting and clicking on computers for a lot of the time, and not focusing on their patients,” he said. “When you put on Google Glass to collect and reference that information, it helps you engage with the patient better.” Shakil added that the Augmedix system “takes care of documentation in the background faster than you would. It humanises the process.” This is also what attracted the strategic investors. “At Dignity Health, we are committed to developing partnerships that harness the great potential of technology and apply it in ways that help patients and providers make better day-to-day decisions about care,” said Dr. Davin Lundquist, chief medical information officer, Dignity Health, in a statement. “The use of Google Glass and Augmedix allows our doctors to spend more time with patients by eliminating the distraction of entering information into a patient’s electronic medical record on the computer. This enables our healthcare providers to give more focused attention to our patients and results in a better patient experience.” “As we strive to create the high-quality, high-value healthcare experience our patients expect from Sutter Health, new technology tools and services allow us to innovate in ways that deliver a more efficient, affordable and personalized level of care,” said Dr. Albert Chan, Sutter Health’s vice president, chief of digital patient experience, also in a statement. “Wearable technology holds tremendous promise, especially for enhancing the office visit experience. We are committed to partnering with our patients, and value how our growing network of digital health innovators helps strengthen those patient-doctor relationships in new ways.” And interestingly, the humanizing doesn’t end at the patient end of the system. The software that Augmedix currently uses relies on a large team of humans to help enter info and update records in the back end. “It’s almost more powered by humans than AI and speech recognition today,” Shakil said. However, he added that part of the funding is going to build out more of the tech using some of the later innovations in the field: “We will be deploying more natural language processing in the future. It creates more efficiencies for us to do so.” That may be using tech from Google (which is ramping up in this space ), but just as likely Augmedix will consider solutions from Nuance and others, he said. Google Glass always felt and continues to feel somewhat like a niche play, so just how big is Augmedix today? Today there are “hundreds” of doctors already using Augmedix’s software on Glass, concentrated in Southern and Central California, Shakil said. That may not sound like a lot, but Shakil points out that each doctor pays “low-single digit thousands of dollars” each month, which works out to a “very reasonable” amount of annual revenue. He said the company is on track to have thousands of doctors using this by next year, with the bigger target for 10,000 doctors within five years. Considering that these five new investors cover 100,000 doctors, and the amount of outlay that’s already dedicated to IT, a ten percent penetration rate doesn’t sound too outlandish. And while Glass is at the center of what Augmedix does today, it sounds like this isn’t somethig that the company will necessarily be wedded for the long term. Indeed, while Google was something of an early mover with Glass (cleverly lowering the bar for building solutions with its Enterprise edition), the world has moved on when it comes to connected headsets that feed its users information. Hardware now includes other smart eyewear to full-on augmented reality and virtual reality gear from the likes of Facebook’s Oculus, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung and more. Shakil says that for now its solution and business is focused entirely on Glass (note: among other VCs , Google itself has not invested in Augmedix). But it is also testing out other alternatives in what Shakil refers to as “light AR.” Down the line, Augmedix wants to add more services on to its platform to better complete the loop. This will include patient-oriented features, “ so that the patient can go home and relive the visits and listen again to what the doctor said” or be taken through demonstrations for self-care. Augmedix also wants to add more guidance for doctors, to help them remember different points for, say, smoking cessation regiments or other clinical work. Way further down, you could imagine how this might extend into other aspects of a doctor’s work, such as during procedures. 2016-04-25 18:01 Ingrid Lunden

8 Baidu head of comms and China tech figure Kaiser Kuo is leaving the firm to return to the U. S. China’s tech scene is losing one of its most recognizable and influential faces after Baidu head of comms and all-round nice guy Kaiser Kuo announced he is leaving the company to return to the U. S.. New York native Kuo has spent more than 20 years in China and has presided over internal communications at Baidu, one of the country’s largest internet companies and its top search firm, for the past six. Formerly a journalist with Red Herring and China Now, Kuo is a high-profile figure in China’s tech scene thanks to a combination of factors that include his sharp insight, Western background, longevity in China, ability to speak Mandarin and English, and down-right likability. He was also a founding member of Tang Dynast y, one of the first heavy metal bands in China. Baidu and rock aside, he’s known for the Sinica Podcast , which he hosts alongside Jeremy Goldkorn. The duo plan to go full-time on the podcast from next month after it was acquired by an unnamed startup in New York. (Kuo has promised more details on this soon.) Kuo said he will continue to maintain ties with China, and make regular trips to the country while tapping into the China-watching community in the U. S. for the podcast. All the best Kaiser, you’re one of the best in the business and we look forward to seeing the podcast go full-throttle. 2016-04-25 18:01 Jon Russell

9 9 Mozilla gives WebAssembly a parallelism boost Mozilla is improving compilation in both the WebAssembly portable bytecode format and asm.js JavaScript subset by leveraging parallelization in its Firefox browser. Using parallelism, an engineer at Mozilla worked on reducing startup times in asm.js programs in the browser. "As our JavaScript engine, SpiderMonkey , uses the same compilation pipeline for both asm.js and WebAssembly, this also benefitted WebAssembly compilation," said the engineer, Benjamin Bouvier. Parallelization, he said, consists of splitting a sequential program into smaller independent tasks, then running them on different CPUs. "If your program is using N cores, it can be up to N times faster. " Mozilla's goal is to make more work run in parallel by taking out the SpiderMonkey middle-level intermediate representation (MIR) from the main thread, as well as removing and code generation. "Instead of emitting a MIR graph as we parse the function's body, we emit a small, compact, pre-order representation of the function's body," Bouvier said. "In short, a new IR. As work was starting on WebAssembly (wasm) at this time, and since asm.js semantics and wasm semantics mostly match, the IR could just be the wasm encoding, consisting of the wasm opcodes plus a few specific asm.js ones. Then, wasm is translated to MIR in another thread. " Instead of parsing and generating MIR in a single pass, wasm IR would be parsed and generated in one pass, while the MIR would be generated out of the wasm IR in another pass. While Mozilla found compilation much faster in its new scheme, it still can be a pain, especially in mobile applications, according to Bouvier. "This is mostly due to the fact that we're running a whole multi-million-line codebase through the back end of a compiler to generate optimized code," he said. "Following this work, the next bottleneck during the compilation process is parsing, which matters for asm.js in particular, which source is plain text. Decoding WebAssembly is an order of magnitude faster though, and it can be made even faster. " More load-time optimizations are coming, Bouvier said. WebAssembly is a highly touted attempt to improve the Web's performance through a portable code format running in browsers at native speeds. It has been supported by browser vendors Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. More about Apple Apple. Google IR Microsoft Mozilla 2016-04-25 18:01 www.computerworld

10 Weekend tech reading: A year with the Apple Watch, have smartphones peaked? A year with the Apple Watch: What works, what doesn’t, and what lies ahead? About a year ago, Apple announced and released its first Apple Watch. The long-rumored product was Apple’s first all-new product category since the iPad and its first under CEO Tim Cook. To say that expectations were high would be an understatement. To date, we don’t really know much about how the Apple Watch has sold -- Apple folds it into the "Other products" category... Ars Technica How I hacked Facebook, and found someone's backdoor script As a pentester , I love server- side vulnerabilities more than client-side ones. Why? Because it’s way much cooler to take over the server directly and gain system SHELL privileges. Of course, both vulnerabilities from the server-side and the client-side are indispensable in a perfect penetration test. Sometimes, in order to take over the server more elegantly, it also need some client-side vulnerabilities to do the trick. But speaking of finding vulnerabilities, I prefer to find server-side vulnerabilities first. Devcore Got a hot seller on Amazon? Prepare for e-tailer to make one too Rain Design has been selling an aluminum laptop stand on Amazon.com Inc. for more than a decade. A best-seller in its category, the $43 product has a 5-star rating and 2,460 customer reviews. In July, a similar stand appeared at about half the price. The brand: AmazonBasics. Since then, sales of the Rain Design original have slipped. "We don't feel good about it," says Harvey Tai, the company’s general manager. "But there's nothing we can do because they didn’t violate the patent. " Bloomberg Siemens team unveils 3D printing spider-bots Researchers in the US have demonstrated prototype spider-like robots equipped with 3D printing technology that are able to work together to construct complex structures and surfaces. Developed by a team at Siemens Corporate Technology’s Princeton campus the devices -- dubbed SiSpis -- are the latest step in the development of autonomous mobile manufacturing techniques that Siemens’ believes could ultimately play a major role in the manufacture of everything from aircraft to ships. The Engineer The web is Doom In July 2015 I suggested that the average web page weight would equal that of the Doom install image in about 7 months time. Recall that Doom is a multi-level first person shooter that ships with an advanced 3D rendering engine and multiple levels, each comprised of maps, sprites and sound effects. By comparison, 2016’s web struggles to deliver a page of web content in the same size. If that doesn’t give you pause you’re missing something. So where does this leave us? MobiForge EFF sues DOJ over its refusal to release FISA court documents pertaining to compelled technical assistance Given the heightened interest in the government's efforts to compel companies like Apple to break into their own products for them, the EFF figured it would be a good time to ask the government whether it had used FISA court orders to achieve these ends. Naturally, the government would rather not discuss its efforts to force Apple, et al. to cough up user data and communications. Tech Dirt Tech giants can decay and die too Back in 2000, at the height of the dotcom bubble, it would have made a better than average April Fool's joke. Running a story that the Daily Mail was thinking about taking over the web giant Yahoo would have raised some wry smiles, in much the same way as the Brighton Argus buying Apple might do today. Back then, the internet colossus could have bought the British publisher and dismissed the cost as loose change, hardly worth putting on the balance sheet. Stuff.co.nz Solar Impulse 2 plane takes off from Hawaii to California -- with no fuel An experimental plane trying to fly around the world without a single drop of fuel took off from Hawaii on Thursday, resuming a journey that had stalled on the island of Oahu for almost 10 months. The Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, lifted off just before sunrise to cheers and applause. It will head for the San Francisco Bay area, some 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) away. CNN Has the 'impossible' EM drive being tested by NASA finally been explained? The EM drive, the so-called “impossible” space drive that uses no propellant, has roiled the aerospace world for the past several years, ever since it was proposed by British aerospace engineer Robert Shawyer. In essence, the claim advanced by Shawyer and others is that if you bounced microwaves in a truncated cone, thrust would be produced out the open end. The Examiner How Amazon Kindle Unlimited scammers wring big money from phony books What if scam artists could make thousands of dollars publishing free, fake books that people are tricked into opening but never read? It looks like that’s happening. Amazon created Kindle Unlimited, a Netflix for books, that’s delivering indie authors revenue and readers. But it turns out that the way it works may have created an opportunity for scammers to steal earnings from real writers producing genuine works. The Observer How the Internet is changing the English language People from the midwestern United States say “pop,” while people from the coasts say “soda.” Southerners might say “y’all” instead of “you guys.” And people from the Internet say a lot, actually. Abbreviations like “v important” or “p cool” signify something that “very important” and “pretty cool” do not. The use of a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ conveys something a bit more subtle than “I don’t care,” or even “I don't know. " The Daily Dot How to kill patent trolls once and for all If you ask entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley what's holding back innovation, patent trolls will surely be high on all of their lists. Why are patent trolls so deleterious? Well, these companies exist for no other reason than to gobble up patents and then file frivolous lawsuits over semantic patent violations against any target they can find, with the hope of cashing in with a big settlement. The Week Studio 360 Janicza Bravo makes short films about loneliness. In one, Michael Cera plays an abrasive paraplegic who can’t get lucky. In another, Gaby Hoffmann plays a phone stalker for whom the description “comes on too strong” is not strong enough. Bravo’s shorts employ the visual grammar of art-house cinema: over-the-shoulder shots representing a character’s point of view, handheld tracking shots depicting urgent movement, lingering closeups to heighten intimacy or unease, carefully composed establishing shots with an actor in the center of the frame. The New Yorker We've reached peak smartphone Two things became apparent after the end of the Spring 2016 Smartphone Glut. One: Android is still a second-class citizen when it comes to gaming, and two: smartphones are in a ridiculously boring place. Gizmodo Bendable 'wallpaper' cameras are right around the corner Researchers have taken a giant leap toward the production of flexible cameras -- sheets of lenses that can twist and deform, allowing you to wrap them around just about anything you might choose, providing you with fields of view unimaginable with current technology. Like something from science fiction, the flexible lens array, designed by scientists at Columbia University in New York, has the ability to adapt its optical properties when bent. The Christian Science Monitor What convolutional neural networks look at when they see nudity Automating the discovery of nude pictures has been a central problem in computer vision for over two decades now and, because of its rich history and straightforward goal, serves as a great example of how the field has evolved. In this blog post, I'll use the problem of nudity detection to illustrate how training modern convolutional neural networks ( convnets ) differs from research done in the past. Clarifai Spy chief pressed for number of Americans ensnared in data espionage U. S. lawmakers are pressing the nation's top intelligence official to estimate the number of Americans ensnared in email surveillance and other such spying on foreign targets, saying the information was needed to gauge possible reforms to the controversial programs. Reuters 2016-04-25 17:01 Matthew DeCarlo

11 Firebird Database Version 3.0 Released The latest version of the open-source Firebird SQL relational database has been released with a unified server architecture, improved support for SMP and multiple-core hardware platforms. Firebird began life as a fork of the open-source version of Borland Interbase back in 2000. Since then the code has essentially been rewritten, and Firebird is now available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. This latest version has undergone the largest reworking of the architecture since that initial release back in 2000. The new multi-threaded engine processes and shared page caching have been designed to make better use of multi-core hardware and large address spaces, so providing what the developers describe as "dramatic performance increases". The new version also has improved threading of engine processes, and options for sharing page caches across thread and connection boundaries. Firebird 3.0 has also been improved in terms of its SQL support, with added window and statistical functions. Support has also been added for the Boolean data type and the associated logical predications. The security features have been improved with the addition of wire and database encryption, along with and multiple security databases. The performance of the garbage collection and incremental backup has also been improved. Another change to the new version is the addition of a new public API that replaces the legacy one in new applications, especially object-oriented ones. The main difference between the new API and the legacy one is that user defined routines (UDR) can query and modify data in the same connection or transaction context as the user query that called that UDR. It is now possible to write external triggers and procedures, rather than being limited to external functions (UDFs). According to developer Alex Peshkov, the old API had too many limitations: "High on the list was the limitation of the 16-bit integer pervading the legacy API, encompassing message size, SQL operator length, BLOB data portions, to name a few examples. While 16-bit was probably adequate when that old API came to life, in today's environments it is costly to work around. " The new version is available now in 32 and 64 bit versions for both Windows and Linux. OS X and other platforms will be available "soon". To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2016-04-25 16:53 Written by

12 Data management: Five decades of prospecting for business value Data management has been the midwife of business value for IT for much of the past half century. Twenty years ago, in the 7 November 1996 issue of Computer Weekly that commemorated 30 years of our publication, Nicholas Enticknap wrote: “The 1990s have seen an increasing emphasis on making IT provide competitive business advantage, and this has led to the rise of data mining and data warehousing applications. “It has also led to an appreciation of the advantages of making your data and even applications available to others; customers, suppliers and intermediaries such as brokers.” Twenty years on and that is still, in the overall context of IT, the specific vocation of data management and business intelligence, and data analytics. Enticknap goes on to say this is what is “driving the second major revolution of the 1990s: The rise of internet-based computing.” In the 3 July 1986 issue of Computer Weekly, a decade earlier, the same author was harping on a similar theme, in a series of articles on what was then called the “fifth revolution” in computing, touching on artificial intelligence (AI): “We expect to see new applications that are designed to translate data into information, such as decision support and expert systems.” Generations one to four, whatever the detail of the distinctions between them, all “conform[ed] to the same basic computer architecture as first proposed by [John] von Neumann and his colleagues in 1944”, wrote Enticknap, when a computer was “a super-powerful calculator when electronics was still in its infancy”. A big aspect of the new paradigm, which included also user friendly computers, was solving “the problem of capitalising fully on the large investment in data”. 2016-04-25 14:41 Brian McKenna

13 How do you solve a problem like blockchain? In a recent article Computing pointed out that while blockchain is a very interesting innovation it is not the solution to all of the problems being placed at its feet. Even for the purpose for which it... 2016-04-25 14:40 John Leonard

14 Microsoft cloud strength highlights third quarter results REDMOND, Wash. — April 21, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended March 31, 2016: “Organizations using digital technology to transform and drive new growth increasingly choose Microsoft as a partner,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “As these organizations turn to us, we’re seeing momentum across Microsoft’s cloud services and with Windows 10.” The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) to non-GAAP financial results. Microsoft has provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. During the quarter, Microsoft returned $6.4 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends. This quarter’s income tax expense included a catch-up adjustment to account for an expected increase in the full year effective tax rate primarily due to the changing mix of revenue across geographies, as well as between cloud services and software licensing. As such, the GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates were 25% and 24%, respectively. “Our continued operational and financial discipline drove solid results this quarter,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Microsoft. “We remain focused on investing in our strategic priorities to drive long-term growth.” Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes grew 1% (up 6% in constant currency) to $6.5 billion, with the following business highlights: Revenue in Intelligent Cloud grew 3% (up 8% in constant currency) to $6.1 billion, with the following business highlights: Revenue in More Personal Computing grew 1% (up 3% in constant currency) to $9.5 billion, with the following business highlights: “Digital transformation is the number one priority on our customers’ agenda. Companies from large established businesses to emerging start-ups are turning to our cloud solutions to help them move faster and generate new revenue,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. Business Outlook Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast. Webcast Details Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, John Seethoff, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary, and Chris Suh, general manager of Investor Relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time (5:30 p.m. Eastern time) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on April 21, 2017. Adjusted Financial Results and non-GAAP Measures During the third quarter of fiscal year 2016, GAAP revenue, operating income, net income, and earnings per share include the net impact from revenue deferrals. For the third quarter of fiscal year 2015, GAAP operating income, net income, and earnings per share include charges related to integration and restructuring expenses. These items are defined below. In addition to these financial results reported in accordance with GAAP, Microsoft has provided certain non- GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. Presenting these non-GAAP measures gives additional insight into operational performance and helps clarify trends affecting the company’s business. For comparability of reporting, management considers this information in conjunction with GAAP amounts in evaluating business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Non-GAAP Definitions Net Impact from Revenue Deferrals. Microsoft recorded a net $1.5 billion revenue deferral during the three months ended March 31, 2016, primarily related to Windows 10. Integration and Restructuring Charges. Integration and restructuring expenses were $190 million during the three months ended March 31, 2015. Integration and restructuring expenses include employee severance expenses and costs associated with the consolidation of facilities and manufacturing operations related to restructuring activities, and systems consolidation and other business integration expenses associated with the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices and Services business. Constant Currency Microsoft presents constant currency information to provide a non-GAAP framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. To present this information, current and comparative prior period non-GAAP results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the average exchange rates from the comparative period rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the respective periods. The non-GAAP financial measures presented below should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. Financial Performance Constant Currency Reconciliation Segment Revenue Constant Currency Reconciliation About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as: For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor . All information in this release is as of April 21, 2016. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations. For more information, press only: Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7070, [email protected] For more information, financial analysts and investors only: Chris Suh, general manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400 Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information, as well as today’s 2:30 p.m. Pacific time conference call with investors and analysts, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor . IMPORTANT NOTICE TO USERS (summary only, click here for full text of notice); All information is unaudited unless otherwise noted or accompanied by an audit opinion and is subject to the more comprehensive information contained in our SEC reports and filings. We do not endorse third-party information. All information speaks as of the last fiscal quarter or year for which we have filed a Form 10-K or 10-Q, or for historical information the date or period expressly indicated in or with such information. We undertake no duty to update the information. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties described in our Forms 10-Q and 10-K. 2016-04-25 16:58 By Microsoft

15 A hands-on guide to Windows 10's Anniversary Update Start menu Microsoft has implemented lots of changes to Windows 10 in readiness for the big Anniversary Update due for release in July. If you’re a Windows Insider then you’ll likely have already played around with new features such as Windows Ink, Bash on Ubuntu , Extensions on Edge , and so on. The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview release, Build 14328, introduces some major -- and very welcome -- tweaks to the Windows 10 Start menu. Here’s a detailed guide to the changes. SEE ALSO: Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 introduces an improved Start menu, and loads of exciting new features The first thing you’ll notice when you click the Start button is installed apps have been moved front and center. Not more having to click on All Apps to find a particular item (personally I always prefer to search for an app, rather than use the menu, but this might change now). The list of apps is presented alphabetically, and you can scroll down to find the one you want. Alternatively, if you have a lot of apps installed, you can just click on any of the menu headings (such as one of the letters or Recently added) and jump straight to a particular section using the A-Z view. Right-clicking an app you use regularly will let you pin it to the tiled section on the right. Above the apps list, at the very top, is a Most used section, which to begin with includes Get Started, Sway, Maps, People, Calculator, and Alarms & Clock. Underneath that is Recently added. This shows the last app you installed, but can now display up to three new items. The little sidebar to the left of the menu gives you quick access to your account (you can change account settings, Lock and sign out from there), File Explorer (which has been removed from the Taskbar for space reasons) and Settings. The Shutdown button has also been moved to here, and clicking it will let you choose the action you require. This little bar stays visible at all times and you can customize it through Settings > Personalization > Start. Scroll down to the bottom and click Choose which folders appear on Start. You can add Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos, HomeGroup, Network, and Personal folder. The Settings menu also lets you choose to toggle various options on or off, including Tiles on the right of the Start menu can be reordered, resized and removed as before, and of course you can resize/reshape the menu itself by clicking and dragging. If you prefer a long list of apps, extend the menu downwards. Personally I think these changes really help to improve the Start menu, but you may disagree. Let me know what you think in the comments below. 2016-04-25 12:16 By Wayne

16 Download ready-to-use Linux virtual machines from OSBoxes VirtualBox is a great tool for trying out some new Linux distro, but you’ll usually have to spend a while finding a download and setting up your VM and operating system, first. OSBoxes.org makes life easier by providing 40+ prebuilt VirtualBox (VDI) and VMware images for Android x86, CentOS, , Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, , Remix OS, Ubuntu and many more. Just browsing the website might give you some ideas. If you’re intrigued by the name "Chromixium", for instance, clicking a link to the official site will explain that it’s "the best of Chromium with the power of Ubuntu" (aka Cub Linux). If that sounds interesting, there are links to download prebuilt 32 and 64-bit images for VirtualBox and VMware. There’s still a little work to do. In VirtualBox, click File > New, enter a name/ type/ version for your download ("Linux" and "Other Linux 32/ 64 bit" usually work for the final two.) Allocate some RAM to the VM, select "Use an existing virtual hard drive file", choose the VDI you’ve just downloaded and click "Create". That’s essentially it. The OS is already set up with a default user account (osboxes) and password (osboxes.org), so there’s nothing technical or time-consuming to get in your way. Just log in and explore. VirtualBox is an open source application for Windows, Mac and Linux. 2016-04-25 12:15 By Mike

17 Raspberry Pi camera gets an 8-megapixel Sony upgrade The Raspberry Pi itself has been refreshed several times since it first launched in 2012, but the 5-megapixel camera module has remained unchanged since it was introduced three years ago. That changes today however, as everyone’s favorite Pi add-on finally gets a long overdue update. SEE ALSO: Raspberry Pi Zero gains a mysterious new feature, and improved availability The OmniVision OV5647 sensor used in the original camera module (and its infrared-sensitive sibling) reached its end of life at the end of 2014, and so a new sensor was sought out, with Sony coming to the rescue. The new camera boards sport a Sony IMX219 8- megapixel image sensor, and again there are visible-light and infrared versions available. It’s 25mm x 23mm x 9mm in size and a weighs of just over 3g. The Raspberry Pi Camera Module v2 and NoIR Camera Module v2 are on sale from today from the usual Pi suppliers, including RS Components , element14 and The Pi Hut. Despite the upgrade, the camera still costs just $25. 2016-04-25 12:11 By Wayne

18 Google Play store, and 'over a million' Android apps, are heading to Chromebooks Google is preparing to bring the full range of Android apps available on its Play store to Chrome OS, greatly expanding the range of software available on those devices. Android apps running on Chrome OS is nothing new; the App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) added that functionality back in 2014 , but only a limited number of apps have been supported so far. But over on the Chrome OS subreddit, various users have reported that when the settings first load on their devices, they see an option to "Enable Android apps to run on your Chromebook". Ars Technica - which was able to verify the claims on its own device - noted that the option quickly disappears, so it's not possible to proceed any further with enabling that feature. Reddit user ' TheWiseYoda ' also spotted this among related strings in the Chrome OS (from line 6522): And another Reddit user, ' InauspiciousPagan ', also managed to bring up a branded dialog box introducing the new feature: The feature will evidently be opt-in, allowing Chrome OS administrators - for example, those who manage the numerous Chromebook deployments in schools and universities - to block the ability for users to install Android apps on their devices. But at this stage, not much more is known about Google's plans to offer "over a million" Android apps and games on Chromebooks. But the company's I/O developer conference is now just a few weeks away , and that seems like the perfect place for Google to make an announcement. Source: Ars Technica / Reddit 2016-04-25 11:36 Andy Weir

19 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner A federal court judge has sentenced the SpyEye malware creators to almost 30 years behind bars for their crimes. The pair of cybercriminals were found guilty of developing the software and distributing the resulting malware to anyone willing to pay for it. They were also found guilty of using the malware they designed to steal online funds themselves. The SpyEye software has widely been held responsible for huge losses for online financial service businesses across the globe. The news was announced by the US Department of Justice on Wednesday. 27-year-old Russian, Aleksandr Panin, was sentenced to spend nine and a half years in jail, while his hacker-in-arms, Algerian national,Hamza Bendellad, also 27, is set to serve 15 years for his part in the crimes. SpyEye was effectively nothing more than a sophisticated Trojan virus whose sole aim was to gain access to and steal sensitive sensitive financial information from unsuspecting users such as bank account numbers and credit card information, as well as duping people into unveiling pin numbers and logon details. Infected machines could be used to send on further malware and also forward on mountains of spam mail. At its height, SpyEye was reported as having infected more than 50 million computers worldwide. The DOJ stated that the damage inflicted by the fallout from SpyEye was estimated at being around 1 billion dollars in terms of financial cost to banks globally US attorney, John Horn said: “It is difficult to overstate the significance of this case, not only in terms of bringing two prolific computer hackers to justice, but also in disrupting and preventing immeasurable financial losses to individuals and the financial industry around the world.” The FBI were aided in their investigation by some rather notable tech companies, including Microsoft, Trend Micro, and several international police forces. The post International SpyEye Bank Hackers Receive Lengthy Jail Sentences appeared first on FileHippo News . In an effort to combat identity theft, financial fraud, and other related crimes, the US has begun moving towards the EMV chip system for credit card payments that Europe has had in place for nearly a decade. The new cards have already begun to replace old magnetic stripe cards, but the new regulations that have tagged along with them have left retailers and merchants frustrated. With magnetic stripe cards, the responsibility for fraud has fallen to the issuing banks, a vast improvement over the days when consumers themselves had to fight bankruptcy and struggle to clear their good names and their good credit. But under the chip card system, it’s the merchants who are responsible for the loss if a card is used fraudulently, meaning they had to scramble to not only update all of their point-of-sale credit card readers–at their own cost–but also endure a lengthy wait to have those POS systems certified as compliant. That was aggravating enough, but there’s a different reality to using a chip card: consumers simply aren’t used to it, either to the process of “dipping” the card (inserting it into the chip reader) instead of “swiping” it through the magnetic reader, or to the irritating delay brought on by waiting for the card reader to process the chip. One study by JDA Software Group found that the average dip time is eight to twelve seconds , a bizarrely long wait when customers are used to swiping and moving on. Whether out of habit or frustration, consumers who have chip cards are often still opting to swipe them instead of dip them, meaning merchants will foot the bill for any criminal activity. Visa is now working on a software update that will address that, reducing the delay at the cash register to as little as two seconds. More importantly, though, is the lack of delay this will mean for merchants, who will not be required to recertify their dip POS systems. The post Dip vs Swipe: Chip Credit Cards Get Software Update appeared first on FileHippo News . “Today, we’re announcing the end of Chrome’s support for Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8, since these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft and Apple. Starting April 2 016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes.” The end of support for Windows XP was always inevitable but for some people for whom Windows XP is still the last word in operating systems, it may well have come as a bit of a hammer blow, as Chrome still allowed a certain degree of security on the internet for the 15- year-old OS. But it isn’t like XP was being singled out. In much the same way that Microsoft are no longer supporting Internet Explorer anymore, Windows Vista, and older versions of OS X have also lost official support from the internet giant as well. Google’s decision to continue to support XP long after Microsoft had cast it aside was partly down to the sheer size of XP’s user base, which even now still numbers in the millions. But now even they are encouraging people still using the 15-year-old OS to upgrade. “If you are still on one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer operating system to ensure that you continue to receive the latest Chrome versions and features.” While the end of support for XP may come as a bombshell for some, Google had signaled their intention to kill it off back in November. Of course, Chrome will continue to work as normal on any of the above listed systems, but the it will no longer receive security updates or new features, meaning that if security vulnerabilities or exploits are found, there won’t be a fix coming down the road. Chrome 50, the new version of the browser, comes with new support for push notifications and a nifty new feature that allows preloading of webpages to speed up browsing. As an aside, Google also listed 20 security fixes as part of it latest update. The post Chrome Ends Support For Windows XP And Vista appeared first on FileHippo News . The technology and transportation industries were rocked last fall when German automaker Volkswagen–parent company to several auto brands, including Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat–was caught using that would “turn off” the emissions standards on their diesel models if the vehicle’s system detected an electronic test. That essentially meant a fully-automated cheat that let the automaker meet or exceed government standards for vehicle emissions. To date, VW has admitted to installing this software on 11 million cars, which has resulted in sanctions, lawsuits, and talk of criminal penalties for the parties involved. But further investigations into the scandal have uncovered an even more alarming fact about the software: it’s been around for years… almost seventeen years, in fact. It turns out that Audi developed this software in 1999 for its parent company, but at the time it was simply a way to turn off certain engine functions without a specified reason (like the need to detect some kind of scanning and defeat it). According to further news coming out in a report later today, VW executives weren’t concerned with the software until years later when their cars were incapable of meeting the emissions restrictions. The timeline seems to show that VW started installing the Audi-made software in 2005, which could result in far more vehicles than the 11 million that executives have originally admitted to. Of course, Volkwagen officials aren’t talking, claiming the need for silence until all litigation is resolved. Apart from the individual lawsuits, the company also faces the expense of reaching an agreement on what to do about the vehicles that are already on the roads and yet do not meet various government restrictions on how much damage they’re allowed to do to the environment. The post VW’s Emissions Cheating Software Is Nothing New appeared first on FileHippo News . The Zero Day Initiative, a group whose function is to seek out brand-new vulnerabilities in software and report those back to the publisher, announced an alarming find last week. ZDI uncovered two security flaws in Apple’s QuickTime software, then reported those to Apple. The resulting response was something along the lines of, “Oh well, we’re dumping QuickTime anyway.” That’s a serious oversimplification of what was probably a really well-thought out response from their tech and PR departments, but that was the gist of it. Originally an Apple computer application, QuickTime powers multimedia content. A Windows download came along later, ostensibly to reach those users who were PC devotees when it came to computing, but Apple product fans when it came to their mobile devices. QuickTime allowed that compatibility between video content on your iPhone and redirecting it through your PC, for example. There is no evidence yet that anyone has used these two newly discovered vulnerabilities in a malicious way, but experts aren’t taking any chances. ZDI has instructed Windows users to delete QuickTime, as has the US federal government. According to a statement from the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team , “Computer systems running unsupported software are exposed to elevated cybersecurity dangers, such as increased risks of malicious attacks or electronic data loss. Exploitation of QuickTime for Windows vulnerabilities could allow remote attackers to take control of affected systems.” The document continued, “Computers running QuickTime for Windows will continue to work after support ends. However, using unsupported software may increase the risks from viruses and other security threats. Potential negative consequences include loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data, as well as damage to system resources or business assets. The only mitigation available is to uninstall QuickTime for Windows.” Apple has not yet announced when it will end compatibility for QuickTime altogether; this news only points to the lack of future updates. The post Apple Ceases Updates To QuickTime For Windows appeared first on FileHippo News . If the FBI’s debacle involving an iPhone 5 has shown us anything, it’s the tech users do value their privacy. The resentment surrounding the court case to compel Apple to create a backdoor into a phone–a case that cost the taxpayers and Apple a lot of money in legal fees, and was intended to cause Apple to foot the bill for paying its engineers to create this magical security flaw–demonstrated consumers’ views on privacy rather nicely. So it’s no surprise that more and more communication platforms are rolling out end-to-end encryption, meaning their clients’ texts, calls, and even group chats can now be more secure, from start to finish. WhatsApp launched its encryption within days of the FBI declaring “thanks for not helping us, Apple, but we found some foreign hackers to do it.” The ultra-popular messaging and productivity app–which probably has more businesspeople collaborating on sensitive projects that require security than criminals plotting to break the law via a group text–has always offered a level of security during the sending of the message, but their end-to-end rollout means encryption at both the send and the receive. This helps thwart the old work-around of having the user’s cellular company turn over any messages that were sent or received through their servers. Now, Viber has also unveiled its own end-to-end encryption in four of its top markets, also home to its research and development centers, to offer its 700+ million users the best security they can provide. In Viber’s case, the goals of the encryption are a little more targeted to specific types of users, as the feature offers a color-coded system of protection levels, red through green. Viber’s model takes one huge thing into consideration, and that’s the shared device, an understandable concern considering that many of the platforms users are in what the tech industry still considers to be “emerging” markets. With this encryption, a use can be more aware that he may be talking to his girlfriend’s six-year-old or his boss’ wife on their shared Viber account, and might want to consider his words carefully. While it’s easy to think WhatsApp, Viber, and other similar platforms have filled the privacy need as a response to recent data security and spying activity, end-to-end encryption is something that both companies have been working on for quite some time. The post Viber Latest Messaging Platform To Add Encryption appeared first on FileHippo News . In a brief written explanation , the current justices decreed that the appeal would not be followed up on. The order concludes an 11-year battle between the tech giant and the publishing industry. The disagreement between the two groups centers around the outcome of a decision made by the the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals last June that stated that it was legal to scan books if you don’t own the copyright. The Authors Guild originally sued Google back in the early 2000s claiming that Google’s policy of showing search results from digitally scanned books infringed on publishers copyrights, even though the search results only showed snippets of the works. The guild had argued that Google Books provided a free substitute for their work, and that the revenue Google earned from ancillary advertising affected them negatively in financial returns. If Google had lost, they would probably have been facing billions of dollars in damages claims from authors. Not all the publications scanned by Google are in question however. Books that are no longer under copyright restrictions are free in their entirety. This however does not affect the millions of more recent titles that are still under copyright protection. The Supreme Court did not accept that Google’s book scanning undermined the ability of authors to earn money from their work. The writers guild said in a statement Monday, that the lost appeal was a “colossal” loss. Google has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004 when it struck an agreement with several big research libraries to digitally copy their collections. The post US Supreme Court Rules in Google’s Favor After Decade+ Legal Fight With Authors appeared first on FileHippo News . As any regular reader of our news section here at FileHippo can’t but have failed to have noticed over the last 6 weeks, the ongoing legal feud between Apple and the FBI has been an omnipresent story that for a long time felt like it would go and on and on and on and on. Apple’s steadfast refusal to comply with the US government’s order to unlock the San Bernadino terrorist iPhone sparked off a massive debate in the tech world about privacy, the rights of the individual and personal encryption. But now the people at WhatsApp have added in built default end-to-end encryption for all of its messages. If anyone was still had any doubt as to what side of the fence the company was building its house on, they just got their answer. “Recently there has been a lot of discussion about encrypted services and the work of law enforcement,” the company said in a statement on their website. “While we recognize the important work of law enforcement in keeping people safe, efforts to weaken encryption risk exposing people’s information to abuse from cyber criminals, hackers, and rogue states.” The move to end-to-end encryption for all WhatsApp users now means that even if the tech messaging firm wanted to hand over information to a legal authority, it can’t. As part of the announcement, the post on the WhatsApp website says: “The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message. Not cybercriminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us. End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private – sort of like a face-to-face conversation.” WhatsApp is one of the few free communication platforms that now provides full end-to-end encryption that is switch on by default for everything WhatsApp related. The company also said that they fully expect encryption to ‘ultimately represent the future of personal communication. ’ The post WhatsApp Switches On Encryption For A Billion Users appeared first on FileHippo News . “This morning we filed a new lawsuit in federal court against the United States government to stand up for what we believe are our customers’ constitutional and fundamental rights – rights that help protect privacy and promote free expression. This is not a decision we made lightly, and hence we wanted to share information on this step and why we are taking it” ; – said Brad Smith, Microsoft President, and chief legal officer in blog post published on Thursday. The blog post highlighted the fact that 5,624 requests for data had been made in the last 18 months from US Government authorities, and that almost half of these had come with a court order that compelled the company to keep the demand secret. The software giant filed their case in US federal court, Thursday, with the hope of striking down the key legal mechanism currently used in the US that can force companies to turn over data but effectively gags them, from informing their customers. The blog post continued: “The urgency for action is clear and growing. Over the past 18 months, the U. S. government has required that we maintain secrecy regarding 2,576 legal demands, effectively silencing Microsoft from speaking to customers about warrants or other legal process seeking their data. Notably and even surprisingly, 1,752 of these secrecy orders, or 68 percent of the total, contained no fixed end date at all. This means that we effectively are prohibited forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data.” The key mechanism used by law enforcement agencies are the use of ‘national security letters,’ that were introduced with the often cited Patriot Act that was introduced in 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11. National security letters don’t themselves require a court order and can be issued by the FBI, apparently on a whim. It was revealed last year that companies have no option but to turn over complete browser usage histories, and also the IP addresses of anyone the individuals in question had correspondence with, cell site information, and also any and all online purchases made in the last year. “Ultimately, we view this case as similar to the other three that we have filed. It involves the fundamental right of people and businesses to know when the government is accessing their content and our right to share this information with them,” Brad Smith concluded. The post Microsoft Sues US Federal Government Over Users Private Data. appeared first on FileHippo News . Admit it, you read that headline and your brain unconsciously changed it to “not a thing,” driven by a sense of hope. Sorry. The International Drone Racing Association (yes, there’s an association, and yes, it’s international) announced its broadcast partnership with none other than ESPN, who will actually broadcast drone races. Because curling wasn’t bad enough. In all seriousness and minus any further jokes (well, maybe just a couple), this announcement is the perfect demonstration of the lightning speed of technology adoption, along with the broader interest in advancements. When niche sports typically come on the scene, it can take years (or decades, depending on how mindlessly pointless the “sport” might seem to outsiders) for an audience to be receptive to it. As IRDA’s spokesman has stated, it’s only taken eight months to go from the first ever US championship race to an ESPN broadcast deal. The terms of that deal are interesting, and actually speak to likes of the typical drone footage audience. The network’s online channel will live-stream the entire three-day event, and then edit it down to a one-hour “highlights reel” broadcast for television after the fact. Naysayers may wonder what’s so fascinating about watching a bug-shaped ugly step-sibling to a radio controlled airplane, but that’s because they’re not aware of the capabilities of the drone, both while in flight and while in competition. The drones’ cameras will be feeding live footage to the broadcast, giving viewers a 360-degree bird’s eye panoramic of the course, the upcoming race being slated for New York City. That footage alone is broadcast-worthy, even without the competitive angle or the massive prize purse. Of course, the real excitement will come from seeing the capabilities that the drones’ designers have put into it; we’ve come a long way from the days when you hopped on down to the hobby shop/comic book store to upgrade to a more powerful engine for your plane or a more capable antenna for the RC. It will be exciting to see not only what drones are capable of, but also what humans can do with them. The post Drone Racing Is Now A Thing appeared first on FileHippo News . 2016-04-25 05:30 feeds2.feedburner

20 20 Globalscape delivers faster enterprise file transfers With increased cloud usage and more demand for remote working, the ability to move large files around efficiently has become more and more important. Delays or latency in moving data can create serious challenges for a business and the size of files being moved is increasing, causing additional strain on bandwidth. Secure file transfer specialist Globalscape is launching a new release of its Enhanced File Transfer (EFT) product which comes with an Accelerate module designed to provide extreme file transfers and increase the speed, efficiency and reliability of data movement. Version 7.3 of EFT with Accelerate can transfer files around five to ten times faster than on FTP, and more than 20 times faster than over SFTP. It's able to overcome latency and securely move data between geographically dispersed servers or locations, preventing delays and eliminating costly bottlenecks in the delivery of important files. It also lets enterprises get better value from their internet connectivity -- in some cases, allowing them to replace costly leased lines or private networks "The shape, size and amount of data being collected, managed and received today is increasingly putting strain on IT infrastructure and business processes, yet the demand for data is growing exponentially," says Peter Merkulov, vice president of product strategy and technology alliances at Globalscape. "With workforces becoming more remote and global collaboration being easier than ever, it’s incredibly important to ensure that data moves quickly and efficiently. Any delay or disruption of data transfers can create serious repercussions for a business. EFT Enterprise with the Accelerate module is an ultra-fast, reliable way to transfer large amounts of data providing companies with added the security, control and compliance features so desperately needed to mitigate risk, and prevent delays". Under the skin, Accelerate uses the FAST protocol, which can reduce typical transfer delays caused by large file bottlenecks, geographic distances, round trip time and packet loss associated with standard file exchanges. It also works in conjunction with scClient, a preconfigured client application, which enables an individual user to send files at an accelerated rate, even when in remote areas or off-site locations. It retains Globalscape's data security and regulatory compliance capabilities. You can find out more about the solution and how it works on the Globalscape website . Image Credit : megainarmy / Shutterstock 2016-04-25 11:17 By Ian

21 Restrict your PC to run only specific apps with Secure Lockdown Secure Lockdown ($14.95-$29.95) is a quick and easy way to turn your computer into a "kiosk PC", a system which runs only the applications you specify. If you run a business and would like customers to be able to browse some demonstration software, for instance, you probably don’t want them to be able to close that program, Alt+Tab to something else, log out or otherwise mess things up -- and that’s where Secure Lockdown can help. Setup is straightforward, and at a minimum is little more than choosing the applications you’ll allow to be run. Reboot your PC with Secure Lockdown enabled and the user is able to access your whitelist of applications from a launcher. This is where "smart" users might be tempted to run something else, but Secure Lockdown does its best to stop them, removing the Start button and menu, desktop icons, Explorer access, Task Manager, Ctrl+Alt+Del functions, Win+R launcher, right-click menu and more. Even smarter users could launch a target application, then click File > Open to try and browse the file system that way. But Secure Lockdown has that covered, too, blocking access to local drives and disabling the right-click menu. There’s still scope for simple PC vandalism, like resizing an application window, moving it mostly off the screen, closing it entirely. But again, there are options to restart a closed applications or keep it maximized. Secure Lockdown can also be used to lock down Internet Explorer or Chrome, where it’s able to remove particular menu bars or options, block specific browser tasks (download, open, printing), even restrict browsing to certain websites. Some of these restrictions might get in your way, perhaps stop some of your applications from working, but Secure Lockdown is very configurable. Most features can be enabled or disabled by clicking a checkbox. There are many other ways to lock down a PC. If your computer is only ever going to be used as a kiosk then you could do something similar by applying standard policy restrictions , removing Windows components, deleting executables you don’t want others to access, and so on. Secure Lockdown’s key advantage is ease of use. You don’t have to figure which policies to set, because the program does it for you. And crucially, it can be enabled or disabled in a few seconds, ideal if you only need a kiosk PC occasionally. Secure Lockdown is a commercial application which runs on Windows XP and later. 2016-04-25 11:06 By Mike

22 Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx wants YouTube to pay artists more royalties YouTube is not paying artists enough in royalties for music videos, and Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx has had enough. He says that the Google-owned video site pays just a fraction of the likes of Apple and Spotify. Sixx is calling on other musicians to join forces in a bid to make YouTube dig deeper into its pockets and pay artists a fair share. He is quick to point out that this is not just about getting more money for himself, insisting that he is also looking out for "the little guy -- the up and comers that we were at one point". As well as being a royalty issue, the debate also focuses on the idea of copyright law and how it operates around the world. Sites such as YouTube that allow people to upload content of their own are immune from prosecution for copyright infringement. Musicians argue that this gives the site an unfair advantage when negotiating pay deals, resulting in artists being paid less. Speaking to the Guardian, Sixx said : Google argues that it pays out "billions" to the music industry and suggests that YouTube acts as a form of advertising: Photo credit: Helga Esteb / Shutterstock 2016-04-25 11:03 By Mark

23 Why DDoS is far from dead

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that are carried out by a botnet (a network of compromised computers) to overwhelm the processing power of the victim computer, effectively taking it out of commission, have been around for a while. Peaking in 2000 with high profile attacks against Yahoo, eBay, CNN.com, Amazon.com and other e-commerce sites, they evolved in 2010 to be used by Hacktivists such as Anonymous in their Operation Payback , which escalated into a wave of attacks on major pro-copyright and anti-piracy organisations, law firms, credit card and banking institutions. Traditionally, DDoS attacks were network‐based. In such volumetric-based attacks, the attacker flooded the victim computer with information, taking up all of the victim computer’s bandwidth and infrastructure, overwhelming the victim computer’s ability to process the volume of information. Scripts for such attacks have become readily available on the Internet, as well as the Darknet. Therefore, it seemed as if DDoS was "old news". Don’t Dismiss DDoS Just Yet DDoS attacks against HSBC, the BBC, and the Internet’s core servers brought DDoS back into the headlines. Attacks by Anonymous, ranging from attacks on NASA, Nissan, the city of Denver and Donald Trump, added to the notoriety of DDoS attacks. According to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report, in 2015 there was a 148.85 per cent increase in total DDoS attacks over 2014. DDoS attacks have become shorter in attack duration (14.95 vs. 29.33 hours) and more complex, using multi-vector attacks more frequently. Reasons why DDoS is Alive and Kicking DDoS has evolved and continues to evolve DDoS attacks are becoming more accessible and varied: The next step: Expansion of DDoS attacks into new areas Due to their connection to a network, IoT devices could be manipulated for launching a DDoS attack, similarly to servers in a botnet. Many IoT devices run on known operating systems and share the same cryptographic key, making them vulnerable to be exploited by DDoS attacks. The exploitation of CCTV cameras for a DDoS attack instead of a typical computer botnet is a prime example of this type of attack. Cybersecurity experts expect DDoS to continue being a serious threat to organizations in 2016, growing both in size of attacks and in the chances of becoming a victim of an attack. Protection requires a multi-faceted approach that goes beyond relying solely on firewalls threats. Attacks must be identified on the endpoint and network level, and prevented in real-time. Critical steps include: incorporating DDoS threat prevention steps into the company’s cybersecurity strategies, monitoring the company’s network and maintaining logs of normal traffic volumes, using a secured Domain Name System (DNS), protecting Internet-facing systems and applications while keeping them fully patched, as well as working with ISP and DDoS mitigation services providers. Photo Credit : Duc Dao / Shutterstock Guy Caspi is CEO of Deep Instinct Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. 2016-04-25 11:01 By Guy

24 Elon Musk: Tesla self-driving cars "almost twice as good" as human drivers The promise of self-driving cars is not only one of increased comfort and more free time, but much more importantly, that of safer roads. And that promise seems to quickly be turning into reality, according to Tesla founder, Elon Musk. Tesla, which has taken the world by storm with pre-orders for its latest electric vehicle, has also been very interested in self-driving technology. In fact, the company recently launched a software update to its existing Tesla cars that allowed them to be autonomous in some select situations. This has led to safer driving, by a wide margin, according to Musk. Talking to the Minister of Transport and Communications, on a recent trip to Norway, Elon Musk espoused the benefits of self-driving cars, even in their current limited form. He said: If these numbers prove to be real and not just hyperbole, they may well help to move the market towards wider and swifter adoption of self-driving cars. Insurance industries and regulatory bodies, not to mention average citizens, may see the major benefits of self-driving cars and push society in that direction. To that end Musk continued: Another major player in self-driving cars, Google/Alphabet, has only driven a couple of million miles in its autonomous vehicles, so the “billions” mentioned by Musk will still take some time. That being said, there’s speculation that the new Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle will also be the first widely available self-driving car, so autonomous vehicles may quickly become a staple of our society. Source: Electrek Via: IBT 2016-04-25 10:16 Vlad Dudau

25 A regsvr32 hack is all it takes to bypass Windows' AppLocker security A security researcher has discovered a way to get around Windows' AppLocker security system. Casey Smith found that it was possible to use Regsvr32 to call up a remotely hosted file that could be used to run any application -- malicious or otherwise -- of your choice. This is something that will be a concern to companies, many of whom rely on AppLocker as it restricts what users are able to run on their computers. What is particularly concerning is the fact that the exploit does not require administrator privileges, and doesn't make any changes to the registry which makes it difficult to detect. Smith uncovered the exploit whilst looking to install a reverse shell on a computer with restrictions in place. After playing around for a while he discovered that a simple command could be used to execute a script. The beauty of the solution -- aside from the lack of privileges needed -- is that it should just show up in logs as regular HTTP or HTTPS traffic, reducing the likelihood of detection. Smith explains : At the moment, there is no patch available for the exploit -- it could be argued that it's a feature that is included by design -- but if you want to be on the safe side, you might want to consider blocking Regsvr32 with your firewall. Photo credit: McIek / Shutterstock 2016-04-25 10:01 By Mark

26 New Windows 10 updates causing massive problems for some users One of the big changes Microsoft introduced in Windows 10 was mandatory updates. It’s easy to see why the software giant believed this was a good idea -- reducing the number of unpatched systems is great news for everyone -- but it does mean when a bad update is released by Microsoft, everyone installs it. Case in point is two new updates released this month that have created problems for some users. SEE ALSO: Microsoft hits a new low -- sneaks Windows 10 advertising into an Internet Explorer security patch Microsoft has started an official thread for updates KB3147461 and KB3147458 asking if anyone is seeing issues with them, and a lot of people are. Problems reported by users following the installation of the updates (which rolled out on April 12) include broken apps, Start menu crashes, and crash loops and bluescreens. User SusanClifford says: While Scott 98 complains: Some of the many complaints just seem to be with Windows 10 problems in general, and don't actually relate to the two April patches. Have you experienced any problems with the latest updates in Windows 10? Photo Credit: wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock 2016-04-25 09:25 By Wayne

27 27 Microsoft announces cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions for every developer SAN FRANCISCO — March 31, 2016 — Thursday at Build 2016, Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, and Qi Lu, executive vice president of the Applications and Services Group, demonstrated how Microsoft Azure services and the Office platform can empower developers to more easily leverage advanced analytics, machine learning, emerging cloud development models and the Internet of Things (IoT) to build their intelligent apps. Microsoft also announced new free development tools to help every developer more easily scale their apps for every platform and reach the largest possible number of customers. Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Developer eXperience, delivered the final Build keynote address to showcase how partners are innovating using Azure, Office and Windows. “Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that supports the diverse needs of every organization and developer — from core infrastructure services to platform services and tools to software-as-a- service — for any language, across any platform,” Guthrie said. “With 30 regions worldwide — more than every major cloud provider combined — Azure’s massive scale means developers and businesses alike can focus on creating the next generation of amazing applications, not their underlying cloud infrastructure. This makes our cloud the de facto choice for enterprises of today and tomorrow — and today, more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 agree.” “In terms of reach, Office is one of the few platforms in the world that provides developers with access to over a billion users across a variety of devices,” Lu said. “The opportunity to build on the Office platform has never been greater. With new extensions and new connections to the Microsoft Graph — an intelligent fabric that applies machine learning to map the connections between people, content and interactions across Office 365 — developers are empowered to build intelligent apps that can transform the landscape of work.” The intelligent cloud to help developers build their next intelligent app Guthrie announced on Thursday that Microsoft is helping developers more easily build native cross-platform mobile applications by including Xamarin’s capabilities in Visual Studio Community and also making Xamarin Studio for OS X free as a community edition. In addition, Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers will now have access to Xamarin’s advanced enterprise capabilities at no additional cost. The company also announced a commitment to open source the Xamarin SDK, including its runtime, libraries and command line tools, as part of the. NET Foundation in the coming months. With these announcements, Microsoft extends its commitment to offering choice and flexibility to every customer across every platform and device — merging the. NET and Xamarin ecosystems together to provide an unmatched mobile development and DevOps experience. Now developers can deliver fully native cross-platform mobile app experiences to all major devices, including iOS, Android and Windows. Guthrie also announced several new Azure services designed to help developers address today’s operational realities and take advantage of tomorrow’s emerging trends, such as the Internet of Things and microservices. These new capabilities are designed to make Azure the best platform to build the next intelligent app — on Linux or Windows using any language: The Office developer opportunity: unprecedented users, data and intelligence Microsoft’s Lu, along with Office partners Starbucks Corp., MDLIVE Inc. and Zendesk Inc., showcased how developers can use the Office platform to create new business opportunity and closer customer connections. Starbucks CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger showed how Starbucks is developing an Outlook add-in that allows people to send gift cards within Outlook and schedule meetings at nearby Starbucks locations. “We’re always looking for new ways to engage with our customers outside our stores,” said Martin-Flickinger. “Our work with Office is opening up new opportunities for us to connect with our customers and save them time when they want to combine coffee with meetings. Building on the Office platform is reaching our customers right on their desktop or device and extending the Starbucks Experience to them in new and compelling ways.” The Microsoft Graph, made generally available last fall, offers developers unified access to insights about how workers can be more productive. Microsoft previewed six new APIs for the Microsoft Graph that let developers link Office 365 data to third-party solutions. For example, one extension automatically compiles and exposes a list of times a group of people are available to meet, making it easier to work across organizations. Lu also shared how conversational interaction will evolve in the future and how developers can immediately start building apps that engage users in meaningful conversations. The new Skype for Business App SDK and Skype Web SDK announced Thursday allow companies to integrate Skype calls directly within their Web or device offering, greatly enhancing the service and connection they can provide to their customers. The company also showed off new functionality that lets developers build apps and place them directly into Word, Excel and PowerPoint ribbons. Finally, the developer portal for Office 365 Connectors is now available for developers to write and publish their own connectors. Connectors deliver relevant content, such as updates on financial records or helpdesk logs, from popular apps and services directly into Office 365 Groups conversations. The developer portal is launching with connectors such as Asana, Salesforce, Trello, Twitter, UserVoice, Zendesk and many more. Developers and partners innovate on Windows, Azure and Office Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-04-25 09:43 By Microsoft

28 Commercial notebook shipments return to growth Commercial notebook shipments have returned to growth in the first quarter of 2016, new figures by market analysts IDC say. New form factors, guided by the ever increasing desire for mobility, aided by the new Windows 10 operating system and the Skylake processors were key drivers for this growth. HP was the biggest winner of the new change, with Dell also outperforming the market average, IDC’s report says. Asus, Apple and Fujitsu posted some strong results, as well. "The return to growth in commercial notebooks in Europe is a good sign", said Chrystelle Labesque, Director, IDC EMEA Personal Computing. "It is interesting, however, how market consolidation is progressing. Productivity is key in enterprise. Innovation in terms of form factors and productivity gains with the latest generation of devices is supporting some renewal in the enterprise space". In Western Europe, there has been a 1.3 percent increase in commercial notebooks shipments. Germany recorded best results, going into double digits. Finland, Norway, the Nordics, all improved, while Southern Europe was somewhat weaker. The top three players now hold 56.3 percent of the total market share. HP gained 1.6 percent market share (it hit 24.9 percent in EMEA), followed by Lenovo, which kept its leadership position in consumer shipments in EMEA. Dell reported strong growth, bigger than the growth of the market, while Asus declined less than the market average, all thanks to its notebook performance. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: scyther5 / Shutterstock 2016-04-25 09:15 By Sead

29 Microsoft’s excellent Windows Phone keyboard is now available for iOS Microsoft is bringing its excellent Windows Phone keyboard to the iPhone today. The new iOS version will let you tap or swipe to type out words and intelligently predict words for sentences, just like the Windows Phone variant. Microsoft had promised a beta period, but it appears the app is freely available in the US App Store today. Microsoft's iPhone version of Word Flow includes some extra additions that aren't available on Windows Phone. You can customize the keyboard background with your own image, and there's also a one-handed mode. The one-handed mode lets you swipe or tap out words by moving the keyboard to the side in an arc shape, and it's particularly useful if you own the larger iPhone 6S Plus. Surprisingly, this isn't Microsoft's first keyboard for iOS. The software maker released a special hub keyboard for the iPhone recently, designed to let users quickly access files and contacts directly from the keyboard. Microsoft has been experimenting with a variety of Android and iOS keyboards, and the company also acquired Swiftkey in February. We're expecting to see some additional keyboards for iOS and Android as a result, but the latest Word Flow is available right now in the US App Store. 2016-04-25 09:13 Tom Warren

30 Tech leader to establish roots at uCity Square: Microsoft Innovation Center comes to Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA — (April 4, 2016) — A new Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) will open to the public at uCity Square in Philadelphia this summer. The MIC, which is the result of a collaboration between Microsoft Corp., SeventySix Capital, the University City Science Center and Wexford Science & Technology, will be the first in the region and the third in the U. S., with other locations in Atlanta and Miami. The Innovation Center complements and enhances Microsoft’s regional presence, which includes an office in Malvern and a Microsoft Store at King of Prussia Mall. Currently there are over 350 Microsoft employees in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Located on the ground floor of the Science Center’s corporate headquarters at 3711 Market Street, the MIC will be equipped with the latest Microsoft technology. Through a combination of programming and outreach activities, Microsoft – working closely with the Science Center and SeventySix Capital – will seek to spur economic development and create new opportunities for the local tech startup community. Further, the MIC will host activities that will bring underrepresented groups to greater awareness of and involvement with STEM activities and careers. “Bringing Microsoft to Philadelphia and uCity Square is a game changer on many levels,” said Science Center President & CEO Stephen S. Tang, Ph. D., MBA. “Not only have we attracted a large tech company to our city, but the MIC also offers a means to engage our neighborhood, innovation, and entrepreneurial communities and give them access to Microsoft technology and training. It took a true collaboration between SeventySix Capital, Microsoft, Wexford and the Science Center to make this happen.” “We are thrilled to work with SeventySix Capital, the University City Science Center, and Wexford Science & Technology to bring technology and resources to the great city of Philadelphia,” said Jeff Friedman, director of Modern Government in Microsoft’s State and Local Government Solutions Group. “MICs are part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to empower developers and entrepreneurs, extending into local metro markets to help startups grow their business with technology and services such as cloud computing, developer tools, software and open source technologies.” The MIC will open in time for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in July and will serve as a hotbed of Microsoft activity during the convention, with a number of programs and events that explore the intersection of technology and civic engagement. After the DNC, Microsoft, the Science Center and SeventySix Capital will develop and deliver a suite of ongoing technology and innovation focused programming that will offer the startup, entrepreneurial, academic and neighborhood communities access to Microsoft resources and expertise. “Microsoft’s presence in uCity Square will enhance our community of ingenuity and become a catalyst to continue innovation and economic growth in our city,” said Joe Reagan, Vice President at Wexford Science & Technology. “With this opportunity, Philadelphia’s flourishing premier innovation district, uCity Square, will work in tandem with Microsoft to attract talent and companies that will bring businesses of all sizes together to advance technology and collaboration. We’re excited to see what the future holds for uCity Square.” “This is an amazing win for Philadelphia! Jon Powell, our team at SeventySix Capital and I are thrilled to see our hard work pay off to attract Microsoft, a Fortune 50 tech company, to our city,” said Wayne Kimmel, Managing Partner of SeventySix Capital. “Our shared vision with Jeff Friedman at Microsoft to build an open and accessible venue to inspire all people to explore and learn about the latest technological innovations will become a reality this summer during the DNC and beyond because of our collaboration with the Science Center. The MIC will be the legacy of the DNC and will spur future entrepreneurs to create businesses and technologies to change the world!” About the Science Center The University City Science Center is a dynamic hub for innovation, and entrepreneurship and technology development in the Greater Philadelphia region. It provides business incubation, programming, lab and office facilities, and support services for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and growing and established companies. Since it was founded in 1963, graduate organizations and current residents of the University City Science Center’s Port business incubators have created more than 15,000 jobs that remain in the Greater Philadelphia region today and contribute more than $9 billion to the regional economy annually. The Science Center is leveraging its history as the nation’s oldest and largest urban research park as it joins forces with Wexford Science + Technology, a BioMed Realty company, to expand its footprint and rebrand its physical campus as uCity Square — a true mixed-use community of ingenuity. For more information about the Science Center, go to ucscreview.org . About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. About SeventySix Capital SeventySix Capital invests in passionate, smart and nice entrepreneurs who are launching game-changing companies in the e-commerce, retail and healthcare industries. Wayne Kimmel founded SeventySix Capital, the Philadelphia area based venture capital fund, in 1999. Recently, Jon Powell joined Kimmel as a Managing Partner at SeventySix Capital. Powell is also the CEO of Kravco, a leading private real estate developer and property management company that developed the King of Prussia Mall. SeventySix Capital’s top exits include, SeamlessWeb – acquired by ARAMARK, now public as GrubHub (NYSE: GRUB), Take Care Health Systems – acquired by Walgreens (NYSE: WAG) and NutriSystem (NASDAQ: NTRI) – top performing stock in the U. S. for 5 consecutive years. Intel, IBM and Yahoo! have also acquired SeventySix Capital portfolio companies. Some of SeventySix Capital’s current portfolio companies include: Adwerx, CareCam Health Systems, Dwolla, Indiegogo, ReverbNation, StartUp Health, and Whistle Sports. SeventySix Capital’s partners are extremely active in the entrepreneurial and non-profit communities around the world. For more information on SeventySix Capital, please visit seventysixcapital.com or at @76capital on Twitter. About Wexford Science & Technology Wexford Science & Technology, a subsidiary of BioMed Realty, is a real estate investment and development company specializing in facilities for for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, especially universities, university-related research parks and healthcare systems. Wexford brings a unique approach of collaborating with clients to build knowledge communities which are vibrant, mixed-use, amenity-rich environments that foster innovation. About uCity Square Powered by the University City Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology, uCity Square will be the center of Philadelphia’s economic growth in University City by creating a dynamic environment for innovation and collaboration between the private sector and top-tier research institutions such as University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. 2016-04-25 08:35 By Microsoft

31 UDOO planning to bring x86 Arduino-compatible maker board to market Without doubt, the maker space has gathered real momentum over the last half decade with significant interest in the various incarnations of the Raspberry Pi as well the numerous boards that support Arduino platform. UDOO has already made a name for itself in the Arduino space with its UDOO Dual and UDOO Quad single board computers launching on Kickstarter back in April 2013. These were followed up by the UDOO Neo , launching two years later in April 2015. Both campaigns were successfully funded and fulfilled despite some delays in the shipment of all units. Like many Arduino boards, both the UDOO Dual/Quad and Neo boards were built with ARM CPUs. However, there have been a number of x86-based Arduino-certified boards including both generations of Intel's own Galileo board that have made it to market. UDOO is preparing to join these ranks with its own offering in the form of the UDOO X86. Billed as "the most powerful maker board ever", it is claimed to be ten times more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 3 in a multi-threaded CPU SysBench test and capable of running three 4K outputs simultaneously. Trumping the 32-bit Galileo boards, the UDOO X86 is 64-bit from the outset packing in a 64-bit CPU starting with a 2 GHz Intel Braswell CPU paired with 2GB RAM in the Basic version which ramps up to a 2.56 GHz Intel Pentium CPU with 8GB RAM in the Ultra version. In terms of connectivity and expansion, the board manages to cram in gigabit Ethernet, three USB 3 ports, an M.2 Key B slot for storage, an M.2 Key E slot for wireless modules, an HDMI output and two mini DisplayPort outputs. UDOO X86 also embeds compatibility with Arduino 101 which is connected to the Intel CPU through an internal USB port. This would allow the Arduino board components to continue operating and, if required, wake up the Intel CPU when it is powered off. The board is also versatile in terms of supported operating systems which spans Linux, Windows and Android. At the time of writing, the UDOO X86 Basic, Advanced and Ultra boards can be had for as little as $89, $109 and $209 respectively. Bundled performance kits can be included for an additional price which will add an SSD, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module, case and cables. For those looking for an all-in-one maker board, an Intel-based media centre solution or something to use as the basis of a Steam machine, then this may be an enticing purchase. However, be prepared to wait as delivery is currently estimated for November 2016 and, as with many crowdfunding projects, timeframes can and do slip. Source: Kickstarter 2016-04-25 08:28 Boyd Chan

32 The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC: new Gwent faction and screenshots revealed New images and information regarding The Witcher 3’s second and final piece of DLC, Blood and Wine , have been revealed. As well as showing more screenshots of the Southern France-style area of Toussaint, CD Projekt Red has announced that a new faction will be added to everyone’s favorite card battling mini-game, Gwent. Damian Monnier, one of the studio’s senior gameplay designers, announced during a PAX East panel that the number of Gwent decks will increase from four to five with the introduction of the Skellige set. Four cards from the new deck were revealed during the panel. These included the mushroom card which can transform berserkers into bears, a Madman Lugos hero card, the Draken card, and the “golden cock,” which Monnier said is based on a creature from Norse Mythology. At one point during the Q&A session, a fan asked if CD Projekt Red would ever consider releasing Gwent as a standalone title for mobile devices - a seemingly perfect platform for the card game. The developer proceeded to ask the audience if they thought it was a good idea. The cheers of the crowd were recorded, and the video will now be shown to bosses at company HQ in Poland in the hope it will prove how successful Gwent for mobile would be. More information about the upcoming $19.99 DLC will be released soon. CD Projekt Red has said Blood and Wine’s area will "rival the size of those [areas] found in the base game," and the story will take around 20 hours to complete. Rumors suggest that it will be released on June 7. 2016-04-25 07:30 Rob Thubron

33 10 Big Data Books To Boost Your Career Data science and analytics are some of the top in-demand jobs in the technology industry today. Indeed, demand is higher than supply for these specialists, and many data science masters degree programs have sprouted in the past few years. Online learning curriculum has also expanded significantly, too, with offerings from the big MOOC providers (massive open online course) such as Coursera and Udemy , as well as vendors who offer the technologies that enable big data, such as MapR and Confluent, among many others. Create a culture where technology advances truly empower your business. Attend the Leadership Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! But aside from formal education, either online or offline, there are other ways to learn about this emerging field, and to gain some of the skills you need if this is the next step for you on your career journey. Or maybe you are an executive who is leading a team of data scientists and need better grounding to learn about the technology they use to do their jobs. InformationWeek has put together a collection of essential reading for data scientists, business analysts , executives, and others who are interested in this rapidly growing field. Our collection features 10 books to help you understand everything from the ramifications of widespread algorithms and models for our future society, to how to use some of the most popular languages and tools to generate insights from data. What are the essential skills for data scientists to possess? What are some of the key recipes for R users to leverage in their work? How can you use data to tell stories that compel your audience to action? How can you work with big data technologies such as Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark? And what are the cultural and economic ramifications of a future world where so many decisions are based on a black box of algorithms? Take a look at this list to find out. Are there any that you will add to your reading list? Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments below. 2016-04-25 07:06 Jessica Davis

34 Mexico's voter database containing the records of over 80 million citizens leaked online Earlier this month, it was reported that hackers had infiltrated the Philippines’ Commission on Elections database and leaked the personal information of up to 55 million people. Now, Mexico has become the latest country to have its entire voter database posted online. It was Chris Vickery, a security reseacher at MacKeeper, who discovered the collection of records on April 14. Vickery, who is known for uncovering breaches such as the Hello Kitty hack last year, was browsing using Shodan , a search engine for Internet-connected devices and servers, when he stumbled upon the 100GB+ database. The data contained the information of every Mexican citizen registered to vote as of February 2015, including their names and addresses, occupations, dates of births, unique voting numbers, and the names of their parents. After making the discovering, Vickery informed several authorities, including the US State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, and The Mexican Embassy in Washington, but the information remained online. While speaking about his research during a visit to Harvard, Vickery mentioned the leak. A student from Mexico was able to verify the accuracy of his father’s record, and a faculty member gave Vickery the names of people he should contact. Eventually, news of the leak reached the Mexican National Electoral Institute (INE), which confirmed the database’s authenticity and removed on April 22 from the Amazon Web Servers. Vickery believes that the leaked information could have resulted in crimes much worse that identity theft. “The existence of this database is, itself, a violation of federal Mexican law. The server is, at this very moment, allowing the public to copy 93.4 million voter registration records. Under Mexican law, these records are ‘strictly confidential,’” he wrote in a message to Amazon. “People’s lives are at stake here. Kidnapping is a considerable problem in Mexico. Right now one of your servers is handing out the home addresses of 93.4 million Mexicans. Is Amazon seriously not willing to do anything about this?” In a recent update from databreaches.net, it appears that the INE has identified the source of the leaked information but isn’t announcing it yet. Copies of the information provided to Mexican political parties are electronically watermarked, which allowed the organization to trace the database back to the owner. A criminal probe has now been launched. 2016-04-25 06:15 Rob Thubron

35 OpenStack by the numbers: Who’s using open source clouds and for what? The latest bi-annual survey data of OpenStack users shows a continuing march of the open source cloud software into mainstream of enterprises, but also the project's continued challenges related to ease of deployment and management. The April 2016 version of the OpenStack Foundation's survey ( read the full report here ) queried 1,603 members from 1,111 organizations who oversee 405 OpenStack clouds. OpenStack has a healthy distribution of both large and small organizations. Twenty-three percent of respondents work for a company with between 1,000 and 9,999 employees, while 18 percent work at a business with fewer than 1,000. Businesses in many sectors use OpenStack but it's clear that a couple of core industries stand out. Sixty-eight percent of respondents work for Information Technology companies; 14 percent for telecommunications providers and 9 percent for academic institutions. OpenStack clouds are not yet mega-scale. Almost half are fewer than 100 nodes and close to one in five are fewer than 10 nodes. The project is maturing. In April 2015, about half of OpenStack clouds were in production. This year, 65 percent of respondents say their OpenStack clouds are in full production use. Only 21 percent are in development and testing while 14 percent are in a proof of concept phase. Is OpenStack a public or private cloud platform? Backers of the project say it can be either, but the majority of users (65 percent) use it to build private clouds. Only 16 percent use it to build public clouds. One emerging use case is a hosted private cloud: 12 percent of respondents contract a service provider to host a dedicated OpenStack deployment, freeing customers from having to manage the complexity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the fact that OpenStack is open source is a key driver for its use. But interestingly, 66 percent of respondents said the primary reason they chose to use OpenStack was to save money over alternative infrastructure costs. Ninety-seven percent said standardizing on open APIs was at least one of the their top five reasons. The Foundation asked its members what they most like and dislike about using OpenStack. Aspects related to the project being open source are key benefits for users, but increasing its ease of use and management is a top priority. Like: Don't like: The relationship between OpenStack and Amazon Web Services has been somewhat tenuous. But the survey shows that OpenStack users commonly integrate AWS and OpenStack. OpenStack users prefer to use open source components throughout their environments. While this may not be a surprise, it is striking how prevalent open source components are in OpenStack deployments. For example a whopping 93 percent of OpenStack clouds run the Kernel Virtual Machine hypervisor. The next most popular hypervisor is QEMU with 16 percent use. Despite VMware's efforts to assimilate its tools into the OpenStack ecosystem, only 8 percent of users reported ESX as their hypervisor. On the networking front, the most popular network driver is Open vSwitch, while for storage Ceph is the dominant platform. MySQL is the top database, followed closely by MariaDB and MongoDB – all of which are open source. Again in the operating system open source dominates the majority (74 percent) of OpenStack clouds. What may be surprising here is Ubuntu's commanding lead over Red Hat, SUSE and CentOS. While it's unsurprising that users of an open source cloud infrastructure would also use open source components elsewhere in the stack, it highlights the challenges traditional vendors have in monetizing support of OpenStack clouds. Many OpenStack users are exploring emerging technologies in their OpenStack clouds. Application containers, software defined networking and network function virtualization, along with bare metal clouds are among the most interesting emerging technologies used in OpenStack environments. At the Austin Summit one of the key themes is expected to be the integration of OpenStack with higher-level orchestration and platform as a service (PaaS) tools. This is important because while OpenStack IaaS provides capabilities for automation of infrastructure, higher level services give developers the tools they need to write, manage and deploy code on that infrastructure quickly. OpenStack users seem willing to embrace these new technologies: 42 percent say they're either using or experimenting with Kubernetes, Google's open source container management service. Cloud Foundry (used by 24 percent), OpenShift (from Red Hat) and Mesos are other popular platforms being explored. Finally, the Foundation attempted to pin down who within an organization is managing OpenStack clouds and the answer shows how cloud computing is ushering in a new wave of jobs. The most popular job title of a respondent to the OpenStack survey was a "cloud architect," a title did not exist 10 years ago. 2016-04-25 03:46 Brandon Butler

36 Feds seek public input on the future of IoT The U. S. government believes the Internet of things (IoT) has enormous economic potential across all industries. Its machine-to-machine technologies can reduce automobile-related injuries, usher in an era of precise weather forecasting and automate all types of processes. But what impact will IoT have on jobs? Will it create more than it destroys? And what happens to all the data devices generate? With those kinds of issues at stake, the U. S. Department of Commerce is now seeking public comment on the "benefits, challenges and potential roles for the government in fostering the advancement of the Internet of Things. " There are 28 questions, and multiple sub-parts to some questions. It's a long list. The Commerce Department began accepting comments Friday , opening a comment period that lasts until 5 p.m. ET on May 23. The government plans to make the responses -- likely to run into the thousands -- public, resulting in the nation's single largest knowledge dump about the future of technology and where Americans think it should go. The focus on IoT is deceptively broad. Any IoT discussion will likely bring in all its related technologies processes: Robotics, automation on every level, widespread use of artificial intelligence tools, and the collection of incalculable amounts of data about every aspect of life. In sum, the government wants to know how the IoT will impact life, job, security and privacy. Many of the questions are broad, such as: The government's goal is to map out its policy role, including research, economic development, standards and security and privacy. The U. S. can influence standards, set rules on security and the privacy of data and influence the market through its purchasing power. "It would be good to have a clear policy on IoT from one of the biggest buying centers in the world," said Alfonso Velosa, an analyst at Gartner. Data ownership is another problem waiting to be solved. For instance, a carmaker sells vehicles to a car rental firm. The connected vehicles today can send information back to the auto maker, which may use it for vehicle maintenance. But that data is valuable for competitive and monetary reasons. This is data a car maker could sell to another party, perhaps an insurer. Should it be allowed to? "Right now we don't have any rules about how that data is managed," said Velosa. The government can also help set standards and rules governing security at the device, communications and cloud level. Some of the security rules the government needs to set are obvious, particularly around the ability devices to spy on people, said Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester. But the government needs to think about security and privacy rules now because they "are hard to undo later," said Gillett. Joshua New, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a Washington-based research group, said there are already bipartisan efforts in Congress to try to develop a national IoT plan. Indeed, in January, Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), launched the Congressional Caucus on the Internet of Things. It has two broad goals: to educate lawmakers about IoT and develop a policy role. In the Senate, lawmakers have their own bill, the DIGIT Act (Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things), which would create a national working group to develop IoT policy recommendations. There is a lot the government can do, said New. For instance, it can bring together cities, public transit agencies and tech firms and help broker agreements on deploying IoT-based technologies. This government involvement could create markets for vendors, encouraging research and investment, he said. The government will take the public comment data and issue a "green paper," which is the name for a tentative government report, not an official statement of policy. (That will come in a subsequent "white paper. ") While this is a big project to undertake in the remaining months of Obama administration, considering the bipartisan IoT activities in Congress and widespread interest in the area, "this issue is here to stay," said New. 2016-04-25 03:39 Patrick Thibodeau

37 US no longer requires Apple's help to crack iPhone in New York case The U. S. no longer requires Apple’s assistance to unlock an iPhone 5s phone running iOS 7 used by the accused in a drug investigation, stating that an “individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case.” The Department of Justice has withdrawn its application in the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. DOJ had earlier appealed to District Judge Margo K. Brodie an order from Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, ruling that Apple could not be forced to provide assistance to the government to extract data from the iPhone 5s. “Yesterday evening, an individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case,” DOJ wrote in a filing to the court late Friday. “Late last night, the government used that passcode by hand and gained access to the iPhone.” The filing did not provide information on who the individual was and in what capacity he was acting. Jun Feng, the accused in the methamphetamine possession and distribution investigation, provided the passcode to investigators , said The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter. Feng has already pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced. He had earlier told investigators that he didn’t remember the passcode. The filing in the New York court has parallels to another dispute between Apple and the government over assistance in cracking an iPhone 5c running iOS 9 used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino killings in December. In that case in the U. S. District Court for the Central District of California, the government had demanded Apple’s assistance but later asked the court to vacate its order as it had accessed data stored on the phone, using a tool from a third party. The tool addressed only a “narrow slice” of iPhones , Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said earlier this month. While it could unlock the the iPhone 5c running iOS 9, the tool does not work on the iPhone 5s or 6, he said. Apple, meanwhile, demanded to know in the New York case whether the government had exhausted all other options to get to the data. Judge Orenstein had ruled that Apple can’t be forced to extract data from the iPhone 5s under a statute called the All Writs Act, the same law invoked in the California case. The government's reading of the All Writs Act, a statute enacted in 1789 and commonly invoked by law enforcement agencies to get assistance from tech companies on similar matters, would change the purpose of the law “from a limited gap-filing statute that ensures the smooth functioning of the judiciary itself into a mechanism for upending the separation of powers by delegating to the judiciary a legislative power bounded only by Congress's superior ability to prohibit or preempt,” Orenstein had written in his order. The government’s withdrawal of its demand for Apple’s assistance in both the New York and California cases leaves unresolved a key legal issue whether the government can compel device makers to help break the encryption and other security in their products, which is an issue of significance both to tech companies and privacy groups. Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. 2016-04-25 03:36 John Ribeiro

38 Indonesian internet users turn to smartphones to go online Almost all (93%) of Indonesia’s 88 million internet users access the internet from smartphones, with the Blackberry Mobile Messenger the most popular app, according to market researcher GfK. The Crossmedia Link survey from GfK found that, besides smartphones, 11% of Indonesia’s users go online via desktops and 5% use tablets. “Our study reveals that Indonesia has a very active online population, who spend an average of 5.5 hours a day accessing an average of 46 apps and web domains with their mobile device each day,” said Guntur Sanjoyo, managing director of GfK in Indonesia . The smartphone sales volume in Indonesia exceeded that of basic feature mobile phones in 2014 to become the more dominant handset type, according to GfK’s point of sales tracking. In 2015, Indonesians bought nearly 33 million smartphones. The Crossmedia Link survey also found that nearly two in three consumers (64%) in the cities of Jakarta, Bodetabek, Bandung Surabaya and Semarang form the country’s online population. More than half (51%) are aged 13 to 27 years, with more males (56%) than females (44%). The top three mobile apps used are Blackberry Mobile Messenger (BMM), Google Playstore and , installed by 92%, 87% and 70% respectively. Other popular apps include Whatsapp Messenger, Youtube Watch page, Line, Facebook, and Instagram. The use of smartphones as the primary means of broadband internet access in Indonesia is driven by the large LTE network investments by the mobile operators during 2015, said Craig Skinner, principal analyst of consumer at Ovum . “The mobile broadband handset availability increased rapidly during 2015 and will continue to do so in 2016. Handset penetration was 55% in 2015, and is expected to increase to 75% by end 2016. “With fixed broadband household penetration at 8% in 2015, smartphones are the primary means in Indonesia of broadband internet access,” said Skinner. This growing trend of internet access via smartphones means organisations providing online services in Indonesia need to be aware that the majority of their customers will be accessing their services through a smartphone. “This transformation process towards digitisation in Indonesia makes it imperative for advertisers to revise their focus from product- to customer-centric advertising strategies, which will engage their consumers around the mobile platform,” said Sanjoyo. Skinner said: “This needs to be taken into account when designing the customer website, and a mobile first design principle should be adopted. This includes being aware of device limitations such as screen size and the touch interface, optimising navigation, keeping the page load size small and reducing network usage.” Among Asean countries, the heavy push into LTE network investment by the Indonesian mobile operators means that Indonesia’s smartphone penetration has moved up the rankings to a level similar to the Philippines and Vietnam, and has closed the gap with Malaysia, said Skinner. Typically, the Asean countries with higher smartphone penetration also have a higher fixed broadband penetration. This has made Indonesia unique, where smartphones are the primary broadband internet access means for a large proportion of the population. 2016-04-25 00:00 Ai Lei

39 Big data analytics a useful security tool, says analyst Big data analytics is a useful tool for enabling organisations to become more resilient in the face of increasing cyber attacks, according to a software market analyst and IT consultant. “A recent survey found that 53% of organisations that are using big data security analytics report a ‘high’ business benefit,” said Carsten Bange, founder and managing director of the Business Application Research Center (Barc). “The survey also found that 41% reported a ‘moderate’ benefit and only 6% said benefit was ‘low’, so there is fairly strong evidence of the business benefits of big data security analytics, ” he told Computer Weekly. While adoption across the board is still relatively low, more than two-thirds of the more advanced companies surveyed are adopting advanced big data security analytics technologies, such as user behaviour analytics, the Barc survey revealed. The more advanced companies, which classified themselves as having “much better” skills and competency in security analytics than their companies, represented 13% of the total sample, with 68% saying they have deployed user behaviour analytics. “Of the 87% who did not consider themselves to be in the more advanced group, only 27% have deployed user behaviour analytics,” said Bange. User behaviour analytics can help improve an organisation’s cyber security resilience, he said, by tracking user behaviour across all IT systems, for example, to identify whenever there are significant deviations from normal behaviour to warn of potential malicious activity. “There is nothing new in being able to identify patterns of behaviour – most of the analysis techniques are 30 to 40 years old – but now we are able to apply them to extremely large data sets across multiple information technology systems,” said Bange. “Organisations need to know there is now the technology to support this kind of analysis that can be very beneficial in the field on information security. It can enable organisations to become more resilient through data-driven security decision-making, planning and incident responses,” he said. 2016-04-25 00:00 Warwick Ashford

40 A Comparison Between Amazon Redshift and Azure Data Lake - Developer.com In this article, we will do a comparison study of Amazon Redshift and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Redshift is a data warehouse offering in the cloud offered by Amazon and Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a data warehouse offering in the cloud offered by Microsoft. We will analyze the features offered by both in detail. Redshift and SQL Data Warehouse both support petabyte scale systems. Both of them have leader or master nodes and compute nodes. A leader node is responsible for distributing the work to the compute nodes and aggregate the data returned by the compute nodes. Both of them use columnar storage to enable parallel processing. In SQL Data Warehouse, the scaling of the clusters can happen in minutes. The scale out can be done for compute and storage units independently. SQL Data Warehouse also supports pausing a compute operation. There is no cost applied when the compute nodes are in pause state; only a storage cost is charged. Azure SQL Data Warehouse supports all the SQL concepts, such as indexes, stored procedures, and user defined functions. Redshift supports two kinds of sort keys: compound and interleaved. A compound sort key a combination of multiple columns, one primary column and one or more secondary columns. A compound sort key helps with joins and where conditions; however, the performance drops when the query is only on secondary columns without the primary column. A compound sort key is the default sort type. In interleaved an sort, each column is given an equal weight. Both compound and interleaved require a re-index to keep the query performance level high. Data can be integrated with Redshift from Amazon S3 storage, elastic map reduce, No SQL data source DynamoDB, or SSH. If there is an on-premises database to be integrated with Redshift, export the data from the database to a file and then import the file to S3. This file can now be integrated with Redshift. Re-indexing is required to get a better query performance. Azure SQL Data Warehouse is integrated with Azure Blob storage. It uses a similar approach to as Redshift to import the data from SQL server. The SQL server data is exported to a text file and then copied across to Azure Blob storage. Once the file is in Azure blob storage, it can be imported to Data Warehouse using the Polybase create 'CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE' command, followed by the 'CREATE TABLE... AS SELECT' command. Once the data is imported, re-create the indexes; in other words, use 'create statistics' to get the optimal query performance. Redshift can be hosted in a virtual private cloud. The data can be encrypted at rest and also when accessed from the client tools. Data is encrypted over the wire using SSL and, at rest, every block is encrypted using hardware-accelerated AES-256. The compute nodes cannot be accessed directly. they can be accessed only through the leader node. The data is backed up as snapshots in S3 storage automatically and by default they are retained for a day. The retention can be extended up to 35 days. Azure SQL Data Warehouse currently doesn't support hosting on a virtual network. It also supports encryption at rest and over the wire. Over the wire, it can be encrypted by using SSL and at rest it can be encrypted by using the 'ALTER DATABASE SET ENCRYPTION ON' command. The data is backed up automatically to Azure blob storage as snapshots every eight hours and the backup is retained for seven days. Redshift integrates with many popular BI tools, like Tableau. In addition, it also allows connecting using JDBC and ODBC drivers. Azure SQL Data Warehouse also supports integration with popular BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI. Both Redshift and Azure Data Warehouse look promising. Azure SQL Data Warehouse leads in some areas, such as the scalability and decoupling the store from compute. On the other hand, Redshift leads in security by enabling it to be hosted in a VPC. 2016-04-25 00:00 Uma Narayanan

41 Working with Java Archive Files - Developer.com An archive refers to a collection of one or more files put together as a single unit. Often in Java programs, we come across an archive file called a JAR (Java Archive). This type of file is common to every Java programmer. Archive files are created by using file archive software such as WinZip, 7-zip, tar, and so forth. These types of files are particularly useful to store and transmit multiple files as a single unit. File archives sometime employ data compression and encryption as well. This article delves into some of the key concepts of working with archive files by using Java programming. Archive files may employ different data encoding techniques to reduce the overall size of a file's content. There are several compression algorithms to reduce file size; typically they are of two types: lossless and lossy compression. Lossless compression algorithms work without compromising any data loss due to the reduction of data file size. Lossy compression, on the other hand, assumes that some loss of information is acceptable. For example, when compressing an image file, a loss of few colour bits would not make much of a difference visually, but can reduce the file size considerably. This may be acceptable for type of files such as images, video, and so on. But, such lossy compression is not acceptable for say, a file containing product information. Here, we need lossless data compression techniques to be applied because, even when decompressed, we need the exact information without any data loss. For example, in a lossless data compression, a string such as 'AAAAAABBBB' may be stored as '6A4B'; in other words, 'six A's and 4 B's'. Storing '6A4B' takes much less space than storing a repeated sequence of characters. This simple technique is called Run Length Algorithm (RLE). RLE reduces file size by the method called statistical redundancy where a repeated sequence of characters is replaced by a counter. There are many algorithms representing lossy and lossless data compression. For example, the variation of Lempel-Ziv (LZ) algorithm - LZR (Lempel-Ziv-Renau) algorithm, which forms the basis of a ZIP archive, LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) used in GIF images, aand the like. Encoding techniques such as MP3, Vorbis, and AAC are lossy; JPEG 2000, FLIF, and so on are lossless. They are very good for images or audio/video compression where dropping out a few bits does not really matter to the overall appeal of the content but definitely reduces quality if you are picky about minute details. Just listen to an MP3 audio and the same file but in uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF, AU, or raw, header-less PCM. Refer to the following articles for more information: This process, when is reversed to get the actual data content, is called decompression . Figure 1: How the Archiver works Java provides two API classes, called Deflater and Inflater , in the java.util.zip package to compress and decompress data respectively. These two classes provide the core compression, decompression utility in Java. The way to implement these classes is as follows. The steps to deflate/compress are as follows: Similarly, to inflate/decompress, follow these steps: Let's try it in a simple string. Do not get confused: Deflater is for compression and Inflater is for decompression. Suppose we have a number of files to archive in a ZIP format; we can use classes such as ZipEntry, ZipInputStream, ZipOutputStream, and ZipFile from the java.util.zip package to work with ZIP file format as follows. To read the content of a ZIP-formatted file: The Java API has ready classes to deal with some of the other common archive file format such as GZIP files and JAR files. An archive file basically contains the metadata information of the directory structure of the files, error detection and recovery information, and so on. The java.util.zip package provides some excellent utility classes to deal with checksum apart from archive support. 2016-04-25 00:00 Manoj Debnath

42 Contract-to-Hire IT Staffing The so-called “Gig Economy” is a growing trend. The numbers are stunning: About 40% of the U. S. workforce—up from 31% in 2005— take part in the gig economy. But for technology companies and departments, hiring permanent staff is the better solution in many cases. Even better—getting to test-drive staffers before you hire them. We’re talking about Contract-to-Hire Staffing, and PC Connection is your go-to source to find the right people for the long term. You know your company needs IT workers, but hiring them is a significant investment. And what if you don’t like their work, or they’re not a good fit? It’s a dilemma many employers face. A 2015 Deloitte study found the average cost of hiring an employee has reached $4,000, and the average time it takes to hire one is 52 days. Once they’re in, you’d hate to ask them to leave and start the process all over again. Plus, there’s a good chance you’d have to pay unemployment benefits. One solution is to use a contract-to-hire agreement, in which a contractor will work for you for a set amount of time, and then you decide whether you want to keep them around for good. That gives both you and the worker a chance to know each other before making a major decision. Since the contractor is already there, you’ll see exactly how they perform the kind of work you need. The arrangement also allows you to onboard quickly, so that you don’t fall behind on your projects while you get bogged down searching for a “unicorn” employee (who may or may not exist). More companies are turning to contract-to-hire arrangements because the traditional hiring process involving resumes, interviews, and references doesn’t guarantee a good fit. “One bad seed can really have an impact on your culture,” said an executive who uses contract- to-hire in a New York Times interview. Only one in three of her hires were working out before she switched to a contract-to-hire system. Now, she says she’s getting “rock stars.” Of course, you could just keep using contractors instead of hiring permanent staffers at all. Though they get paid a higher hourly rate, you don’t have to pay them benefits, and you gain flexibility. But for some functions, employees are a better choice. If workers feel they’re part of a team , they are more likely to take pride in their work and go the extra mile for you. Once you train them, they’ll know what to do without much supervision, and you’ll know you can count on them to be there when new assignments come in. Contract-to-hire can benefit workers, too. It’s not easy to get a posted job, and even highly qualified candidates can feel like a number, filling out lengthy application forms and sending their resumes into the void, never knowing whether a recruiter or hiring manager will spot their aptitude and pick them out of a huge stack. But if you give them a shot as a contractor, they have a strong incentive to catch on fast and turn in an excellent performance so that they can get hired. Once they have demonstrated that they can do great work, they will have a better chance of negotiating a higher salary. And if you decide they aren’t the right choice, it’s fast and easy to start the contract-to-hire process again. PC Connection can help you “field test” technology talent so you can make a strategic decision based on your environment and the fit of the individual. Among the benefits: For more information on other IT Staffing options, take a look here. 2016-04-25 00:00 Tim Duffy

43 The future is the trust economy As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful new currency is emerging — and it’s based on trust. What’s striking about the shared economy is not the technology that has made it possible, but the vast changes it has triggered in society. It has brought a renewed sense of community, engendered more collaboration, sparked new thinking and put a premium on trust, tapping into a need that transcends boundaries and is still rife with opportunity. If you’re not working to build and demonstrate it, then the future might be about to leave you behind, as trust is quickly becoming the global — and most-valued — currency of modern time. Trust was once an expensive pursuit. Banks were built from luxurious materials in bold architectural forms, with sturdy marble pillars and adornments to provide the most powerful declarations of solidity, tradition and trustworthiness — and to project a sense of enduring history. “You can trust us — look how much money we can spend on our buildings!” Trust, more than anything, came from being purposefully wasteful. Likewise, expensive educations from Ivy League schools represented not just a level of intellect or achievement, but an aura of excellence one can derive from investing in a trusted academic institution that came with a built-in reputation. It signified the social status and financial ability to spend more than necessary to be part of an elite group, and, like a stamp of approval, projected specific qualities to potential employers. And think about the hospitality industry. Historically, hotels found success through standardization — guaranteeing a level of comfort and quality under an umbrella brand or chain, often built on emblems of safety, trust and tradition. This has all changed. Today, we are prepared to place our lives in the hands of people we know nothing about. We’ve taken our most visceral fear of the unknown and cast it aside in a matter of months. What’s empowered this shift in values is the codification of reputation — it’s the five stars next to people’s names that make it possible to trust someone we otherwise know nothing about. And it’s transforming the way we live: From riding in an UberX to staying in an Airbnb ; from buying or selling handmade products on Etsy to peer-to-peer loans; from hiring someone on Upwork or TaskRabbit to booking home cleaners on Handy or renting a car on Turo. Similarly, we’re seeing a codification of influence and status, the result of which is also trust. The recommendations you receive on LinkedIn and the connections you share with a potential employer can determine whether you get the job. And your Instagram presence — specifically, earning the “endorsement” of high-profile followers — determines your next date, if what you seek is a membership on Raya, a new dating app that prides itself on fostering an intimate community of celebrities and creative people. Reputation is now carried by a new system, which takes rather elusive notions of credibility, influence and status and turns them into measurable scores. It’s “digitizing” relationships and social connections, extracting value and insights from our associations and both codifying and commodifying trust — signifying it and selling it. PR, marketing and advertising campaigns have long looked to assert signs of quality, establish credibility and give buyers reasons to believe in them. As consumers, we used to trust that a recognizable hotel brand must provide a great guest experience — otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to build its name. In fact, in the pre-digital age, the advertising that helped build brands was expensive, and that was key. Just as banks spent big money on marble columns, anything in TV commercials exuded an aura of quality, stemming from the feeling that advertising had a high production value and air time was limited. Compare that to today’s decentralized and fragmented media landscape, and we see the challenges for brands. What becomes of brand-driven trust when we read news stories that our friends like and share with us, buy products because of reviews on Amazon and stay at hotels we find tagged on Instagram? The very notion of branding is rapidly changing. For a start, it is less physical. That’s what allowed the rise of bitcoin — it isn’t tied to physical assets like the gold standard; it’s the collective beliefs and hopes of its owners that make it so. Similarly, anyone can build an e-commerce site on Wix for $29, with an accompanying social feed that sells products under the guise of a carefully curated aspirational lifestyle. The modern language of trust is a slick user interface, a decent booking flow and impactful images; above all, it’s great reviews, ratings and influence. Trust may soon be a commodity that consumers not only want from the brands with which they interact, but demand to know about other people. It won’t just be about customers reviewing brands, but our own personas being attached to a score or reputation; people themselves will be “measured.” Everything from our influence, social following, work connections, credit worthiness and beyond, could make up the metric of trust. This may end up deciding who gets upgraded on a flight, who can buy products from us or who gets priority customer service. In this new world, our “trust score” will be the only metric that people need in order to make decisions on how to do business, and with whom. It effectively becomes the new credit score. For someone with VC funding, the opportunity in the next year to find a single metric of trust is huge. The question is what are you doing to actively build trust with your customers? In a world where your brand is less what you say and more the collective experiences of everyone using it, you can’t simply rely on marketing to meet the challenge for you in the future. 2016-04-24 20:16 Adriana Stan

44 Tribeca’s Storyscapes projects used technology to explore blindness, solitary confinement and more As the Tribeca Film Festival winds down in New York City, we’re highlighting one of the most tech- driven parts of the event — Storyscapes , which showcased 10 works of virtual reality and interactive storytelling. At Storyscapes, I talked to the creators of Notes on Blindness (which won the juried Storyscapes award), 6×9 , The Argus Project and Network Effect , among others. One word that came up repeatedly was “empathy” — the idea of using technology to really put you in someone else’s shoes and make you feel what they feel. It’s also worth noting that even if you missed the event, many of these projects have are also available through web versions, or at least have a website where you can find out more info — I’ve linked to them above. 2016-04-24 20:16 Anthony Ha

45 You never forget the pain, so try to avoid it They say once you ’ve had frostbite, you never forget the cold. A founder who has suffered a bad board, or board member, never forgets that, either. I took my company public at age 33 with a board of four: me, someone I trusted and two people who taught me the meaning of the word acrimony. I have been obsessed ever since with helping my founders pick the right board members and avoid my mistakes. Here’s what that looks like for me. Trust is an absolute. The journey from startup to public is easily a decade. Things will go wrong. Things will get hard. And sometimes hard decisions will need to get made. If you don’t trust the people around the table, how can you trust their input? Trust is particularly critical in a worst-case scenario. Not all founders survive as CEOs. If you don’t survive, but you trust and respect those who made the call, knew they believed it was required for the good of the company, you wouldn’t be happy, but you ’ll eventually get over it. If not, you ’ll carry that chip on your shoulder, perhaps for the rest of your life. I could point to some still-angry outed-founders of successful companies, but I’m sure you know of some yourself. If they are still angry, do you believe they trusted, and respected, the people who pushed them out? Respect. A simple term for a complex set of realities, each of which could be its own enumerated point. For me it’s about people who are: Smart and wise. Not just one or the other. IQ is the hardware you ’re born with; wisdom is the software you run on it. Humans earn their software with time and experience. One classic mistake founders make: Y ou don’t need people running the same software you are. If you are packing your board with copies of yourself you may as well buy a mirror and a tape recorder. Look for people with experience you don’t have. That may be a more advanced version of the code you ’re running, but it’s likely better to have people with experiences you are entirely void of, or very weak in. Open minded. Intelligence and wisdom become less useful when you become convinced all you know is known and static. Things change, and while past is often preamble, one must be willing to see a new version of present and future. My most significant pain on my own board came from people with prior-world metaphors trying constantly to apply them to my new-world business — and insisting they were right. My greatest value came from the person who was always open to what a new world could look like, and was the most open to being wrong. Creativity can be the other side of the brain from what many engineering-centric founders bring to the table, so it’s good to have a bit of it on your board. Willing to help. Often promised, seldom delivered. While this is likely worse among seed investors, I have seen it at companies of all rounds. Much of it comes from how the investor defines themselves; hands- off can be another way of saying lazy and disengaged. I respect people who roll up their sleeves when needed and do the work when it can have an impact. I recently helped one of my founders win a last-minute slot in a major European pitch competition, but he wasn’t able to attend and didn’t have anyone to send. Rather than lose the slot, I cancelled a week of meetings, flew to the conference and made the pitch for him. We won, BTW. Telling you we won is bragging; the rest is just explaining what should be par, but I have learned is birdie. One interesting dichotomy I have noticed in venture is the dual fiduciary responsibilities board members may have: to the company and to their firm. This is a delicate and appropriate balance, but not everyone manages it well. Everyone wins biggest when the company wins biggest, and those who are driven by that mission tend to be the most focused on making the best decisions. This doesn’t mean the entrepreneur always wins, or can do whatever they want. Sometimes what’s best is tough love. The role is more parental than fraternal; not typically saying yes or no, but helping make the best possible decisions. Sometimes this means letting an entrepreneur, having heard input against an idea, go forward with that idea because they are committed to it, believe it’s right and may have a vision the board lacks. Sometimes it is about preventing a mistake. A founder I was advising once told me of a meaningful pivot he was “considering,” even though his business was going exceptionally well. To me the idea was clearly a company killer. To help the founder see the danger, I spent an hour telling stories of mistakes I had made. When that didn’t work, I told him the decision would kill the company. He thanked me for the advice and did it anyway. I can remember few things as painful in my decade as an investor as watching my founder drive off a cliff without being able to grab the wheel. That decision did kill the company. I wasn’t on his board, but the board should have prevented that mistake. This function is generally the sum of the previously covered attributes. People committed to a business, who aren’t in the business every day, often see trees within the forest the daily woodsmen do not. I’ve had a few epiphanies with meaningful impact on a founder’s business; from seeing the importance of a new trend far enough ahead to embrace it, to having an experience I can share that helps them make, or not make, a decision. I love when another board member comes up with an idea that’s out of the blue and truly an aha moment. Many come from the patterns we all recognize over time, but some come from the ether. Avoiding bad advice is equally important. A founder once told me of an investor he took on for “brand” reasons that he’d learned their advice wasn’t just not useful, it was harmful. “Every time I listen to their advice, I regret it,” he said. As a seed investor, I encouraged founders to consider their investors’ advice and opinions, and then make their own decision. But they need to consider where the advice stems from. Experience is valuable, opinion is questionable. Founders may know more about the ship they are sailing than any of the crew, but there’s no reason to hit the same rocks as the last sailor. I recall one founder who liked his board member personally, but considered them dangerous as an investor. They were more concerned with how they looked to other board members, and within their firm than in making the hard calls. I had a board member on one of my own boards that cost us enormous wasted time over a period of months in going through a formal process for something we could have done internally — and the only reason I could glean was a need to make sure no one in his firm questioned him later. These are both issues of self-confidence. If your board member is self-confident, but can’t get his firm’s support behind critical decisions, this is a problem of standing within their firm, or of my final point… This really isn’t the person, but the firm they are from. Do they have the financial resources to go the distance. Any active top-tier firm should fulfill this need, but things change. I recall a company that was doing well, needed one more round to raise, but had one board member from a firm that had not been able to raise their last fund and had limited reserves. Take that reality, mix it with an inadequate dose of five, and you have a lot of drag on your funding round. The entrepreneurial journey is long, and much of it is hard. Seven to 10 years is to be expected. That’s a long time to spend with a human being who doesn’t meet the above criteria but came from just the “right” firm. I made that mistake once, and know from experience — a firm’s name may grow or it may fade, but you ’ll be working with the person for a long time, in good times and bad. So yes, choose from amongst quality firms, but from amongst them, pick the best man or woman for the journey. 2016-04-24 20:16 Ben Narasin

46 INNOVATE2016: Tech’s revolutionary promise hinges on strong government relationships 1776 , Washington DC’s leading incubator of technology start-ups, describes itself as “where revolutions begin”. But according to Brandon Pollack , 1776’s Director of Global Affairs, that revolution will only begin in partnership with government. 1776, as Pollock notes, invests in what he calls “entrenched” verticals – regulated areas of the economy like healthcare, energy, education and smart cities which can’t be disrupted by working completely outside the political process. Thus 1776’s place both in Washington DC and as the most prolific incubator in areas like healthcare, energy, education and smart cities. The view from DC of the Obama administration’s record on innovation is quite rosy Obama, Pollock says, gets an A on innovation – a grade with which not everyone in Silicon Valley will agree. But Pollock appears less optimistic about a post Obama America. It’s “quite unique” – the “weirdest” election the DC veteran has experienced and he’s disappointed with the absence of discussion about innovation amongst the candidates. As Pollock notes, the only candidates who have stressed the innovation economy – Marco Rubio and Martin O’Malley – are no longer in the race. So much, then, for innovation in 2016. As always, many thanks to CALinnovates for their help in the production of this interview. 2016-04-24 20:16 Andrew Keen

47 How Facebook Connect changed the consumer internet When Facebook opened its API, the platform spawned a completely new way of distributing apps on the web. Developers now had unprecedented access and deep integration into many of Facebook’s core features, allowing anyone to sign up and start building. In just six months after opening up the platform, more than 10,000 apps launched. At that moment, Josh Elman, now a partner at Greylock Partners, realized that the social network was going to change the consumer Internet. But as this “Cambrian explosion” of apps unfolded, Josh, a product manager at Zazzle at the time, saw users became less engaged under the weight of all the apps. He remembers, “you couldn’t go to Facebook without being inundated with a hundred request of your friend— play this game, give them a gift, hit them with a reward, and get some points. Facebook itself stopped being fun.” However, he was bullish on the platform and the possibilities it could unlock, so he decided to join the Facebook Platform team in 2008 to help launch Facebook Connect. Though the company was experiencing traction, it wasn’t able to entice key brands to partner with their platform. Facebook was much smaller at the time and Josh knew that going after partnerships with big brands – like CNN, Amazon and The New York Times – was the wrong initial strategy. More often than not, startups go after these so-called “big whales” but ultimately fail because both parties have different agendas and expectations. Facebook needed to go after the right partners who would be on the same page and have the flexibility to be creative and truly integrate with the platform. With that in mind, Facebook partnered with Huffington Post and it was a complete success – they leveraged one another for distribution and content, and both reaped the benefits. In fact, users who logged in to The Huffington Post with Facebook spent more time on the site than the average user. Facebook paved the way for consumer Internet companies, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, to look at distribution and growth in new way. Companies began to open up their platforms and APIs for others to build and grow on their platform. For startups who initially have no brand power, the ability to build on top of existing platforms provides massive value by creating a direct channel to a large user base. But while the rise of platforms forged a new avenue for creating apps and viral distribution, Josh cautions startups to make sure they are still building their own identity and only leveraging platforms to accelerate their goals . “Growth is really about thinking strategically about how to get your users doing things on the right platforms in the right places” he says. “And it’s not so much about growth hacking as much as building the right partnerships, and thinking about your users.” 2016-04-24 20:16 Elisa Schreiber

48 Sirin Labs blasts into the secure smartphone space with a $72 million seed round Sirin Labs, a new high-end smartphone manufacturer, has raised a $72 million seed round from Singulariteam founder Moshe Hogeg, Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, and the Chinese social networking service Renren to launch a new, secure smartphone. The phone will be revealed in May at Sirin Labs’ flagship store in London. Against a backdrop of global concerns over digital security like Apple’s dustup with the FBI and Whatsapp’s encryption announcement; the new phone company (now almost three years in the making) aspires to combine both the safety of a military-grade device and the features of an everyday phone. “We managed to combine military phone and the phone for everyday use… We said: let’s create the best phone we can. Let’s see if we can integrate the best from both worlds without limitations,” said Hogeg. That combined functionality will cost a pretty penny, according to Hogeg. “It won’t be the most expensive phone in the world. We are in the neighborhood of $10-15k per phone. Tesla is a good example for us. They started with high priced cars, but today their car prices are much lower.” Considering the phone’s high price point, Fortune 500 executive seems to be a likelier customer profile than a 25 year-old tech lover. Hogeg says he is looking to create a high-end product in a vertical where it’s sorely missing. “As tech lovers, we said we wanted to bring the most sophisticated tech out there into the smartphone,” said Hogeg. “91% of Fortune 500 companies are under cyber attacks, but companies can’t use a military phone because they usually lack all the apps that consumers use.” The secure phone space remains fairly wide-open since Blackberry left in 2013 and is now focusing on security-focused enterprise customers with . Silent Circle ’s Blackphone is currently trying to take the lead among consumers. The company’s phone is priced at only $799, which means a very different customer from Sirin’s targets. However, in February last year, Silent Circle announced – as part of the $50 million round – its intention to grab BlackBerry’s market share and woo business users. Finland-based Bittium revealed its Bittium Tough Mobile at the Mobile World Congress in February to compete head to head with the Blackphone and ARCHOS ’ similarly priced GranitePhone. With ARCHOS, Silent Circle and Bittium all battling for market share, Hogeg’s Sirin Labs is launching at a time when consumers, animated by mainly aesthetic concerns, are perhaps willing to pay more for security without compromising on usability — or giving up on the joy of time-wasting apps. Most secure phone manufacturers are strictly in the enterprise space, and Sirin’s high price point will likely put the company in that category, unless Hogeg’s thesis of Tesla-like adoption for the company’s product comes to fruition. Known for security expertise, Hogeg bets on Israelis to provide Sirin with the knowledge to dominate the secure phone market. Headquartered in Switzerland, most of Sirin’s day to day operations are managed from the company’s offices in Tel Aviv (R&D and operations) and in the Swedish city of Lund where they are assembled by Sigma Connectivity. Hogeg believes that the combination of Swedish engineering and Israeli security expertise is a winning recipe. “Tel Aviv is a high-tech epicentre built around internet security, anti-virus software and cyber- defence technologies, and Sweden is a nucleus for some of the best telecomms engineers, designers and computer scientists in the world,” the Yo app founder said. Although Rakishev and RenRen have previously invested in Hogeg’s Singulariteam , Sirin is an entirely separate venture for both. Rakishev, a serial investor and petrochemical mogul, and Hogeg have partnered in a number of projects, including Mobli and Genesis Angels , then chaired by the now jailed ex-prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert. Sirin is the latest project between the two men and was born in 2013 when Rakishev’s phone was hacked. While the attack damaged Rakishev’s phone, it did even more to damage his faith in mobile technology. “Rakishev called me to share the story about his hacked phone and asked why he was unable to find a mobile phone that would ensure privacy while meeting the needs of an international business person, and why the new technology he saw in tech shows and tech publications wasn’t available in consumer devices,” said Hogeg. The company’s operational lead and CEO is Tal Cohen, a former McKinsey consultant. Other key people include Fredrik Oijer, former product director at Sony Ericsson and Karim Rashid, known for his sensual minimalism, is in charge of design. Rashid, well known for designing luxury items, is not designing a luxury phone. “Sirin is not about luxury, It is about advanced technology which in turn results in high-end products,” Hogeg said. The company is looking to beat competition by focusing both on usability and security for the consumer space. Currently, most companies that offer full encryption are enterprise-focused. “We have a holistic approach, which integrates hardware and software solutions to ensure the best security and encryption. The specifics will be revealed in our product launch event later this year,” Hogeg said. Renren, one of the investors announced today, refused to comment on its role in Sirin, but considering the company’s preexisting relationship with Hogeg and the recent acceleration of Chinese interest in Israel , stranger things have happened. What’s more, with over 160 million users on its social platform and a strong focus on mobile, it’s hardly a surprise for the company to desire a stake in the secure smartphone market. 2016-04-24 20:16 Dennis Mitzner

Total 48 articles. Created at 2016-04-25 18:01