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69 articles, 2016-07-07 00:01 1 Windows 10 will continue to evolve post- Anniversary Update Redmond reckons the current preview build system works well (2.04/3) 2016-07-06 12:58 1KB www.techradar.com 2 C++17 Feature List is Now Complete, Enters Review During the last meeting in Oulu, Finland, the ISO C++ committee (1.02/3) completed the definition of the C++17 feature list. At the meeting, a number of new language and library features were approved, including constexpr if, template , structured bindings, and others. 2016-07-06 21:00 1KB www.infoq.com 3 Java 9 on the Brink of a Delivery Date and Scope Review After the May 2016 deadline was missed for a feature complete Java 9, Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform, suggested a method to collectively review all work remaining in unfinished JEPs and decide whether delaying the project further to accommodate, or descope them... 2016-07-06 20:59 3KB www.infoq.com 4 npm Releases Enterprise Add-ons for Security, Licensing Npm has released Enterprise add-ons, allowing developers to directly integrate third-party tools for the first time 2016-07-06 20:59 3KB www.infoq.com 5 PHP Web Development Resources 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. 2016-07-06 19:54 5KB www.i-programmer.info 6 How DevOps transformed Hiscox into an organisation that can deploy code in 30 minutes Hiscox went from one release a year to becoming a DevOps champion,Developer,Software ,The Cloud 2016-07-06 17:27 4KB www.v3.co.uk 7 Apple Seeds Fifth Beta of iOS 9.3.3, Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan, and tvOS 9.2.2 The Beta 5 builds are available for public and developers 2016-07-06 17:27 2KB news.softpedia.com

8 Microsoft has cut the price of its Lumia 550 in the UK and Ireland by 20% Along with reducing the price of its Lumia 650 today, Microsoft has also slashed 20% off its entry-level Windows 10 Mobile handset, bringing it down to £79.99 in the UK, and €99 elsewhere in the UK. 2016-07-06 17:22 1KB feedproxy.google.com 9 Uber Drivers Share Secrets They Hear in Their Cars Uber drivers created a thread with posts on Reddit 2016-07-06 16:52 1KB mobile.softpedia.com 10 WhatsApp and Facebook Blocked in Zimbabwe to Prevent Coordinated Protests Protests happened anyway, regardless of social media ban 2016-07-06 16:31 2KB news.softpedia.com 11 Dell increases prices in the UK by 10% following Brexit Dell has confirmed that its prices are increasing in the UK, as a result of the country's recent decision to exit the European Union, which pushed down the value of pound sterling against the dollar. 2016-07-06 16:22 1KB feedproxy.google.com 12 Ubuntu Linux to be bundled as preferred OS with Pivotal Cloud Foundry app platform Pivotal settles on Ubuntu as platform of choice for Cloud Foundry,Cloud Computing,Developer,Open Source ,Canonical,Ubuntu,Linux 2016-07-06 15:59 3KB www.v3.co.uk 13 Asus ZO1B with 5.5-inch Display and 2GB of RAM Spotted on GFXBench The smartphone comes with Snapdragon 435 2016-07-06 15:58 1KB news.softpedia.com 14 The best free software uninstallers 2016 Remove every trace of unwanted programs, including the bits their own uninstallers miss 2016-07-06 15:46 7KB www.techradar.com 15 Moto Z Play Variant with Snapdragon 625 Gets Benchmarked The smartphone will have a 5.5-inch display 2016-07-06 15:34 1KB news.softpedia.com

16 Sound Devices Firmware 3.10 Is Available for 633, 664, and 688 Field Mixers The new firmware adds support for 3rd party wireless control 2016-07-06 14:51 2KB drivers.softpedia.com 17 Best 5 Jabber Clients for Windows in Pictures We picked our favorite XMPP (Jabber) clients and we're showing you how they look like in the following article 2016-07-06 14:30 4KB news.softpedia.com 18 NVIDIA’s 368.69 GeForce Graphics Driver Is Up for Grabs The package improves VR gaming experience for DiRT Rally VR 2016-07-06 14:07 1KB drivers.softpedia.com 19 AT&T brings Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and Wi-Fi calling to Samsung Galaxy S6 active Nine months after Google originally released Marshmallow, AT&T has finally released Android 6.0.1 for Samsung's Galaxy S6 active. The update weighs in at 1441MB, and includes Wi-Fi calling support. 2016-07-06 13:22 2KB feedproxy.google.com 20 Nvidia's new GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 cards don't support the HTC Vive over DisplayPort Nvidia's new graphics cards, the GTX 1080 and 1070 may be the best than money can buy but they don't fully support the HTC Vive VR headset. The problems show up when using the Vive over DisplayPort. 2016-07-06 12:50 2KB feedproxy.google.com 21 BEBLOH Banking Trojan Outbreak Leads to National Security Alert in Japan Crooks stole over #25.8 million from Japanese banks 2016-07-06 12:39 2KB news.softpedia.com 22 Data Generation Gap: Younger IT Workers Believe The Hype There's a growing generation gap when it comes the promise of revenues from data-driven projects. Where younger workers see the future, older workers may only see another cycle of tech hype. 2016-07-06 11:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 23 21% off SentrySafe Fire-Safe Waterproof File Storage Box - Deal Alert Secure documents in your house or office. The HD4100CG model is UL classified with 1/2-hour proven fire protection and ETL verified 1/2 hour fire protection for CD's, DVD's, USB drivers and memory sticks up to 1550F. It is also ETL verified waterproof. 2016-07-06 07:13 1KB www.javaworld.com

24 And the next version of Google Android will be called... Nougat Google officially names Android 7.0,Mobile,Mobile Phones,Mobile Software ,Google,Android,Mobile 2016-07-07 00:01 2KB www.computing.co.uk 25 New software provides overview of big data of genome sequencing -- ScienceDaily Since researchers first succeeded in mapping the human genome back in 2003, the technological development has moved at warp speed, and the process which at that time took several years and billions of dollars can now be performed in a few days. Researchers have developed a new... 2016-07-06 19:54 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 26 New tool for forecasting behavior of the microbiome -- ScienceDaily A team of investigators has developed a suite of computer algorithms that can accurately predict the behavior of the microbiome -- the vast collection of microbes living on and inside the human body. 2016-07-06 19:54 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 27 Internet attacks: Finding better intrusion detection -- ScienceDaily The brute force and sheer scale of current Internet attacks put a heavy strain on classic methods of intrusion detection. Moreover, these methods aren't prepared for the rapidly growing number of connected devices: scalability is a major issue. Now a researcher proposes another way of... 2016-07-06 19:54 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 28 Delivering the Internet of the future, at the speed of light and open-sourced -- ScienceDaily New research has found, for the first time, a scientific solution that enables future Internet infrastructure to become completely open and programmable while carrying Internet traffic at the speed of light. 2016-07-06 19:54 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 29 Ice sheet modeling of Greenland, Antarctica helps predict sea-level rise -- ScienceDaily Predicting the expected loss of ice sheet mass is difficult due to the complexity of modeling ice sheet behavior. To better understand this loss, a team of researchers has been improving the reliability and efficiency of computational models that describe ice sheet behavior and dynamics. 2016-07-07 00:01 7KB feeds.sciencedaily.com

37 IT teams of the future will have non-tech members Leadership, understanding of business objectives and project management are the three most important skills among businesses, a new report by IT resourcing company Experis says. Leadership, understanding of business objectives and project management are the three most important skills among businesses, a new report by... 2016-07-06 16:43 2KB feeds.betanews.com 38 [Giveaway] VisionTek USB 3.0 512GB Pocket SSD -- enter to win! Nowadays, everyone seems to be obsessed with cloud storage. While there is nothing wrong with utilizing the aforementioned storage option, it should never be your only method. In other words, redundancy is key -- a local backup of your files in addition is very... 2016-07-06 16:24 1KB feeds.betanews.com 39 Employees put corporate networks at risk Digital device practices among US employees are exposing their employers to increased security risks according to a new study. Digital device practices among US employees are exposing their employers to increased security risks according to a new study. Identity management company OneLogin along with Arlington Research sur… 2016-07-06 15:03 2KB feeds.betanews.com 40 The Surface Hub's version of Windows 10 build 14371 has leaked online A new build of the variant of Windows 10 that runs on the Surface Hub has leaked online. There's no specific changelog for build 14371, although features seem to be somewhat restricted. 2016-07-06 14:44 1KB feedproxy.google.com 41 IBM Rolls Out New Job Cutting Plan In The Netherlands According to a leaked company memo, IBM is imposing involuntary job cuts in the Netherlands for the first time. Does the move serve as a template for Big Blue to impose forced layoffs in regions where local labor laws have made it difficult to impose mandatory cuts? 2016-07-06 14:36 6KB www.informationweek.com 42 O&O DiskImage Professional 11 unveils complete redesign, new command-line tool O&O Software GMBH has unveiled O&O DiskImage Professional 11 64-bit, major new version of its disk-imaging tool for Windows PCs. Also available for 32-bit versions of Windows, the new release unveils a major facelift, giving the program a more modern look... 2016-07-06 14:31 2KB feeds.betanews.com

43 Data centres could cut power consumption by 25 per cent with simultaneous multi-threading Simultaneous multi-threading can make servers handle instructions more efficiently,Hardware,Datacentre,Operating Systems ,Mainframe,Microsoft,Research 2016-07-06 14:27 3KB www.v3.co.uk 44 Suse brings Linux for high-performance computing to Microsoft's Azure cloud Suse has the only supported enterprise Linux for HPC available on Microsoft Azure ,Cloud Computing,Open Source ,Suse,Linux,Azure,Microsoft,High Performance Computing 2016-07-06 13:30 2KB www.v3.co.uk 45 Cut your browser's RAM usage with All Browsers Memory Zip All Browsers Memory Zip is a free memory optimizer designed to cut your browser’s RAM usage. The program doesn’t just work with Chrome, IE or Firefox -- it recognizes and supports almost 40 browsers, out of the box. All Browsers Memory Zip is a... 2016-07-06 13:24 2KB feeds.betanews.com 46 Save 86% off the Complete API Mastery Bundle via Neowin Deals Save $138 off the Complete API Mastery Bundle. Learn to incorporate Google, Facebook, Twitter and more APIs with six courses on application building blocks via Neowin Deals. 2016-07-06 13:06 1KB feedproxy.google.com 47 Microsoft's Skype Meetings Aimed At Small Businesses Microsoft is offering Skype Meetings, a free, pared-down version of Skype for Business. It's aimed at small businesses, and it offers tools including HD video conferencing. 2016-07-06 13:05 3KB www.informationweek.com 48 UK's Darktrace aims to lead the way to automatic cyber security Darktrace hopes to be a leader in the move to automated cyber security to free up security professionals to focus on business risk and innovation 2016-07-06 12:45 3KB www.computerweekly.com

49 Reordering issues in GitHub, SUSE joins Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance, and Twistlock announces US$10 million in series A funding—SD Times news digest: July 6, 2016 GitHub enables reordering of issues and pull requests; SUSE has joined the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance 2016-07-06 12:23 4KB sdtimes.com 50 iOS 10 Will Allow iPhone Users to Instantly Register as Organ Donors Health app coming with new option to become a donor 2016-07-06 12:19 2KB news.softpedia.com 51 IDC predicts slowdown in public cloud infrastructure spend will be short-lived IDC claims prospect of overseas datacentre builds and growing enterprise demand for off-premise services should ensure sales of IT infrastructure increase through 2016 2016-07-06 12:15 2KB www.computerweekly.com 52 New partnership delivers cloud solution for the insurance industry Insurance companies have slightly different software needs from other businesses. They need to expand accounts, drive renewals, streamline the new policy acquisition process and manage claims. Insurance companies have slightly different software needs from other businesses. They need to expand accounts, drive renewals,... 2016-07-06 12:08 2KB feeds.betanews.com 53 Tesla Autopilot Crash Under NHTSA Investigation The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into the circumstances surrounding a fatal accident involving a Tesla being driven under autopilot. 2016-07-06 12:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 54 IBM Opens Blockchain-Oriented, Bluemix Garage In NYC This week, IBM added a seventh garage for developers. Big Blue is opening a BlueMix Garage in New York City that will focus on financial services, including the use of blockchain technology. 2016-07-06 11:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 55 Google's robot cars recognize cyclists' hand signals — better than most cyclists Google's self-driving car can recognize, understand and remember cyclists hand signals, Recode reports. 2016-07-06 10:25 3KB www.cnbc.com 56 Uber App Update To Track Driver Behavior The update is designed to capture data about how Uber's drivers operate their vehicles -- measuring braking, acceleration, and speed. 2016-07-06 10:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 57 Predictive Analytics, Wearables Data Driving EHR Growth Electronic health records may not be new, but they are gaining strong adoption. That's driven by trends such as integration with predictive analytics systems and telemedicine. 2016-07-06 10:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 58 The New IT: Driving Business Innovation With Tech Andi Mann, chief technology advocate at Splunk, sees major changes afoot in how IT and business are aligning. Here, he shares experiences with CIOs and other IT leaders as they work on developing strategies to derive real business outcomes from the technology they use every day. 2016-07-06 08:06 6KB www.informationweek.com 59 Starship Technologies To Test Robot Delivery Service Pedestrians in several European cities will soon see semi- autonomous robots traveling alongside them, delivering goods for local merchants. 2016-07-06 08:06 5KB www.informationweek.com 60 Google is working to make every website viewable in VR WebVR support is a work in progress for the Chromium project, which could one day change how we browse the Internet 2016-07-06 07:49 1KB www.infoworld.com 61 New Tor-powered backdoor program targets Macs The Eleanor malware allows attackers to execute commands and scripts, steal and modify files and take pictures using the webcam 2016-07-06 07:46 3KB www.infoworld.com 62 Testing GTX 1080 SLI Performance with Dual Palit GeForce Cards In this article, we're taking a close look at the GTX 1080's dual-card SLI performance at 4K resolution to see exactly how much more graphics-crunching horsepower that second GPU brings to the table. 2016-07-06 19:56 4KB www.techspot.com

63 Oracle must pay $3bn compensation to HPE over Itanium support Oracle loses latest round in five-year legal battle with HPE,Software,Chips and Components,Hardware ,software,Oracle,Itanium,server,Unix,Intel,HPE,HP 2016-07-07 00:01 883Bytes www.computing.co.uk 64 Cisco and IBM to partner on collaboration tools and analytics New services underpinned by IBM Watson analytics,Software ,IBM,Cisco 2016-07-07 00:01 670Bytes www.computing.co.uk 65 Engineer models heart valves, wind turbines for better designs, performance -- ScienceDaily Computer modeling technologies are being developed to help engineers design better machines. The models are being applied to wind turbines, artificial hearts and gas turbines. 2016-07-06 19:54 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 66 How to tame your robot -- ScienceDaily A student has put the power of interacting with robots into our hands — literally. 2016-07-06 19:54 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 67 Bioinformatics software developed to predict effect of cancer-associated mutations: Software analyzes 40,000 proteins per minute -- ScienceDaily A new piece of software has been developed that analyses mutations in proteins. These mutations are potential inducers of diseases, such as cancer. The development is free, easy, versatile and, above all, fast bioinformatics application that is capable of analyzing and combining the... 2016-07-06 19:54 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 68 Computing a secret, unbreakable key: Researchers develop the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution -- ScienceDaily What once took months by some of the world's leading scientists can now be done in seconds by undergraduate students thanks to new software, paving the way for fast, secure quantum communication. Researchers developed the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution. 2016-07-06 19:54 3KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 69 Computer security: With Boxmate malicious programs have no place left to hide -- ScienceDaily By preventing unexpected behavior changes, the “Boxmate” approach defends existing embedded systems, mobile devices, and even servers against known and as-yet unknown forms of attack. 2016-07-06 19:54 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com Articles

69 articles, 2016-07-07 00:01

1 Windows 10 will continue to evolve post- Anniversary Update (2.04/3) So last week, we had confirmation that the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 will land on August 2, but some Windows Insiders (testers) have wondered what might happen to the whole programme and deployment of preview builds after the big upgrade has been pushed out. Well, it seems that Microsoft simply wants to continue with the system, kicking out preview builds in the exact same manner after the Anniversary Update goes live. Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group – who recently took over from Gabe Aul as Windows Insider chief – tweeted in reply to a question from one tester: "We will definitely keep pushing builds post-anniversary update. This system seems to work pretty well. " Currently, the final bug squashing for the Anniversary Update is taking place, to make sure everything is fully shipshape when the upgrade is unleashed in just under a month's time. Development of any big new features was frozen a little while ago, with these being put back to the second major 'Redstone' update which should emerge early in 2017. So what new tricks will Windows 10 gain come August 2? Anniversary improvements will include bolstered security (from Windows Hello and Windows Defender), Windows Ink enhancements, tighter integration between PCs and the Xbox One console, and a raft of embellishments to the Edge browser and Cortana. Check out this article for the full skinny on what's coming. Via: WinBeta Article continues below 2016-07-06 12:58 By Darren

2 C++17 Feature List is Now Complete, Enters Review (1.02/3) During the last meeting in Oulu, Finland, the ISO C++ committee completed the definition of the C++17 feature list. At the meeting, a number of new language and library features were approved, including constexpr if , template , structured bindings, and others. As committee member Jens Weller writes , now that the feature list has been closed, a review period will start: The next two meetings mostly will process reviews, feedback and issues flagged by national bodies. This will not add new things to the standard, but can have minor or major changes. Among the features that were added to C++17 in the last committee meeting in Oulu, Weller highlights the following: Additionally, Sutter mentions new features that deserve to be highlighted, including: The list above only includes new features that have been approved in the last committee meeting, but the list of features that will be part of the new C++17 standard is much longer. A useful resource to get an overview of what the new standard should include at the end of the review process can be found in this Stack Overflow thread. 2016-07-06 21:00 Sergio De

3 Java 9 on the Brink of a Delivery Date and Scope Review After the May 2016 deadline was missed for a feature complete Java 9, Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform, suggested a method to collectively review all work remaining in unfinished JEPs and decide whether delaying the project further to accommodate, or descope them. Although the process hasn't finished yet, the current state suggests a combination of both. Mark Reinhold has previously stated his view regarding the measures to be taken when a new version of Java doesn't meet its deadline: on one side, there is a core set of functionality that gives meaning to the new version, and delivery has to be delayed if needed to include this core functionality ; on the other side, he emphasises the importance of establishing a relatively predictable cadence for new versions, concluding that non-core functionality should be descoped if it's not going to be finished on time. This rationale gives base to the process that was proposed so as to select the JEPs for which Java 9 will wait, and the ones that will have to be derived at a later state. This process expects JEP owners to either request an extension of the deadline, indicating the estimated date of delivery, or to drop Java 9 as their target. For those who do request the extension, a review process will determine whether the extension is granted or not. This process affects 11 JEPs out of a total of 82. Among the JEPs at risk and judging by the state of the issue tracker , as of the moment of writing this article, ten have requested a deadline extension, which has been already granted for seven of them; the other three are still pending. The reviewed due date for these accepted JEPs is 1st September, meaning a delay of roughly three months. If we were to assume that the current picture represents the final decision, Java 9 would be affected by a further delay of three months, potentially pushing GA to June 2017 , and four JEPs would be descoped to prevent further delays. The JEPs to be potentially descoped would be: Although nothing is definitive yet, it seems that recent developments are shaping Java 9 closer to its final form. If the aforementioned JEPs are finally dropped, further analysis will be needed to assess the impact, especially around JEP 282 (jlink), which seems a fundamental component of the Module System. 2016-07-06 20:59 Abraham Marín

4 npm Releases Enterprise Add-ons for Security, Licensing Npm has released Enterprise add-ons, allowing developers to directly integrate third-party tools for the first time. Ben Coe, general manager of npm Enterprise, told InfoQ: Think: a security vendor’s green checkbox verifies that code is safe; a license audit tool warns that a package’s dependency relies on the GPL; a CI tool watches for dependency updates and warns of what would break... In npm's blog post Introducing add-ons for npm Enterprise Coe said npm Enterprise exposes an API allowing third- party developers to build on top of npm Enterprise product. Explaining the motivation behind the move, Coe said add-ons have "the power to combine what were discrete parts of your development workflow into a single user experience, and knock out the barriers that stand in the way of bringing open source development’s many-small-reusable-parts methodology into larger organizations. " A typical Node.js application consumes hundreds of dependencies: too many to be easily tracked. This challenge is made even harder as most of these dependencies are indirect, and fetched via another package. Coe likens reviewing the license requirements "of each piece of external code" to security research, saying "trying to manually confirm the licensing of every dependency (and their dependencies, and their dependencies…) is impossible to scale. " The security risks associated with an enterprise using open source code mean that if a package has security vulnerabilities, the application may become exposed, and if they are malicious, the application can be compromised. In the blog post The npm Meltdown Uncovers Serious Security Risks Nicolás Bevacqua said “The vast majority of npm users are benevolent, though. This is why semver mostly works. Trusting package authors mostly works. Until it doesn’t.” Partner to npm, Node Security Platform , known for providing security information on audited modules announced in a blog post their security add-on on for npm Enterprise. Adam Baldwin, founder of the NSP, said: For years, our nsp tool has been a pivotal source of intelligence on vulnerabilities in Node dependencies. Beginning today, nsp’s security vulnerability notices will be exposed conveniently right inside of npm Enterprise. The nsp add-on provides developers with security information in the sidebar of the module detail page, including details on if a module has known vulnerabilities, giving a link to a more detailed security report. Baldwin promises that also coming soon for Enterprise customers is published information on verified modules, as audited by the Node Security team. According to npm, everyone stands to benefit from the movement to bring open source code, workflows, and tools into the enterprise. "When companies develop proprietary code the same way communities build open source projects, then the open source community’s methods and tooling become the default way to build software," Coe said. 2016-07-06 20:59 James Chesters

5 PHP Web Development Resources PHP is the focus of this week's round up of interesting posts from external blogs. Among the mix you'll find guidelines to reduce complexity, a comparison with HHVM and an excursion into Docker. We start with praise for PHP and end with a rant about its shortcomings. PHP web development is one among several web development methods that will never fade away. With every passing year, it has become the most trusted platform for developers and companies for website development. The reason for such tremendous popularity of PHP is the outcome of the continuous research and development. Through this blog, I am going to unveil the top reasons that stand out for why PHP 7 is ideal for website development. The enormous strides that WordPress has taken as a platform in the past 12 years have been mirrored by developments around the language it's written in: PHP. Though new languages and frameworks grab the headlines every couple of months, PHP still powers the vast majority of the consumer- facing web. In this article, we’ll cover what you need to know as a developer to keep your PHP skills up to par for WordPress and the wider web beyond. As with any successful recipe, there are several key ingredients we use in creating our software here at Epignosis HQ: a passion for creating things; an understanding of the e-learning market and our customers needs; hard work and long hours; hard-core programming chops; ketchup (just kidding). In this behind-the-scenes post we’ll delve in why we opted for PHP, what benefits it gives to our team, and how those translate to a better product experience for our customers. PHP is pretty much a freestyle programming language. It's dynamic and quite forgiving towards the programmer. As a PHP developer you therefore need a lot of discipline to get your code right. Over the years I've read many programming books and discussed code style with many fellow developers. This article reflect what I see as some of the most helpful rules for delivering better code. Have you heard of Docker? I first heard this word a year ago. It's all about containers, I was told. Awesome. What are containers?, I thought. I dug deeper, and I read all about containerization, process isolation, and union filesystems. There were so many terms and concepts flying around that my head started spinning. At the end of the day, I was still scratching my head asking what is Docker? and how can Docker help me? I've learned a lot since then, and I want to show you how Docker has changed my life as a developer. In this article I will show you how to build an efficient PHP development environment with Docker. PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages used for web development. The latest version of PHP, PHP 7 is a new version of the language that is been optimized for fast performance. However, PHP has a rival in HHVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine) - a virtual tool that executes PHP code. The competition between these two options is heating up, so let’s take a look at the performance that each can offer. When I first heard about micro-frameworks I thought they were suitable only for small projects, prototyping and small REST APIs (or other types of APIs). Well this kind of thinking wasn’t my fault. That’s how some micro- frameworks were presented to the world. Are micro-frameworks really easy to use and aimed mainly at small projects? When Rasmus Lerdorf first put PHP together, he - quite sensibly, despite his heritage - chose not to write it in Greenlandic or Danish. Good job too - that would have been rather unpleasant to work with. He opted instead, being in Canada, for a more local tongue. No, not French. developers in Britain have been grumpy about this ever since. What was he thinking? And more importantly, how do we undo this travesty? How do we developers ensure the traditions of the British Empire continue to be upheld, even in the digital age? I'm cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There's a lot in the world of technology I don't like, and that's really to be expected-programming is a hilariously young discipline, and none of us have the slightest clue what we're doing. Combine with Sturgeon's Law, and I have a lifetime's worth of stuff to gripe about. PHP is an embarrassment, a blight upon my craft. It’s so broken, but so lauded by every empowered amateur who’s yet to learn anything else, as to be maddening. It has paltry few redeeming qualities and I would prefer to forget it exists at all. But I’ve got to get this out of my system. So here goes, one last try. When choosing a WordPress host, one of the most important considerations is performance. Of course, every hosting provider will say their service is the fastest, the most scalable, and the most reliable. So how do you evaluate different providers and determine which is right for your needs? The Weekly Top 10: SharePoint and Other CMS Platforms 2016-07-06 19:54 Written by

6 How DevOps transformed Hiscox into an organisation that can deploy code in 30 minutes The world of insurance is often portrayed as staid and conservative when it comes to IT, and Hiscox was no exception. The company has about 2,000 employees, some 250 of them working in IT. But with competitive pressures growing the company has shifted to a DevOps culture in a bid to keep up with change in the industry. James Waterfield, senior cloud specialist at Hiscox, said at the DevOps Summit 2016 that, prior to the shift, IT struggled to support the company's increasing demands. "The required pace of change is a pressure. The business wants change, but IT couldn't deliver change quickly enough. They also won't let you take systems down due to the fear of the unknown," he said. Jeremy McGee, DevOps consultant at the insurer, added: "We're only just now finishing the Windows 2003 decommissioning process. IT works. Why do we need to change it and spend money on it? " Waterfield continued: "How do you support something running on Cobol when the only guy who knows it has left? We were managing old applications which were out of support [from the vendor], and it's hard to get people to agree who's responsible. The pace of change was slow. " The firm was interested in moving to more of a DevOps culture, but the change wasn't easy to instigate. "How do you do DevOps when you've got lots of pre-packaged applications? " asked McGee. "There was finger-pointing, people saying 'We can't install this, it must be infrastructure's fault.' We weren't doing very well. Puppet does a survey each year, and it sums up organisations into three camps: low, medium and high performers. " Hiscox found itself in the first category, managing one software release a year which might take a week to roll out. "And there was the problem that because the business didn't want downtime, everyone tried to cram as many changes as they could into one maintenance window. So rolling that back if anything went wrong was very difficult," said Waterfield. McGee added that the company kept its targets reasonable, aiming for improvements in the speed and quality of delivery rather than expecting to go from an also-ran to Olympic gold. "We wanted to go from a low to medium performer. Let's not boil the ocean. So we started in the application side," he said. "The UK underwriting application was ancient. It needed shooting. So we bought a new packaged system, and because it was packaged deploying it was straightforward. "The vendor had already solved the problem of installing it easily. Customer numbers two and three effectively paid for the automation of the deployment cycle, and we just rode on their coat tails. Puppet stood up the infrastructure, IBM did orchestration and deployment, and we had a little bit of Powershell in there too. " He explained that when this was presented to the IT director, he was delighted that the organisation now had the ability to deploy application code in half an hour. "They looked at that and said it's gone from a week to 30 mins. That's great," said McGee. However, the dirty secret, McGee explained, was on the infrastructure side. "We gave the business faster changes on the application side, so there were lots of smiles and high fives, but that doesn't help when you come to work on the infrastructure end," he said. Waterfield added that the solution was to be able to describe the entire infrastructure in code. "We identified that we needed to create the capability to describe the infrastructure in code. But how? On premise? Buy a solution? Create our own from scratch? Or use something which exists on a cloud platform? " he said. 2016-07-06 17:27 www.v3

7 Apple Seeds Fifth Beta of iOS 9.3.3, Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan, and tvOS 9.2.2 The new Beta of iOS 9.3.3 comes only one week from the Beta 4 builds, which Apple released last week on the 29th of June, and one day after the release of the second Beta version for the upcoming iOS 10 , macOS Sierra 10.12, tvOS 10, and watchOS 3 operating systems, which only registered developers can currently install. Once again, Apple ditched the watchOS 2.2.2 operating system for Apple Watch devices, which hasn't been present in the last two Beta releases. That's probably because there's nothing else to fix or improve in the upcoming maintenance update of the watchOS 2.2 series. Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 build 15G26, iOS 9.3.3 beta 5 build 13G34, and tvOS 9.2.2 beta 5 build 13Y825 are now live in your Apple Developer account, or, if you are a public beta tester running a previous Beta release of any of these OSes, you can now install the Beta 5 version via the OTA updates or the Mac App Store. Now that the Beta 5 release is out, we're expecting to see the final release of the iOS 9.3.3, Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan, watchOS 2.2.2, and tvOS 9.2.2 maintenance update in the coming weeks, until the end of July, when Apple should also start seeding the first Beta builds of iOS 10, macOS Sierra 10.12, watchOS 3, and tvOS 10 to public beta testers. Again, if you are installing a Beta of the iOS, Mac OS X El Capitan, watchOS, or tvOS operating systems on your registered devices, please try to keep in mind that they are pre-release versions, should might contains bugs and shouldn't be used as a daily driver. It is always better to wait for the stable builds to come out. 2016-07-06 17:27 Marius Nestor

8 Microsoft has cut the price of its Lumia 550 in the UK and Ireland by 20% Last month, Microsoft cut the price of its Lumia 950 and 950 XL in the UK by 17%. It has now applied permanent price cuts to its other two Windows 10 Mobile handsets as well. Today, it slashed 25% off the Lumia 650 in the UK, and 35% off in Ireland , less than five months after it launched. The Lumia 550 went on sale in the UK for £99.99 SIM-free in December. In April, it cut £10 off that price in a special offer that ended on June 30 , but its official full retail price remained at £99.99. Today, Microsoft quietly trimmed 20% off that price in the UK, reducing it to £79.99 SIM-free . And as with the Lumia 650, the 550's price has also been permanently cut in the Republic of Ireland. Previously sold for €129.99, Microsoft has now reduced it by €30 (23%) to €99.99 . But even at these reduced prices, you should think carefully before buying one. Unlike the impressive Lumia 650 , the cheaper Lumia 550 earned itself a pretty poor score in our review. 2016-07-06 17:22 Andy Weir

9 Uber Drivers Share Secrets They Hear in Their Cars Uber drivers have created a thread on Reddit in order to share the stories that they heard from riders and while some of them are downright hilarious, others can be so scary that they even determined one Uber driver to quit the service. But lets get to it, one Uber driver stated that he picked up a middle-aged couple which fought all the 30-minute ride and tried to rope him into their argument. Another driver said he picked up 2 girls and one guy, who were so happy with being friends and kept saying how they should hang out more. The funny thing is that by the time they reached their destination, they already had an argument and hated each other. Other Uber drivers had some even scary experiences with riders launching threats and hypothetical statements that caused the drivers to even pull out from the service. The thread on Reddit is quite long and contains all sort of posts and experiences that Uber drivers have encountered during their rides. While some are quite surprising, let's not forget that these things happen, especially in businesses that require lots of interaction with customers. 2016-07-06 16:52 Alexandra Vaidos

10 WhatsApp and Facebook Blocked in Zimbabwe to Prevent Coordinated Protests According to multiple reports, users couldn't access WhatsApp early in the morning, and a total ban affecting all the country's major mobile operators was in place by 07:00 AM local time. By mid-day, the ban had extended to all ISPs and users started reporting difficulties in accessing Facebook as well. For the past few weeks, Zimbabwe has been engulfed in protests as citizens voiced their complaints against the country's mismanagement by its ruling party, ZANU-PF, which recently faced criticism and cyber-attacks from the Anonymous hacker collective. Leading up to today, Zimbabweans have been very active on social media under the #ThisFlag and #ShutDownZim hashtags. Activists called for a total government shutdown scheduled for today. People were asked to stay at home, and government workers not to show up for work. If possible, people were urged to protest on the street. According to IndependentOnline , the government blamed WhatsApp and other social media outlets for helping organize the protest, for spreading lies, and for inciting people to violence. The government wants to extend the ban to other social networks as well. Later in the day, despite the WhatsApp and Facebook ban, users were exchanging guides on how to access the services via VPNs. Reuters reported that police made 40 arrests across Zimbabwe following today's protests. AFKInsider reports that the protest was successful as very few businesses were open, some schools remained closed, and taxi drivers quadrupled their fairs in support for the movement. Protesters also blocked some roads with vehicles, making public transportation difficult. According to TimesLive , the Zimbabwe government is spending around 82 percent of all national revenue on wages alone, and the country is on the verge of economical collapse. Below is a warning sent by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) to members of the public, obtained by Zimbabwe Newsday . 2016-07-06 16:31 Catalin Cimpanu

11 Dell increases prices in the UK by 10% following Brexit Earlier this week, OnePlus announced that it will soon raise the price of its new flagship phone in the UK by £20 to £329 - an increase of 6.5%, which the company directly attributed to currency fluctuations associated with the recent UK referendum decision to exit the European Union. Now, Dell has joined in the post-Brexit price rises too. The pound sterling has been weakening following the referendum result, and hit a 31-year low against the US dollar this week, pushing up the cost of imports into the UK. As a result of sterling's fall, Dell is increasing its prices by 10% in the UK. A spokesperson for the company told The Register : But it's not all doom and gloom for the UK following its Brexit decision. Microsoft said a few days ago that it will continue to invest there as one of its key international markets, despite previously stating that it would have preferred the UK to remain within the EU. Source: The Register 2016-07-06 16:22 Andy Weir

12 Ubuntu Linux to be bundled as preferred OS with Pivotal Cloud Foundry app platform Canonical and Cloud Foundry developer Pivotal have agreed a partnership in which Canonical's Ubuntu Linux will become the preferred operating system for running Cloud Foundry, with secure certified Ubuntu images included. Cloud Foundry is one of the most popular platform-as-a- service suites for developing and deploying cloud-native applications, and versions of it are integrated in a number of platforms such as IBM's Bluemix developer cloud and HPE's Helion Stackato. The new collaboration pairs Cloud Foundry with Ubuntu Linux , which is the most widely deployed Linux distribution for running servers, especially in the cloud. "Ubuntu on Pivotal Cloud Foundry brings together the leading Linux OS and cloud-native platform for enterprise scale-out cloud deployments," said Dustin Kirkland, Canonical's head of Ubuntu product and strategy. Kirkland added that users will also get the full benefit of Canonical's professional service and support facilities when they choose Ubuntu images on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Ubuntu tied its release cycle to that of the OpenStack cloud framework a few years ago to synchronise a new release of Ubuntu Linux with the latest OpenStack enhancements every six months. Pivotal cited this as one of the reasons for standardising on Ubuntu as its preferred platform for running Cloud Foundry. "Widespread enterprise adoption in cloud and physical machines, predictable release quality every six months, an unequalled package portfolio, an excellent security track record, and outstanding leadership around Linux containers makes Ubuntu Pivotal's preferred operating system for Pivotal Cloud Foundry customers," said Pivotal's head of platform ecosystem Joshua McKenty. Tight collaboration between Pivotal and Canonical is also expected to bring further benefits for customers of the two products. For example, the pair are further hardening the Pivotal Cloud Foundry distribution of Ubuntu for US federal agencies and customers in tightly regulated industries. In particular, Pivotal and Canonical are working towards meeting the Defence Information Systems Agency Security Technical Implementation Guides and the Centre for Internet Security guidelines on security hardening. Pivotal and Canonical are also developing an industry standard set of security certifications for the best practice when using Ubuntu in cloud- native platform deployments. 2016-07-06 15:59 www.v3

13 Asus ZO1B with 5.5-inch Display and 2GB of RAM Spotted on GFXBench Asus ZO1B will feature a 5.5-inch display with 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution and carries Snapdragon 435 chipset with an octa-core 1.4GHz CPU, coupled with Adreno 505 GPU. The phone comes with 2GB of RAM inside and has 32GB of internal storage. In addition, rear camera capacity is set to reach 12MP, with 8MP in the front. The smartphone is listed as running Android Marshmallow 6.0.1, according to the post on GFXBench (via Roland Quandt ). The device's code name is Asus ZO1B and there's speculation that this is a lower priced variant of the Asus ZenFone 3. The two devices carry the same screen size and resolution, but all other specs seem to be lower for the Asus ZO1B. Asus ZenFone 3 already comes with a 5.7-inch variant called Deluxe and a 6.8-inch model named Ultra, so it wouldn't be quite out of the ordinary for Asus to launch a lower priced version of the ZenFone 3. Asus ZenFone 3 comes with a 5.5-inch screen and 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution, together with Snapdragon 625 chipset and quad-core CPU, coupled with Adreno 506 GPU graphics. In addition, the phone's internal storage reaches 32GB with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, the smartphone has a powerful 23MP rear camera and 8MP in the front. Obviously, it runs Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 out of the box. At this point, there's no information as to if or when Asus will unveil the Asus ZO1B or if it's even a device part of the ZenFone 3 series. 2016-07-06 15:58 Alexandra Vaidos

14 The best free software uninstallers 2016 Software installers are rarely tidy - they spread files throughout your system, and their built-in uninstallers don't always clear it all away afterwards. Sometimes you'll be informed that "some elements could not be removed" as the uninstaller effectively shrugs its shoulders and leaves the mess behind - whether it's temporary files, old shortcuts or broken registry entries. All this detritus builds up over time, and can slow down your system or cause conflicts further down the line - particularly in the case of security software, which won't run properly if it detects files associated with another tool. Third-party uninstallers can clear up the mess in a few. If you're already having trouble with a program you thought you'd removed, the tool can scan your drives for files and broken links left over. If you want to uninstall a program thoroughly, the tool will run the program's own uninstaller, then perform a cleanup scan immediately afterwards. More advanced tools will monitor what happens when you install a new program - what files are created and changed - so it can rapidly reverse those changes when you want to remove it. Uninstallers can be very handy, but some try to offer too many tools at once (like watered-down versions of Piriform's excellent CCleaner ), or even attempt to install additional 'optimization' software on your machine, which is the last thing you want. Keep an eye out for potentially unwanted programs while installing a new tool, or try the portable version if one is available. IObit Uninstaller does an excellent job of scanning for junk left over by uninstalled programs, and ensuring they're removed properly in the first place IObit Uninstaller gets right down to business, scanning your system for installed software the moment it starts. Its smart, clear interface displays a list of all your installed software, with extra tabs if you're only interested in the newest programs (if you've tried something new and don't like it), and the biggest ones (which will have the greatest impact on system performance). There's a batch processing option for removing multiple programs at once. If you've already uninstalled a program but suspect it's left mucky footprints across your drive, IObit's deep scanner can hunt down junk including broken shortcuts and caches created when installing software updates. IObit Uninstaller also takes a look at your web browsers to identify any plugins that could be uninstalled to speed up your surfing. It currently supports Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not Chrome or Edge. Each extension is accompanied by a user rating to help you decide whether to keep it. There's a file shredder thrown in too, which doesn't really fit with the premise of an uninstaller, but all the other tools are relevant and useful. IObit Uninstaller is well worth keeping on hand, and its thorough scanning makes it the equal of many premium uninstallers. Wise Program Uninstaller doesn't have tools like install logging, but it's easy to use and incredibly small Wise Program Uninstaller is a portable app, so you don't have to worry about it leaving mess of its own, though it offers you a free trial of a product called Spyhunter that you might prefer to decline. It's a very quick and lean little program that scans your system for already installed programs and displays ratings to show you how other users feel about them. You probably already know what you want to erase, but it's a thoughtful touch. Your choices for each program are Safe and Forced uninstall (some also have a Repair option, but only if it's part of the software in the first place). Safe uninstall is simply a way to access the program's own uninstaller, whereas Forced performs a deep scan to track down scrap files and broken registry entries. It shows you everything it's identified before deleting them, but this doesn't serve much purpose; you're unlikely to be able to pick out an individual Registry entry and say "Hang on, I need that! " The main downside of its small size is that it can't log new programs as you install them, but it's well designed and isn't bulked out with unecessary system tools. GeekUninstaller is a portable app, which means it doesn't even need to be installed itself before it begins cleaning up other programs GeekUninstaller is another neat portable uninstaller, weighing in at just 2.5MB. Although a 'Pro' version is advertised on developer's site, this is actually a completely different program called Uninstall Tool - GeekUninstaller is completely free, It performs a speedy system scan and provides the usual options: regular or forced uninstall. If you don't recognize something, GeekUninstaller will Google it for you - a simple but welcome addition that saves you loading up a browser. That's pretty much it - there's no deep scan for remnants of previously uninstalled programs, and no monitoring for new installations, but if you're simply after something to clean up as you go, uninstallers don't come smaller and simpler than this. It comes in over 30 languages too, which is undoubtedly a bonus. The free trial of Ashampoo is excellent if you want to give your PC a deep cleaning, or take the premium tool for a test-run before opening your wallet This is a time-limited trial of Ashampoo Uninstaller rather than the full program, but is well worth considering if you need to purge your PC of one particularly stubborn piece of software, or want to give it a thorough spring clean. The basic trial lasts 10 days, but you can extend for an extra month by signing up for an account (a standard requirement with Ashampoo's free software). The uninstaller itself is impressive, as you'd expect from a premium product - it can remove existing applications, and log new ones as you add them. You can set it to start automatically at the same time as Windows, though your startup time might take a knock as a result. There are also system optimization tools like a file shredder, file restorer, disk defragmenter and even a font manager, but Ashampoo Uninstaller is an excellent tool without these - they are just padding. Revo Uninstaller Free is a competent tool, but cluttered with unnecessary extra utilities and links to Windows' own system tools Revo Uninstaller Free 's icon-strewn interface is colorful but cluttered, and includes tools like a startup program manager, plus links to Windows' own system tools (including defrag and on-screen keyboard). These really aren't necessary, and just distract from an otherwise solid free uninstaller. There are four uninstall options: built-in, safe (built-in with additional registry scanning), moderate (with extra scanning of common locations for leftover files) and advanced (moderate mode, followed by a thorough scanning of your whole system). There's also a strange 'Hunter Mode', which lets you uninstall programs by dragging their icons onto a crosshair on your desktop. It's much more work than selecting the program from a list - a metaphor gone rogue. Unlike some uninstallers, Revo begins by creating a system restore point, which is reassuring. It can't log new installations, though - if you want that, you might like to give Revo's Pro version a whirl for 30 days. It's worlds away from the free edition's late-90s styling, and will give your drives a good scrubbing. Article continues below 2016-07-06 15:46 By Cat

15 Moto Z Play Variant with Snapdragon 625 Gets Benchmarked Moto Z Play is the third smartphone in the Moto Z series, the one that Motorola didn't unveil during Tech World. Specs of the Moto Z Play have surfaced over the past few months and the smartphone was recently spotted on AnTuTu, according to GizmoChina. Moto Z Play has run the benchmarking app and the test revealed that it will be coming with Snapdragon 625 mid-range chipset and two variants, depending on the internal storage and RAM capacity. The first variant would have 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, while the second is set to come with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The smartphone will come with a 16MP camera at the back and it will run Android Marshmallow 6.0.1. Moto Z Play managed to get 59K points in the benchmark test, which is a satisfactory score for a mid-range device. It will also come with Adreno 506 graphics processing unit and the front camera is expected to reach 5MP. Previous rumors stated that the smartphone could have a 3,500mAh battery and come with support for Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS. The price of the smartphone is said to reach $300 for the Chinese variant, but it seems quite high considering that other smartphones come with more powerful specs, like the Xiaomi Mi5 or the ZUK Z2. At this point, there's no information as to when Motorola will decide to unveil the Moto Z Play and which countries will have access to it. 2016-07-06 15:34 Alexandra Vaidos

16 Sound Devices Firmware 3.10 Is Available for 633, 664, and 688 Field Mixers In addition to that, the producer adds a new menu option to disable the CL-12 Output level controls, allows adjusting Slate Mic from 0 to 56dB in 1dB increments, and gives users the ability to set Take Designator to any desired value. If applied, firmware 3.10 will fix issues with arming paired LR or X1/X2 tracks using the CL-12 LR, X1/X2 pots, the CL-12 Mix Bus Track LED behavior, as well as resolves certain reboot-related problems regarding CL-12 channels and fader values. Moreover, owners will now be able to properly scroll frequency upwards in the Rx Screen with the Lectrosonics SRc unit. Also, the PFL switch will save edits to track names, and a few other changes will be implemented as highlighted on the description page of each device. When it comes to installation, first save and unzip the appropriate archive for your model, copy the .prg file to the root level of a memory card, insert it into the mixer, and turn the device’s power on. Now, go to Setup Menu > System > Update Firmware, follow the on-screen instructions, and wait as the mixer does its job. Once completed, the device will automatically reboot and briefly display the installed firmware version. That said, from the links below, follow the one that best describes your filed mixer name, download and apply it to your device, and constantly check our website to be aware when a newer version si available. 2016-07-06 14:51 Iulian Pascal

17 Best 5 Jabber Clients for Windows in Pictures In addition to XMPP, Pidgin supports AIM, Bonjour, Facebook, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MXit, MySpaceIM, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, Yahoo and Yahoo JAPAN. It can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Amiga and Meego. You can set up multiple accounts, allow multiple simultaneous logins for the same account from different locations, transfer files, customize fonts and sound alerts, and load different UI themes. Also, Pidgin has features for creating chatrooms or joining existing ones, and organizing buddies from the chat list in different groups. You can set up actions to auto-perform when someone sends a message, signs on and off, goes away, is no longer idle, starts typing, and so on, like opening an IM window, showing a notification, sending a message, opening a file or playing sound. Besides using a built-in collection of smileys, you can create custom smileys from any local image. Privacy options can be configured to allow or block certain users, and logs with past conversations can be saved to file. There are a bunch of plugins available for auto-accepting file transfers, storing notes, detecting friends who are currently typing to you. Additional plugins can be downloaded from the web to fully customize the IM client. Besides Jabber, Miranda supports AIM, GG, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, IAX (Inter-Asterisk Exchange), Netsend and Tlen protocols, among others. It can only be installed on Windows. You can send and receive files, set up a chat room from the current conversation on the spot, create and manage groups for your friends, as well as view a history of all past conversations. It's possible to customize various parts of Miranda, such as the list of friends, status bar, avatars, fonts and colors, hotkeys, icons, menus, and sounds. The most attractive feature of this IM is that it supports an extensive range of addons. Aside from Jabber, Trillian supports AOL Instant Messenger, Bonjour, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo! Messenger, Foursquare, Twitter, IMAP and POP3. It can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS and Blackberry OS. To be able to use this IM, you have to sign up for a free Trillian account that combines all protocols. Trillian has a color-coded system to easily tell apart the different instant messaging services you connect to. It can be personalized with skins and plugins, such as spellchecker, weather monitor and RSS feed reader. You can customize the contact list layout, fonts and chats, create tabbed windows, chat with friends while playing games, control the way notifications appear, perform video calls, transfer files, record and view chat history, and more. Jitsi (formerly known as SIP Communicator) offers support for Jabber, AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, ippi, iptel.org, IRC and Yahoo. It can be installed on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Android devices. You can log chat history, send and receive files, create and join chat rooms, as well as call phone numbers and encrypt calls (SRTP and ZRTP) to protect your privacy in case you've been intercepted by a hacker. It's also possible to make video calls, set up a master password to prevent other PC users from accessing your personal account, generate fingerprints to increase security, and perform desktop streaming. Gajim supports only the Jabber protocol. However, it features emoticons, themes and support for a wide range of plugins, such as anti-spam, birthday reminder, Google Translate, offline bookmarks, quick replies, and location setter. You can transfer files, as well as save logs with conversations and synchronize them with the server. We've selected what we think to be the best Jabber clients available for Windows. Play this video to see how to connect to a Jabber server and check out our article for more info on Pidgin, Miranda, Trillian, Jitsi and Gajim: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Best-5-Jabber-Clients-for-Windows- in-Pictures-86636.shtml 2016-07-06 14:30 Elena Opris

18 NVIDIA’s 368.69 GeForce Graphics Driver Is Up for Grabs This update fixes BSOD events during Windows Media Player playback with Fast Sync enabled, adds DirectX 11 executables and profile for iRacing: Motorsport Simulator, and resolves the “The Crew” crashes spotted after a driver update. In addition to that, NVIDIA has managed to fix certain cuda-memcheck reports errors, the R3D preview in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, XSplit Broadcaster rendering problems, Sony Vaio laptop boot failures, as well as purple screen of death (PSOD) events with Windows 10 virtual machines. Moreover, the present driver should be able to set MOSAIC with a custom resolution and won’t have problems with GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition cards spinning up and down rapidly. When it comes to compatibility, NVIDIA has made available several downloadable packages targeted at both 32- and 64-bit variants of Microsoft’s Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 operating systems. However, bear in mind that, even though both desktop and notebook configurations are supported by this update, notebook systems are not compatible with Microsoft’s Windows XP and Vista platforms. 2016-07-06 14:07 Iulian Pascal

19 AT&T brings Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and Wi-Fi calling to Samsung Galaxy S6 active Few companies deserve much praise for the speed of their Marshmallow rollouts, but among the major US carriers, AT&T has been particularly poor in updating its handsets. Last month, it released Marshmallow for the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and S6 edge+ , three months after its rival US carriers began upgrading those devices. And following weeks of complaints from its customers earlier this year, it eventually upgraded its Galaxy S6 and S6 edge , three months after the rollout started elsewhere. It's now been nine months since Google originally released Marshmallow , and AT&T is finally getting around to releasing Android 6.0.1 for the Galaxy S6 active - the 'ruggedized' version of the Galaxy S6, which it launched exclusively over a year ago . The update weighs in at 1441MB, and bumps the build number up to MMB29K. G890AUCU3CPE4. Along with the standard improvements that come with Marshmallow - and Samsung's various additions, such as its TouchWiz interface - AT&T's update for the S6 active also includes support for Wi-Fi calling. The carrier announced last month that it would bring Wi-Fi calling to "select Android devices" , the first of which was the LG G4. A few weeks ago, AT&T exclusively launched the new Galaxy S7 active with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow pre-installed. Google has said that Android 7.0 Nougat will arrive this summer , but given AT&T's track record with upgrading its devices, don't expect to see Nougat on the S7 active until sometime in 2017. Source: AT&T via Android Police 2016-07-06 13:22 Andy Weir

20 Nvidia's new GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 cards don't support the HTC Vive over DisplayPort Nvidia’s new GTX 1080 and 1070 cards are all about powerful performance and support for cutting edge graphics. And part of that package is the notion that these are the cards to get for your VR experience. But as things stand right now, you might be disappointed to find out that the DisplayPorts on the GTX 1070 and 1080 don’t work with the HTC Vive. The HTC Vive, one of the big winners in the current VR market , doesn’t work properly with Nvidia’s new cards. The problem shows up when trying to connect the Vive via one of the DisplayPorts on the card. Users, both on Reddit and on Nvidia’s forums are reporting that this doesn’t work, with Steam not detecting the head mounted display. Tom’s Hardware points out that this configuration worked well on the GTX 980, but seems utterly broken on the new graphics cards. And the recent driver updates that Nvidia put out don’t seem to have helped. For its part Nvidia said it was investigating this issue, but that comment was made public was nearly a month ago and so far the company hasn’t put out a fix or any further notice. To be very clear though, the HTC Vive works well with the new cards when using the HDMI port. While that might be enough for most people, the founder’s editions of the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 each come with only one HDMI port; meaning, as things stand now, you’ll have to choose between using the Vive or connecting something else via the HDMI port. Users looking to mitigate this problem can either rely on the HDMI port, or buy one of the OEM GTX models, which usually offer more than one HDMI port. Of course, that doesn’t help those who already bought the new cards, so here’s hoping Nvidia puts out a driver update soon. Source: Tom’s Hardware Via: Techspot 2016-07-06 12:50 Vlad Dudau

21 BEBLOH Banking Trojan Outbreak Leads to National Security Alert in Japan The malware works in a similar way to other banking trojans, meaning it will inject itself into browser processes, also FTP and email clients, and collect the user's credentials. This data is then later used to commit fraudulent banking transactions. BEBLOH comes with tricks to avoid antivirus detection, such as hiding in the computer's memory and hollowing out system processes. According to a Trend Micro investigation, the trojan's authors switched their targeting from Europe to small Japanese banks towards the end of 2015. First signs of trouble appeared in December 2015, when the company detected 324 infections in the country alone. The number quickly rose to 2,562 in March 2016. Along with the quick rise in BEBLOH infections, authorities also detected increased activity from other banking trojans such as URSNIF and ZBOT. This eventually led the Japanese National Police Agency to publish a public alert on the rise of banking trojans on March 3, 2016. The agency revealed that crooks stole around ¥2.65 billion ($25.8 million), mostly by targeting rural banks and small credit unions. Crooks also targeted larger banks, but most of the time, they aimed at smaller banks because these institutions can't afford high-grade security systems like their larger counterparts. Trend Micro says recent BEBLOH versions contain code that specifically targets 17 Japanese banks. Besides the banking trojan, crooks also infected victims with the PUSHDO spambot. Detecting a BEBLOH campaign is not easy work because crooks use spam email messages to spread their malware, utilizing various subject lines that range from human resource issues to loans, and from online shopping to personal matters. 2016-07-06 12:39 Catalin Cimpanu

22 Data Generation Gap: Younger IT Workers Believe The Hype IT has been experiencing a bit of a generation gap between so-called digital natives, who grew up with iPhones and cloud computing, and older workers who didn't. Now, a new study from IDG Enterprise says younger workers see a lot more opportunity in big data than their older counterparts do. Specifically, workers aged 18 to 34 are "vastly more likely" than other age groups to strongly agree on the transformative potential of big data and their companies' readiness to take advantage of it, according to the IDG Enterprise Data & Analytics Survey 2016 . [Your job is probably secure. For now. Read Robots, AI Won't Destroy Jobs Yet.] IDG Enterprise surveyed 724 IT decision-makers of all ages involved in big data initiatives. The report does not reveal the numbers of respondents per age group. The report said respondents aged 55 and older are significantly more likely than those in other age groups to disagree that big data will open up new revenue opportunities and/or lines of business in the near future. These respondents are also more uncertain than other age groups about whether their big data ecosystem will change in the next 12 months, and how it will change. In its report, IDG Enterprise said aged-based differences about the value of data-driven projects may be attributable to "younger employees being more comfortable with the latest technologies and more inured to the inevitability of technology-driven disruption. On the other hand, older respondents have seen many supposedly transformational technologies come and go throughout their careers. " In other words, perhaps older respondents are more seasoned and cynical, having already been through multiple cycles of tech hype. Yet, technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics are driving big investments by enterprises, according to the report. More than half of respondents (53%) said their companies are currently implementing, or planning to implement, data-driven projects within the next 12 months. The report defines data-driven projects as those undertaken with the goal of generating greater value from existing data. Of the projects underway or in the planning stages, 26% of respondents said they are already implemented, 14% said they are in the process of implementation or testing, 13% said they're in planning implementation in the next 12 months, 8% said they are considering a data-driven project, and 8% said they're likely to pursue one but are still struggling to find the right strategy or solutions. How does your company stack up compared with these results? Do you believe there is an age gap when it comes to understanding the value of data-driven implementations? Tell us all what you think in the comments section below. 2016-07-06 11:06 Jessica Davis

23 21% off SentrySafe Fire-Safe Waterproof File Storage Box - Deal Alert Where do you store your most important CD's, DVD's, USB drives and documents? Are they protected from fire and water damage, if that "worst- case scenario" actually happens? SentrySafe's HD4100CG storage box is UL classified with 1/2-hour fire protection and ETL verified 1/2 hour fire protection for CD's, DVD's, USB drivers and memory sticks up to 1550F. It’s also ETL verified waterproof. It measures roughly 11x8 with a 9-inch depth. It currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 300 customers ( read reviews ) and its list price of $85 has been reduced by 21% to $68. See the discounted SentrySafe HD4100CG Fire-Safe Waterproof File now on Amazon. 2016-07-06 07:13 DealPost Team

24 And the next version of Google Android will be called... Nougat The next version of the Android operating system will be named Nougat, Google has confirmed. Announcing it in a tweet late on Thursday, it had been conjectured that Google might called it Nutella. However, the company has not yet revealed when it will be released. In terms of a release date, though, it is most likely that Nougat will debut alongside Google's next-generation Nexus smartphones, which could see models from HTC, Huawei and even Google itself. Most users have been able to test drive Android N for a few weeks after Google launched a public beta testing programme at this year's I/O conference. This means that, as well as making sure that Nougat is as bug-free as possible when it rolls out later this year, users can try out Android's new features, such as a split-screen mode, enhanced notifications and improved gaming smarts, thanks to its support of the Vulkan API. Android 7.0 Nougat also brings enhanced security through the use of file- based encryption and seamless updates, alongside a Data Saver mode that restricts how much 3G or 4G data you plough through and a system- wide Night Mode. The need for improved security has been underlined once again. A new report from Kaspersky revealed that Android devices are coming under increasing attack from new strains of mobile ransomware , and that UK users are among those at risk. The Android N release also has Daydream, Google's new virtual reality platform , although it will be supported only by Daydream-ready handsets running the OS. Google announced previously that firms including Samsung, HTC, LG, Huawei and Xiaomi are on board with Daydream, some of which will launch devices later this year. 2016-07-07 00:01 Carly Page

25 New software provides overview of big data of genome sequencing -- ScienceDaily ChIP sequencing -- an insight into the workflow of human cells The EaSeq software has been developed for analysis of so called ChIP sequencing. DNA sequencing is used for mapping the sequence of the base pairs, which our DNA consists of, and ChIP sequencing is a derived method in which the sequences are used to determine the presence of different cell components in the genome at a given time. Roughly speaking, ChIP sequencing can be compared to a microscope, which enables us to observe the presence of different cell components in the entire genome at a given time. The method is still quite young and holds the potential to be applied within many more scientific fields, which can benefit from understanding how healthy and pathological cells control and uses genes, says Associate Professor Mads Lerdrup Better analytical tools means a broader range of applications While ChIP sequencing has made it possible to produce enormous amounts of data very fast, the analysis of these data has -- until now -- been a tedious process. Most of the analytical software being used requires knowledge of computer programming and researchers have therefore been dependent on specialists in order to decode and analyze their data. EaSeq offers a far more visual and intuitive alternative, which makes it possible for biomedical researchers to study and test hypotheses using their own data. This means that instead of waiting for weeks for others to carry out an analysis, researchers will be able to perform the analyses themselves in a matter of hours. Today, DNA sequencing is gaining ground within the clinical area where it is e.g. being used for diagnosis and targeting of treatment within the cancer area. The developers of EaSeq see similar perspectives for ChIP sequencing in the clinical work, and in that context strong analytical tools will be pivotal. "The DNA sequence itself tells us very little about how cells actual decodes the DNA, and to understand this we need to map out which cell components are present in different parts of the genome at a specific time. It is our hope that we by increasing feasibility can enable researchers to faster uncover such knowledge and apply it clinically," says Associate professor Mads Lerdrup. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

26 New tool for forecasting behavior of the microbiome -- ScienceDaily The open source software package the researchers have designed, known as Microbial Dynamical Systems INference Engine (MDSINE), uses advanced machine learning technologies to accurately predict how microbial communities in the gut will grow and interact over time. The team validated MDSINE using extensive computational simulations, and also applied the software to infection experiments to evaluate the dynamics of C. difficile , a bacterial species that is the most common cause of infection in the hospital and can cause serious illness and even death in patients. The team also analyzed the effects of a "probiotic cocktail" of various bacterial strains that is being developed to treat inflammatory diseases, predicting the contributions of each member of the cocktail to maintain the stability of the bacterial community when diet was altered. "Every person has their own bacterial ecosystem living within them. There's a lot of exciting new evidence that giving patients bacteriotherapies, or cocktails of bacteria, may be effective in treating or preventing a variety of major diseases including infections, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and cancer. MDSINE is the first tool we've developed under the new BWH Precision Medicine Initiative, and we're releasing it as open source software in that hope that it will help to advance the bacteriotherapy field," said senior author Georg Gerber, MD, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor in Computational Pathology at BWH and Co-Director of the Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center at BWH. "Advanced computational methods like MDSINE are essential for understanding how to design and evaluate bacteriotherapies or `bugs as drugs,' and to tailor them to individual patients since everyone's microbiome is different. Our results have given us insights into new bacteriotherapies for C. difficile infection and inflammatory bowel disease, and moreover suggest general strategies for developing these therapies for many other diseases," said Vanni Bucci, PhD, first author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

27 Internet attacks: Finding better intrusion detection -- ScienceDaily Boldly trying a massive number of user name and password until you have that unique combination: that is an example of a 'brute force' Internet attack. Once having gained access to the user's computer, it can, in turn, be used for spreading illegal content or for performing a DDoS attack. Without knowing, users turn into attackers this way. This type of attacks take place via web applications that are relatively vulnerable, like WordPress or Joomla, but also using the Secure Shell (SSH) which enables remote login to a device. Check the contents of the data coming in, analyze network traffic and log files on every single computer: that's the classic approach. Flow based According to Rick Hofstede, this implies analyzing a vast amount of data that will never have effect. Within a network of a larger organizations, with probably tens of thousands of computers, smartphones and tablets connected, it will soon be impossible to check every device. Hofstede therefore chooses a 'flow based' approach: he looks at the data flow from a higher level and detects patterns. Just like you can recognize advertisement mailings without actually checking the content of the brochures. Major advantage is that this detection method can take place at a central spot, like a router taking care of traffic. Even if the number of devices connected to this router is growing rapidly -- and that will undoubtedly happen with the introduction of 5G and Internet of Things -, the detection can be scaled up easily. By zooming in on attacks that have effect, i.e. that lead to a 'compromise' and require action, Hofstede further narrows his analysis. Multiple attacks from the same sender can also be recognized in this way. Hofstede did not just test his methodology inside the lab, he made his 'SSHCure' software available open source, for Computer Emergency Response Teams of several organisations. His method proves to be effective, and diminishes the number of incidents, with detection accuracies up to 100% -- depending on the actual application and the type of network, for example. Future, more powerful routers will be able to perform the detection themselves, without the need of extra equipment, Hofstede expects. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

28 Delivering the Internet of the future, at the speed of light and open-sourced -- ScienceDaily The research by High Performance Networks (HPN) group in the University of Bristol's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering is published in the world's first scientific journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. The current internet infrastructure is not able to support independent development and innovation at physical and network layer functionalities, protocols, and services, while at the same time supporting the increasing bandwidth demands of changing and diverse applications. The research addresses this problem with a new high performance network infrastructure that is open and programmable and uses light to carry internet traffic. It introduces new concepts of open source optical internet enabled by optical white box and software defined network technologies Dr Reza Nejabati, Reader in Optical Networks in the HPN group, said: "Hardware and software technologies reported in this paper can potentially revolutionised optical network infrastructure the same way that Google Android and Apple iOS did for mobile phones. These technologies will hide complexity of optical networks and open them up for traditional programmers and application developers to create new type of internet applications taking advantages of speed of light. " Dimitra Simeonidou, Professor of High Performance Networks and who leads the HPN group, added: "New internet technologies frequently emerge, but most of them rarely result in new and revolutionary internet applications. The technologies suggested could pave the way for the creation of new internet services and applications not previously possible or disruptive. The technologies could also potentially change the balance of power from vendors and operators that are monopolising the current internet infrastructure to wider users and service providers. " 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

29 29 Ice sheet modeling of Greenland, Antarctica helps predict sea-level rise -- ScienceDaily To better understand this loss, a team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers has been improving the reliability and efficiency of computational models that describe ice sheet behavior and dynamics. The team includes researchers Irina Demeshko, Mike Eldred, John Jakeman, Mauro Perego, Andy Salinger, Irina Tezaur and Ray Tuminaro. This research is part of a five-year project called Predicting Ice Sheet and Climate Evolution at Extreme Scales (PISCEES), funded by the U. S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. PISCEES is a multi-lab, multi-university endeavor that includes researchers from Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Florida State University, the University of Bristol, the University of Texas Austin, the University of South Carolina and New York University. Sandia's biggest contribution to PISCEES has been an analysis tool, a land-ice solver called Albany/FELIX (Finite Elements for Land Ice eXperiments). The tool is based on equations that simulate ice flow over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and is being coupled to Earth models through the Accelerated Climate for Energy (ACME) project. "One of the goals of PISCEES is to create a land-ice solver that is scalable, fast and robust on continental scales," said computational scientist Irina Tezaur, a lead developer of Albany/FELIX. Not only did the new solver need to be reliable and efficient, but it was critical that the team develop a solver equipped with next-generation and advanced analysis capabilities. Tezaur said the team next needs to run the solver on new and emerging computers. They also need to be able to calibrate models and quantify uncertainties in expected sea-level rise. "The data we get from climate scientists are usually measurements from the top surface of the ice," she said. "To initialize an ice sheet simulation, we need information about what is happening inside and at the bottom of the ice. Determining interior and bedrock ice properties is what we call model calibration, and requires the solution of an inverse problem. A lot of our work has been in developing and implementing optimization algorithms that are able to solve these inverse problems robustly and efficiently. " Tezaur stresses that the success of PISCEES is due in large part to strong collaborations between glaciologists, climate modelers, computational scientists and mathematicians. "Glaciologists and climate scientist collaborators on PISCEES provide us with data sets to go into our model, while computational scientists come up with the right algorithms to use and implement them efficiently," she explains. Improving computational modeling The PISCEES project began in 2012 because there was no robust land-ice model as a building block for earth system models that calculate sea-level rise predictions to support the DOE's climate missions. Sandia's Albany/FELIX solver includes advanced capabilities and provides increased robustness, scalability and speed, Tezaur said. "In just three years of work, we have created a next-generation land-ice model that is verified, scalable and robust and portable to new and emerging architecture machines," Tezaur said. "These models are equipped with advanced analysis capabilities. " The Albany/FELIX solver was written using the so-called "component- based" software development strategy, an approach devised by Sandia computational scientists in which new application codes are written using mature modular libraries. New solvers created using this approach are "born" scalable: fast, robust and capable of advanced analysis since they are based on a collection of algorithms developed and tested by domain experts. The components comprising Albany/FELIX are the Trilinos libraries, a collection of open-source packages developed by Sandia. In addition to recommending and executing the component-based code development strategy, Sandia researchers have developed approaches for improving the robustness of the nonlinear solver. The Albany/FELIX code has demonstrated scalability up to 1 billion unknowns and tens of thousands of cores thanks to parallel scalable iterative linear solvers and newly developed preconditioning methods by Tuminaro. Adjoint-based deterministic inversion algorithms and software developed and implemented by Perego have enabled rigorous model calibration. In collaboration with experts from the QUEST SciDAC institute, Eldred and Jakeman, a framework for forward and inverse uncertainty quantification (UQ) has been developed. Finally, Albany/FELIX has been made portable to new architecture machines thanks in large part to the efforts of computer scientist, Irina Demeshko. Verification and validation are important While code performance is critical to the success of Albany/FELIX, equally important are verification and validation, two procedures for evaluating a model and its code. Verification ascertains that a code is bug-free. In contrast, validation seeks to check that the physical process described by a model is consistent with what is seen in the real world. Sandia has done a thorough verification of the Albany/FELIX solver using the method of manufactured solutions, code-to-code comparisons on canonical land-ice benchmarks and by performing convergence studies on realistic Greenland and Antarctica landscapes with real data, Tezaur said. Tezaur explains that, in general, validation is much harder to do than verification. The degree to which ice sheet models have been validated by observations is fairly limited, due in part to the limited duration of the satellite observation era and the long adjustment time scales of ice sheets. The PISCEES team has checked that its solver predicts ice sheet quantities such as surface velocities, surface mass balance and that these quantities are consistent with past and recent observations. "We are in the process of doing a validation study for the Greenland Ice Sheet for the period 1991-2012," Tezaur said. "The ice sheet model output will be compared to ice surface elevation and ice sheet mass change observations from ICESat and IceSat 2, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite. " Early results show promise for assessing the performance of different model configurations. A verification and validation test suite, known as the Land Ice Validation and Verification Kit, is being developed by PISCEES collaborators at Oak Ridge, and goes hand-in-hand with the efforts at Sandia. 2016-07-07 00:01 feeds.sciencedaily

30 Samsung Acquires Cloud Provider Joyent Samsung has acquired Joyen t , the public cloud provider positioning itself as a container-native cloud platform. The buyout gives Samsung an immediate cloud presence, and the potential to build an integrated back-end platform to support its consumer-facing devices. For Joyent, there is the potential for rapid growth if Samsung invest to expand the reach of the service. As Forbes observes , potentially the biggest attraction for both parties is the ability to offer an end-to-end experience in the Internet of Things space: “IoT is expected to be at the center of Samsung’s strategy”. Wired described Joyent as 'the best-kept secret in cloud computing '. Its platform offering is narrower than market leaders like AWS and Azure, who provide a whole stack including message queues and databases. Joyent only offers object storage and compute, but the compute stack is its differentiator. On the Joyent cloud you can run Linux-based VMs, containers or serverless compute functions, and they all run directly on the company's open-source Triton DataCenter software , without any intermediate virtualization layers. For Joyent customers who value that flexible compute offering, which includes support for Docker with a pay-per-container billing model, the Samsung acquisition should lead to an expansion of the Joyent cloud. Currently it runs from four data centers, three in the US and one in Europe. Scott Hammond, CEO of Joyent, is clear on his goal for expansion : “We'll be building data centers around the globe.” Those data centers will be filled with machines running SmartOS , Joyent’s proprietary, but open-source, operating system built on Solaris. The choice of Solaris over a Linux distribution comes from Joyent’s engineering history – many of the team worked at Sun Microsystems. With Solaris comes Solaris Zones, a containerization technology that pre-dates Docker by almost ten years. A container-native cloud offering has always been Joyent’s proposition, even if that meant being – as Bryan Cantrill, CTO of Joyent said - “In the right place at the wrong time for an extended period of time”. Containers-as-a-Service offer the potential for huge scale with high efficiency, which is what you need for the service side of an IoT offering. The IoT proposition may take longer to realise, but it could put the Samsung/Joyent partnership in a pre-eminent position. Samsung already has the Artik program which pairs hardware modules with cloud services, but right now that’s backed by AWS. Samsung can now look to migrating the back-end to Joyent, providing its subsidiary with an anchor tenant, and removing a dependency on Amazon. Samsung also has the possibility of centralizing the client software stack. Artik modules currently run a variety of operating systems and development platforms, including Fedora, C++ and Java. If you want to build a range of devices based on Artik, you may need multiple forks of your own software for different types of module. Joyent brings years of experience with Node.js (it was the project’s custodian before creating the Node.js Foundation ), so it would make sense to build the Artik development platform on Node.js. Andrew Reichman of 451 Research suggested the end goal for Samsung is to control the end-to-end product stack and own the data : "They see their future being defined not by manufacturing the devices but by connecting the devices and analyzing their usage and providing content for them". 2016-07-06 22:07 Elton Stoneman

31 31 IT professionals: volunteer your skills to help a charity There are more than 160,000 charities in England and Wales with an income of less than £5m a year, and 120,000 with an annual income under £50,000. Most inevitably concentrate their scarce resources primarily on meeting their charitable objectives and do not place a high priority on having efficient administrative processes. Typically they have no IT professionals available to them on either a pro bono or paid-for basis, so their use of IT is usually neither cost-effective nor in line with their strategic aims. While this is not really a problem when a charity is first launched, it will inevitably act as a significant inhibitor to successful expansion beyond the initial client base. To support any expansion, the charity’s business processes need to be effectively supported by its IT systems. If this is not the case, there will be an increase in cost to the charity and service delivery will be degraded. This is not a new problem, and various attempts have been made to find a solution. For example, corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes attempt to provide appropriately skilled professionals to help charities. However, there is no suitable process for identifying charities with a need, defining that need and then matching appropriately skilled professionals to those needs. The longstanding IT4Communities programme has been successful, but only where the charity has sufficient IT skills to successfully define its project and then manage the resulting business process change. This has resulted in a significant underutilisation of the IT4Communities volunteer base. A new organisation, the Charity IT Association (CITA), is being launched to address these issues by providing a range of pro bono services to support individual charities throughout the whole project lifecycle. 2016-07-06 19:56 David Rippon

32 Lightbend Helps Developers Build Fast Data, Microservices Apps Lightbend, a pioneer in Reactive Systems, is building out its tools to support enterprises with cloud-first business models built on microservices. Lightbend , the creator and steward of the Scala programming language, is investing in delivering the tools and frameworks that developers need to create reactive, fast data and microservices-based applications. The company, formerly known as Typesafe, offers its Scala- based Lightbend Reactive Platform that enables developers to build message- driven applications that scale on multicore and cloud computing architectures by using technologies like Lagom, Play Framework, Akka, Apache Spark, Scala and Java. Lightbend recently closed a $20 million Series C funding round led by Intel Capital. Blue Cloud Ventures also joined Intel Capital as a new investor, with participation from previous investors Bain Capital Ventures, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures and Shasta Ventures. "Our plan is to continue to invest in delivering the tools and frameworks as well as adding to our complementary suite of management products that enable large enterprises to successfully run these reactive applications in production," Mark Brewer, CEO of Lightbend, told eWEEK. "We will be investing in our go-to-market and partnership efforts as well. " Brewer said the Lightbend Reactive Platform is adopted wherever enterprises need to build scalable, distributed applications that don't fail. The company has use cases that include improving customer engagement via mobile devices, integration of Internet of things (IoT) data into real-time business decisions, content delivery to hundreds of millions of devices, auto-scaling resources to support massive spikes of Website activity and more. "Most importantly, we also see a general trend in adoption of our technology to allow enterprises to unlock the potential of hybrid cloud architectures by having highly efficient, highly performant and highly responsive applications that can scale up and scale down based on demand," he said. Moreover, big data has become the killer app for functional programming and functional languages like Scala, Brewer said. More specifically, what Lightbend refers to as fast data is the killer app. Rather than acting on data at rest, modern software increasingly operates on data in near real time—fast data, said Jamie Allen, senior director of global services at Lightbend. This is especially true with IoT and mobile apps. Consequently, big data is becoming less important than fast data for many companies, he noted. "After all, fast data is critical to fast knowledge, and businesses want knowledge as quickly as possible," Allen said. Enterprises including Walmart, Verizon, iHeartRadio, William Hill and Samsung have adopted the Lightbend Reactive Platform to build low- latency, fast data applications based on modern microservice architectures. Lightbend's platform and professional services have become a popular option for enterprises that use the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and JVM languages and that seek the characteristics of application resiliency and scale defined by the Reactive Manifesto , Brewer said. According to the manifesto, Reactive systems are responsive, resilient, elastic and message-driven. "Mobile and IoT use cases are driving enterprises to modernize how they process large volumes of data," said Doug Fisher, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel, in a statement. "Lightbend provides the fundamental building blocks for developing, deploying and managing today's large-scale, distributed applications. " Meanwhile, Brewer said many of the use cases Lightbend sees require tight integration with other key components of a modern application architecture, particularly for fast data applications where the so-called " SMACK Stack "—Spark, Mesos, Akka, Cassandra, Kafka—is the default reference architecture. Consequently, as the company behind Akka, Lightbend partners with the commercial companies behind the other open- source projects in that stack—Databricks, Mesosphere, DataStax and Confluent—as well as other key players such as IBM. "We are also seeing terrific opportunities in working with some of the global systems integrators such as Accenture who have practices dedicated to helping their clients move to modern, reactive architectures," he said. Brewer noted that one of the most exciting areas of investment for Lightbend right now is the fact that most major enterprises are looking to modernize their legacy architectures and Lightbend's Lagom microservices framework makes this transformation much easier. "Application requirements have changed dramatically in recent years," said Jonas Boner, founder and CTO at Lightbend, and creator of Akka . Only a few years ago, a large application had tens of servers, seconds of response time, hours of offline maintenance and gigabytes of data, Boner said. Today, applications are deployed on everything from mobile devices to cloud-based clusters running thousands of multicore processors. "Users expect millisecond response times and 100 percent uptime," he said. "Today's demands are simply not met by yesterday's software architectures. " 2016-07-06 19:55 Darryl K

33 New macOS malware gives hackers complete access to your files For security reasons, out of the box macOS is configured to only allow software from the App Store and identified developers to be installed. However, there are times when users may also want to run apps from other sources, in which case it is possible to enable a no holds barred setting. But, along with the extra freedom, it also exponentially increases the risk of running into malware. You may be inclined to believe that you can stay safe by sticking to known download websites, but that is not always the case. Bitdefender has uncovered a new Mac malware, called Backdoor. Mac. Eleanor, that poses as a document converter on what the security company calls "reputable sites". When installed, it gives hackers complete access to your Mac. Bitdefender says that, while it appears to have "no real functionality", it downloads a malicious script that installs a hidden Tor service, web service, and Pastebin agent through which hackers can do pretty much everything they want, including accessing and managing your files, accessing your webcam, executing commands, sending emails and so on. Here is how it all works. The Tor service gives your Mac a Tor-generated IP address, which gives hackers anonymity as it makes it virtually impossible to track where the incoming traffic comes from. For easy access to your device, your IP address is stored, via the Pastebin service, on Pastebin, but not before it is encrypted using RSA and base64 algorithms. The web service is what actually allows hackers to control your Mac. It sets up a web-based control panel, which can be accessed at the Tor-generated IP address mentioned above using the right credentials. The browser interface gives them access to personal files, the Terminal, root privileges, the ability to connect and manage a database, and so on. "This type of malware is particularly dangerous as it’s hard to detect and offers the attacker full control of the compromised system", says Bitdefender Antimalware Lab technical leader Tiberius Axinte. "For instance, someone can lock you out of your laptop, threaten to blackmail you to restore your private files or transform your laptop into a botnet to attack other devices. The possibilities are endless". You can read more about how it works here. Bitdefender has not provided a method of removing this malware, but the company recommends sticking to the default security setting and running security software on your Mac. Photo Credit: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 17:09 By Mihăiță

34 VR Cover offers replacement foams and new glasses friendly facial interface for Oculus Rift If you've never tried a virtual reality headset before, there is a foam padding that is meant to provide comfort when the device is placed against your face. Naturally, over time, the foam padding will become soiled due to perspiration and general wear, requiring replacement. Luckily, VR Cover is a company that is familiar with the aforementioned issue and has been providing solutions since the Oculus Rift Development Kit 1. Now, the company is back to provide a few new offerings for the Oculus Rift in the form of replacement foam pads and facial interfaces. The Kickstarter campaign by VR Cover offers Oculus Rift owners a chance to purchase replacement foam pads and also new facial interfaces. The foam pads will come in two varieties: one that will be slimmer than the traditional pad, allowing the eyes to get closer to the lens, offering a wider field of view. The other will be a standard size replacement for the current foam pads that will match the ones supplied by Oculus. VR Cover will also produce a new facial interface that will be glasses friendly, allowing those with glasses to play with a bit more comfort compared to the current Oculus Rift setup. While they have collaborated with Oculus on these facial interfaces, they are not official replacements by Oculus. VR Cover's Kickstarter campaign has 29 days left to go as of this writing, and backing it will start at around $32 USD and offer one facial interface (standard or glasses friendly) and a foam replacement. Source: Kickstarter via Tom's Hardware 2016-07-06 17:06 Timi Cantisano

35 DevOps' three big myths solved Puppet senior product manager Ryan Coleman has attempted to dispel the three big myths surrounding DevOps at this week's Computing DevOps Summit 2016. In a presentation Coleman focused on three of the biggest myths that he claims are regularly put to him by sceptics. 1. DevOps works only with 'unicorn' companies and not traditional companies Otherwise interpreted as 'I don't work at Facebook or Google, and DevOps doesn't apply to me.' Coleman argued that the above companies are considered unicorns "because they've been leading the charge with these practices". "Maybe they haven't been speaking about it, but that doesn't mean it just applies to them. From industrial insurance companies to machine shops, everyone has the same problems," he said. 2. There's no sufficient return on investment in applying DevOps principles to legacy applications "It's about iteration. The benefit is aggregate. You may not see those returns right away but that's OK. It's part of the point," said Coleman. He explained how smaller, potentially cheaper, changes to legacy technology can create obvious immediate benefits. "You can take all software and put it in version control. You can just have one file per server," he offered as an example. "So now you have a central source of truth [for each system]. Start looking at those at your leisure. You'll find they're not quite the same, but why aren't they? Should they be. At least now you know the questions to ask. " Helping to automate change, rather than doing it manually, can save time in the long run, according to Coleman. "It's not like if you reduce workload on people they just go away. They can move on to the next legacy app, or the next new project," he said. 3. DevOps requires spare time and people we simply don't have "You don't have to spend six months on a DevOps project to see any returns," advised Coleman. "One thing I'd encourage you to do is not start by saying: ‘We made manual changes to our service today, maybe we've got some script in place. Let's move immediately to continuous releases every day.' "Because if you set out to plan that project, it will take six months or even years, and you'll just get demoralised. You won't see the return till you're all the way there, and that's not even your biggest problem anyway. " Coleman suggested that a company should start small by aligning routes, carrying out version control and starting to automate changes as the process unfolds. "Then start getting to a point where you're pushing code and deploying. It's not about spare time," he said. "Also, you get to reinvest that time. All those changes you're no longer manually distributing to 17 servers is five minutes you can spend on the next task. " 2016-07-06 17:02 www.v3

36 Snapchat 'Memories' is something Facebook won't soon forget Facebook is a social network that I use begrudgingly, but it sometimes does have value in my life. For instance, its "Memories" feature periodically shows me photos from the past on their anniversary of being uploaded. Sometimes a now-deceased relative pops up and it feels like a "hello" from heaven. It's a killer feature. Unfortunately for Mark Zuckerberg and company, rival attention-thief Snapchat seems to be borrowing this feature a bit. Also called "Memories", it too aims to leverage photos -- plus videos -- as memories, but in a more robust way. Will millennial users want such a thing? "Memories is a new way to save Snaps and Stories on Snapchat. It's a personal collection of your favorite moments that lives below the Camera screen. Just swipe up from the Camera to open Memories! It's super easy to find the Snap or Story you're looking for in just a few seconds by typing keywords like 'dog' or 'Hawaii' -- that way you can spend less time searching and more time enjoying your Memories", says Snapchat. The company further says, "you can use Memories to create new Stories from Snaps you’ve taken, or even combine different Stories into a longer narrative! It’s fun to celebrate an anniversary or birthday by finding a few old Snaps and stringing them together into a new Story. We’ve also created a new way to send Snaps from Memories to your friends, or even post them to your Story. If you post a Snap you took more than a day ago to your Story, it will appear with a frame around it so that everyone knows it’s from the past". If you are worried about privacy, don't be -- Snapchat has added a 'My Eyes Only' feature, so you can prevent embarrassing Snaps -- such as the butt- slap in the above demo video -- from being seen by others. While it is always possible to forget to flag some images this way, the onus falls on the user. With that said, the feature seems to be strange given the initial intent of the app -- self-destructing images. It remains to be seen if millennials are truly interested in remembering, categorizing, and aggregating Snaps. Quite frankly, I bet many users would prefer to forget such images. Heck, I know I want to forget the horrific Ouya that Facebook reminded me of this morning! Will Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook be angry at Snapchat over the borrowed "Memories" functionality? Tell me in the comments. Photo credit: Lakeview Images / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 16:47 By Brian

37 IT teams of the future will have non-tech members Leadership, understanding of business objectives and project management are the three most important skills among businesses, a new report by IT resourcing company Experis says. In the report, entitled " Tomorrows Tech Teams ", it was also said that IT teams will see an influx of people from a non-tech background, further complicating the existing IT skills shortage. For almost every IT leader, out of 200 that were questioned, the ability to learn new skills is as important as those that workers have today. According to those surveyed, future-proof IT teams will support continuous learning, and will have a training strategy responsive to current trends. Almost half (48 percent) of the 1,000 IT workers polled said their training program was reactive, while 15 percent said they had no training whatsoever. Not having the right skills results in reduced business growth, less competitive advantage, employee stress, reduced morale and productivity. "The prevailing narrative of the IT skills crisis is that we need more skills in specific tech areas in order for businesses to embrace emerging technologies, innovate and remain competitive. However, our research suggests that the problem is growing", says Geoff Smith, managing director of Experis. "IT leaders and HR must become more agile and identify candidates and existing team members that possess wider business skills and leadership qualities as well as those able to learn new tech skills. It’s also important for them to assess their way of thinking. Individuals that challenge and question existing systems and processes in order to make improvements, displaying a growth mindset, will drive innovation". Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 16:43 By Sead

38 38 [Giveaway] VisionTek USB 3.0 512GB Pocket SSD -- enter to win! Nowadays, everyone seems to be obsessed with cloud storage. While there is nothing wrong with utilizing the aforementioned storage option, it should never be your only method. In other words, redundancy is key -- a local backup of your files in addition is very wise. When it comes to local backups, there are many directions to take, such as a mechanical hard drive. Unfortunately, hard drives have moving parts, are audible, and can be fairly large. Solid state drives are a great choice for storage, and today, we are giving away a USB 3.0 variant. The prize is the VisionTek USB 3.0 512GB Pocket SSD as reviewed here. This drive is new, sealed in the package, and ready to store your files. The aluminum body makes it very durable, while being very attractive too. In other words, this drive rocks! Ready to enter? Simply follow the steps below. There are many ways to enter, and each one gives you an additional entry -- be sure to use them all. VisionTek USB 512GB Pocket SSD giveaway from BetaNews Thanks for being awesome, dear BetaNews readers! Photo credit: Gustavo Frazao / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 16:24 By Brian

39 Employees put corporate networks at risk Digital device practices among US employees are exposing their employers to increased security risks according to a new study. Identity management company OneLogin along with Arlington Research surveyed 1022 respondents in the US and found that 13 percent let their colleagues use a device that can access their employer's network. In addition nine percent allow their partners to access such a device, and one percent even permit their children to use it. Password sharing is widespread too, with 20 percent of employees sharing their work email password, and 12 percent sharing passwords to other work applications. Nearly half of all employees are unaware of company policies around the sharing of passwords. Mobile device security is also lax, one in five employees admit not having any security software on their work devices, beyond that shipped with the operating system. "Security breaches are a near-daily occurrence in the news. Given that it takes only one compromised account to lead to a breach, these lax security practices are troubling, especially when you consider that they could take place at your bank, at your children’s school, or in your local government. A breach at one location can lead to others, especially with bad password habits like password reuse," says Alvaro Hoyos, chief information security officer at OneLogin. "Technical controls should be put in place to ensure only authorized workers are accessing data securely and these should be reinforced with security awareness efforts as well. For example, using single sign-on and identity management solutions to enforce role based access and step up authentication establishes a strong security foundation, and coupling that with periodic security awareness training or simple reminders, strengthens that foundation". OneLogin suggests that these threats can be managed by ensuring that security policies are easy to understand and follow, making employees aware of policies, and employing technologies like two-factor authentication. You can see a summary of the results in infographic form below. Image credit : Di Studio / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 15:03 By Ian

40 The Surface Hub's version of Windows 10 build 14371 has leaked online If you've been wishing that you could install the Surface Hub's special SKU of Windows 10 on your PC, today is your lucky day. Windows 10 build 14371 for Surface Hub has leaked online. The leakster notes that the image doesn't work in VMWare, as it seems to be missing drivers; however, it should work with Hyper-V. They also list some limitations of the build: The image is in ESD format, which means that you'll need to first convert it to an ISO in order to boot it from Hyper- V. As with all leaked builds, we do not recommend installing this build, especially on your production PC. Whatever you do, you're doing it at your own risk. Source: MDL via Windows Central 2016-07-06 14:44 Rich Woods

41 IBM Rolls Out New Job Cutting Plan In The Netherlands IBM issued a company memo this week stating it would institute involuntary job cuts for the first time in the Netherlands, adopting a new and permanent workforce reduction strategy in the region. The effects could be far reaching. Lee Conrad, a former IBM employee who oversees Watching IBM, a Facebook page which tracks Big Blue's workforce cuts, told InformationWeek the move may serve as a template for Big Blue to impose forced layoffs in regions where local labor laws have made it difficult to impose mandatory cuts. IBM Netherlands, for example, previously was only subject to voluntary job cuts, according to Conrad. "In many of the European countries, the cuts historically have been voluntary. This is because of the existence of works councils and unions inside IBM. Labor laws are also more favorable to workers," said Conrad, who previously oversaw the now defunct union organizing effort called Alliance@IBM. He added IBM's effort to spread this practice across Europe and other regions will likely increase. "IBM wants to rid itself of more employees than will volunteer to leave," Conrad said in our interview. "IBM also wants to terminate workers in selective areas and not rely on volunteers. IBM is also shedding business units in countries like Germany and Italy and either selling them to other companies or moving them to low-cost countries like India or countries in eastern Europe. " An IBM spokesman, while not specifically addressing the job cuts in the Netherlands, told InformationWeek, "As reported earlier this year, IBM is transforming its business to lead in a new era of cognitive and cloud computing. To this end, IBM currently has more than 25,000 open positions, many in these key skills areas. If IBM meets its hiring goals, we expect to end the year with around the same number of employees [as] at (year-end) 2015. " IBM had 377,757 employees at the end of 2015, according to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That is down from the 379,592 employees it had in 2014, according to its SEC filing. A copy of the IBM Netherlands' layoff memo was posted on the Watching IBM Facebook page and shared with the IBTimes UK. The IBM memo stated: In today's world, those who do not keep reinventing themselves, fall behind. The demand of the market for new skills and capabilities, is changing fast due to new technologies and changing business models. Our customers have a need for new insights, knowledge and capabilities, making the existing expertise redundant. That is why the optimization of our workforce is a permanent and ongoing part of our business model. In essence it means rebalancing the number of employees currently working for IBM in The Netherlands and this through an involuntary program. And that is unique in the history of IBM Nederland. In the past IBM implemented successfully voluntary leave programs. This time the number of places we need to rebalance is too large. The impact of another voluntary leave program will weigh heavily on the organization. We would need to address too many of our co-workers to realize the reduction we envision. An involuntary program allows us to implement a very targeted program, impacting only those employees whose job will be made redundant or made redundant by IBM's transformation. We do not see any other option than to rebalance our workforce through an involuntary leave program. And that is a hard call to make. Although IBM does not publicly release details of its layoffs, a Wall Street analyst estimated Big Blue would cut as many as 14,000 workers worldwide in the first quarter of this year. Another analyst estimated upwards of 25% of the company's entire global workforce, or 95,000 workers, would be cut by the end of 2016. Conrad said IBM employees and former employees, who share information with Watching IBM, have indicated they expect 350 people to be affected by the IBM Netherlands layoffs. According to Conrad, current and former Big Blue employees have reported 900 jobs cut at IBM Germany this year, affecting areas such as its Global Business Solutions, Management & Business Support and Business & Technology Services operations. In addition, Conrad said, reports have come in of 360 IBM layoffs in France, and 233 IBM job cuts in Belgium. [Read IBM Denies Layoff Size As Salesforce CEO Woos Talent .] The European Works Council (EWC) issued a statement regarding IBM's job cuts in the region. According to the EWC, six weeks after its Jan. 27 job cuts, IBM announced on March 16 a second headcount reduction almost 50% higher than the first round of cuts. The EWC did not specify the number of jobs actually cut, but rather provided a percentage of the anticipated workforce affected. "New in IBM's restructuring approach is the strong focus on involuntary reductions," the council said. "The EWC has never agreed with restructurings, but could not be against a voluntary, fair and respectful approach. Now IBM clearly seems to break with that tradition and choses [sic] to apply involuntary, US based methods in Europe as well. " And what is the takeaway for US IBM employees as Big Blue employs a new job cut strategy in Europe? Said Conrad: "That the future for employment is bleak and that no one is safe. " 2016-07-06 14:36 Dawn Kawamoto

42 O&O DiskImage Professional 11 unveils complete redesign, new command-line tool O&O Software GMBH has unveiled O&O DiskImage Professional 11 64-bit , major new version of its disk-imaging tool for Windows PCs. Also available for 32-bit versions of Windows, the new release unveils a major facelift, giving the program a more modern look and feel. There’s also a new command-line tool, as well as display improvements (including support for 4K displays), and the promise of faster performance. Version 10 introduced a number of notable new features including a file- based backup component, so it’s of little surprise to learn that DiskImage 11 focuses on a complete revamp of its user interface to give the program a much- needed makeover. DiskImage 11 unveils a new ribbon-based user interface, which opens to the Start tab where clearly labeled buttons point to the application’s major features, including imaging, file-based backups, restoration and disk cloning. Other tabs include more granular controls for each of the program’s components -- Drive Operation for imaging and cloning, for example, and Tools, where users can validate and mount images, convert files and perform other tasks. The Tools tab also provides a neat shortcut to the Command Prompt, where the program’s new command-line tool -- oodicmdc.exe -- can be invoked. The tool allows users to create, restore, validate, convert and mount or unmount images. It’s also designed to work with DiskImage’s scripting feature for setting up batch processes. The application also unveils two key display improvements in the form of better support for variable DPI settings as well as high contrast mode. DiskImage 11 also comes with the promise of further performance improvements, resulting in faster backup and imaging, as well as an improved Live Update function for keeping the program updated. O&O DiskImage Professional 11.0 32-bit and O&O DiskImage Professional 11.0 64-bit are both available as free 30-day trial downloads for PCs running Windows Vista or later. The full version can be purchased for $49.95 (new) for a single PC license, or $69.95 for three PCs. 2016-07-06 14:31 By Nick

43 Data centres could cut power consumption by 25 per cent with simultaneous multi-threading Data centres could cut power consumption by 25 per cent and achieve higher rates of use if operating systems deployed simultaneous multi- threading, according to researchers at the Australian National University (ANU), working with Microsoft. "Computer servers spend a lot of time waiting around for search requests to come in. By sneaking in other processes while they are waiting, we can use the computers more efficiently," said Professor Steve Blackburn of the ANU's Research School of Computer Science. Major internet companies now have huge server farms tuned to provide fast responses rather than efficiency, whether for simple web searches or complex applications running in the cloud, but much of that capacity is idle and used only to cover spikes in demand. "The companies have no control of when users will request a search, so they have large server capacity that is mostly idle," said Xi Yang, a PhD student at the ANU Research School. Yang worked with Blackburn and Dr Kathryn McKinley at Microsoft to work out a way for non-time critical processes to use the operating system while it is idle, and to quickly step out of the way when a search request comes in. "The techniques are extremely easy to implement on current hardware," claimed Yang. "In some cases that we studied, the new techniques made a server nine times more efficient. " The core concept that the team examined was to analyse server and application performance in granular detail so that extra processes could be slipped in while longer processes were awaiting instructions. "We have analysed the operating system's performance 100 times more closely than before, which is crucial because much of the activity that occurs inside a computer happens at very high frequencies," said Yang. McKinley suggested that, while high-end hardware offers simultaneous multi-threading, "many companies turn off this feature because, without our approach, sharing wreaks havoc with the responsiveness of interactive services, such as searches". She added: "With our new fine grain hardware control, we can substantially improve the efficiency of data centre servers while achieving the same responsiveness. "This work has the potential for enormous impact in data centres. It could save over 25 per cent of the data centre energy bill for these companies, a huge win. " Blackburn explained that the idea was inspired by the fairy story The Elves and the Shoemaker. "It's just like the elves that used the shoemaker's tools at night in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale," he said. 2016-07-06 14:27 www.v3

44 Suse brings Linux for high-performance computing to Microsoft's Azure cloud Enterprise Linux firm Suse has expanded the availability of its software on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, joining the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance and adding Suse Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing (HPC) to the Azure Marketplace. Suse's Linux distribution has been available for powering virtual machines and their workloads on the Azure cloud platform for several years, but the firm has now signed up to Microsoft's Enterprise Cloud Alliance, which means that the mission-critical platform will be available to customers via the new Enterprise Cloud Marketplace. In addition, Suse is now part of the Microsoft Test Drive programme, allowing customers easily to evaluate Suse Linux Enterprise Server for HPC via the Azure Marketplace. The firm claimed that this will make it the only commercially supported Linux for HPC available on Microsoft Azure. "With Suse's integration into the Enterprise Cloud Alliance, organisations have improved access to the reliability and security of Suse Linux Enterprise Server, including unique workloads such as Suse Linux Enterprise Server for HPC, on the Azure cloud," said Suse's vice president of cloud and software alliances Naji Almahmoud. Suse claimed that the Linux platform integrates seamlessly with Azure cloud services to deliver an easily managed cloud environment. Users also get access to tools such as Suse Studio, the firm's online Linux image creation tool, and Suse Manager for monitoring and managing Linux virtual machines using Microsoft Systems Centre. The move is another part of Microsoft's embracing of Linux and open source software, driven in part by the fact that Linux accounts for an increasing percentage of the workloads running on the Azure cloud. Microsoft also has a strong partnership with Red Hat, which has seen Red Hat products and services available in its public cloud , including the firm's Linux and the OpenShift platform-as-a-service for application development and deployment. 2016-07-06 13:30 www.v3

45 Cut your browser's RAM usage with All Browsers Memory Zip All Browsers Memory Zip is a free memory optimizer designed to cut your browser’s RAM usage. The program doesn’t just work with Chrome, IE or Firefox -- it recognizes and supports almost 40 browsers, out of the box. Once installed, All Browsers Memory Zip monitors your running processes, looking out for supported browsers and checking their RAM usage. If a browser’s memory use edges over a defined figure, the developer says the program steps in and "compresses" the RAM. Memory "compression" sounds intriguing. Technical. Advanced. But from what we can see, it isn’t true. It looks to us that All Browsers Memory Zip just uses the same "cut your working set" Windows system call as just about every other RAM optimizer. Does it work? Well, in a way. Once it’s running, the program really does kick in whenever RAM use goes above a set figure, and if you watch this in Task Manager you can see it fall immediately afterwards. The problem is that the default settings are so very low, only 30MB for Chrome, that your browser almost certainly needs this RAM. What we found happened in practice is that RAM use would reach the threshold, drop a little, then climb up to the threshold again in a few seconds. The more browser tabs you open, the faster the cycle, and the more CPU and disk I/O you’re generating as All Browsers Memory Zip and Windows struggle to cope. This doesn’t necessarily make the program useless. The "maximum RAM" thresholds can be tweaked to whatever you like, and if you set them to something more realistic -- 500MB for Chrome, say, or whatever is a sensible maximum for you -- then you’re much less likely to run into problems. Overall, All Browsers Memory Zip isn’t going to win over any doubters (including us). But its built-in browser support is an unusual touch, and if this kind of tool has helped you before then we’d give it a try. All Browsers Memory Zip is a free application for Windows XP and later. 2016-07-06 13:24 By Mike

46 Save 86% off the Complete API Mastery Bundle via Neowin Deals Today's highlighted deal comes from our ELearning section of Neowin Deals, where you can save 86% off the Complete API Mastery Bundle. Learn to incorporate Google, Facebook, Twitter and more APIs with six courses on application building blocks. This deal includes the following six courses: Certifications of completion not included. For terms, compatibility and instructor info click here. The Complete API Mastery Bundle normally costs $160, but you can pick it up for just $22 for a limited time , a saving of $138. You can even get $10 credit if you share the deal with friends. Get this deal or find out more about it | View more in ELearning That's OK., If this offer doesn't interest you, why not check out other giveaways on the Neowin Deals web site? There's also a bunch of freebies you can check out here . You could also try your luck on our The Playstation 4 and Uncharted 4 Giveaway , or The Mega Macbook Giveaway all you have to do is sign up here to enter for this giveaway. How can I disable these posts? Click here . Disclosure : This is a StackCommerce deal or giveaway in partnership with Neowin; an account at StackCommerce is required to participate in any deals or giveaways. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. 2016-07-06 13:06 News Staff

47 Microsoft's Skype Meetings Aimed At Small Businesses Microsoft is reaching out to small business owners with the launch of Skype Meetings, a free online meeting tool that offers real-time audio and HD video conferencing. The platform also includes collaboration features, such as the ability to share screens and content during meetings. It is designed to be easy to use. For example, with one click anyone can join the online meeting from any device. In addition, users can choose to meet right away or schedule from Outlook for later, and the meeting URL is personalized for the user. Anyone in the US with a business email address and whose organization doesn't already have Office 365 can sign up for free Skype Meetings. Once they sign up, users can set up meetings for up to 10 people for the first 60 days, and for up to three people thereafter. Businesses can also record meetings, share their screen, and annotate PowerPoint for real-time collaboration, as well as use whiteboard, polls, Q&A, and built-in instant messaging during the meetings. The meeting organizer also gets professional meeting controls, such as the ability to mute the audience in order to be heard. In essence, Skype Meetings is a pared down version of the more robust Skype for Business, which starts from $5 per user per month and includes enterprise capabilities and deeper integration with Outlook and other Microsoft Office applications. "If you have an Office 365 business subscription that includes Skype for Business, then you already have richer online meetings capabilities, such as the ability to conduct large group meetings for up to 250 people and the ability to IM anyone in your organization at any time -- not just during meetings," Andrew Sinclair, general manager for Skype for Business, noted in a July 5 blog post . In March, Microsoft announced several updates to Skype and Skype for Business , which were intended to broaden Skype services and make videoconferencing more accessible. In his introductory keynote for Microsoft's Build 2016 developer's conference in April, CEO Satya Nadella explained the company's vision for the future of communication, which includes integrating intelligent Bots into Skype chats. [The Windows 10 anniversary edition is almost here. Here's what businesses need to know.] The next generation of Skype will have Cortana always ready in the upper right-hand corner for one-on-one interaction. Cortana will broker conversations with bots to be a more proactive assistant, and to help enact the ideas you're discussing. In addition, a new Skype client, with Skype Bots, is currently in preview on Windows, Android, iPhone, and iPad. There is also a new Skype developer program available for those who want to start building bots. Microsoft also announced the Bot Connector and Bot Builder, which developers can use to connect bots and create new ones. The company is also working on a new digital assistant called the Bing Concierge Bot to aid users of its search engine. Users will communicate with the Bing Concierge Bot using natural language, and the assistant will respond in the same manner. Chatting in natural language enables the assistant to collect information on a designated task so it can connect with service providers to complete it. 2016-07-06 13:05 Nathan Eddy

48 UK's Darktrace aims to lead the way to automatic cyber security Cyber security will be mainly automated based on artificial intelligence (AI) in future, predicts UK information security startup Darktrace. The company aims to a leader in the move into this new era of information security, and is already working on the next phase of its self-learning security system to enable automatic defence. Darktrace is recognised as one of the UK’s most successful security startups, with founders including senior members of the UK government’s cyber community from MI5 and GCHQ . The company also has close links to the maths department at Cambridge University, with Darktrace’s threat-detection and machine-learning capabilities based entirely on mathematical models. This mathematical base is core to Darktrace’s ability to detect threats without any prior knowledge of what it is looking for and without any need for rules or attack signatures. The company believes that this is what distinguishes Darktrace from traditional security systems and other behavioural analytics systems that rely on mathematical extrapolations of past attacks or analysis of big data collected from various logging systems. Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System is modelled on the human immune system and is designed to address the challenge of insider threat and advanced cyber attacks through detecting previously unidentified threats in real time, as manifested in the emerging behaviour of a specific organisation’s network, people and devices, including mobile devices and internet of things (IoT) devices. “We believe we are the only ones at the moment who focus only on learning from the behaviours of people and systems within the business rather than on algorithms that look for known types of attacks,” said Darktrace co- founder and director of technology Dave Palmer. “We believe in a continuous security approach because there will always be risks, and organisations need to have the capability to deal with them and bring that risk down to a manageable level all the time – rather than having a roller-coaster situation,” he told Computer Weekly. Darktrace uses a human immune system analogy, said Palmer, because security needs to be working all the time to ensure the right managers and the board are aware of the risks. This is so they can manage it down to an acceptable level by learning and understanding more about how the business works than an attacker ever could. “The system is based on the conviction that if you want to do this right, you have got to focus on what your people and devices really do and then be able to look for what is unusual, different or strange, which makes the system unique to the organisation in which it is deployed,” he said. 2016-07-06 12:45 Security Editor

49 49 Reordering issues in GitHub, SUSE joins Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance, and Twistlock announces US$10 million in series A funding—SD Times news digest: July 6, 2016 At GitHub , developers can now reorder issues and pull requests, and indicate priority by moving them higher or lower down their list. For developers, this is an easy way to indicate which milestones or labels in GitHub a teammate should focus on first. After a developer has grouped issues and pull requests within a milestone, they can drag and drop to place them in whatever order is best. Keyboard commands will also work to move items up and down the list. Developers can learn more about milestones and how they associate with issues and pull requests here . SUSE joins Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance SUSE has joined the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance as a way to continue to deliver cloud-based products and help customers respond to business needs. SUSE is also part of the Microsoft Test Drive Program, so customers can evaluate SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing from the Azure Marketplace for free. By joining the alliance, SUSE can continue to expand access to security and reliability of its Linux solutions. “With SUSE’s integration into the Enterprise Cloud Alliance, organizations have improved access to the reliability and security of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server—including unique workloads such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing—on the Azure cloud,” said Naji Almahmoud, vice president of cloud and software alliances for SUSE. “SUSE’s growth on Azure means more options for customers. It is yet another indicator of SUSE’s commitment to helping enterprise customers be successful.” Twistlock announces US$10 million series A round Twistlock announced it has finished a US$10 million round of funding led by TenEleven Ventures. Twistlock also had support from a new investor, Rally Ventures, and existing backer YL Ventures. Twistlock has seen growth over the years, partially because of its approach to embedding security in the early stages of container lifecycles. Its technology includes Twistlock Trust, a set of tools that manages the container vulnerabilities. It also includes Twistlock Runtime, which gives customers behavior analytics of containerized applications and defends applications against production threats. Twistlock also announced that the New York-based company InVision chose Twistlock to secure its own container environments. Additionally, Twistlock said that the founder of TenEleven Ventures, Alex Doll, has joined the Twistlock board of directors. He has a background in security and is on the board of cybersecurity companies like CounterTack, Cylance and Ping Identity. Twistlock started, it has claimed Fortune 50 firms, enterprises and startups in its customer base, according to a company announcement . Wearable devices can give away PINs Despite how fashionable and functional smartwatches are, cyber security expert Yan Wang and his colleagues discovered that these devices “know too much,” and users need to be cautious of hackers stealing their private information. According to research that Wang and his colleagues presented in June at the Association for Computing Machinery Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Xi’an, China, wearable devices can give away a PIN number. The team was able to crack private ATM PINs with 80% accuracy on their first try, and more than 90% accuracy after three tries, according to the researchers’ abstract. Wang said that to eliminate this security breach, the wearable manufacturers should secure the data or add noise so it’s to easy to translate into physical hand movements. In the meantime, he suggested users move their hand randomly between key clicks when entering a PIN number. 2016-07-06 12:23 Madison Moore

50 iOS 10 Will Allow iPhone Users to Instantly Register as Organ Donors The pre-installed Health app will come with options that will allow iPhone users to instantly register as organ, eye and tissue donors without having to fill in any other form. Once they sign up to become a donor in the Health app, all their data is automatically submitted to the National Donate Life Registry managed by Donate Life America. In a press release rolled out today (and which you can find in full in the box after the jump), Apple presents some figures to emphasize how important becoming a donor actually is, pointing out that there are no less than 120,000 Americans waiting for a transplant that could save their lives. “By working with Apple to bring the National Donate Life Registry to the Health app on iPhone, we're making it easier for people to find out about organ, eye and tissue donation and quickly register. This is a huge step forward that will ultimately help save lives,” says David Fleming, President & CEO of Donate Life America. Obviously, Apple used this occasion to praise its efforts to help Americans, explaining that it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to register as an organ donor using the new iOS system. “Apple's mission has always been to create products that transform people’s lives. With the updated Health app, we’re providing education and awareness about organ donation and making it easier than ever to register. It’s a simple process that takes just a few seconds and could help save up to eight lives,” adds Jeff Williams, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer. iOS 10 is projected to launch in September with the new iPhone 7 and will come with a wide array of enhancements, including an improved lock screen, a revamped notification center, widgets, a significantly overhauled Music app, Safari updates, and many other new tweaks that will enhance the experience with an iPhone. 2016-07-06 12:19 Bogdan Popa

51 IDC predicts slowdown in public cloud infrastructure spend will be short-lived The downturn in global demand for IT infrastructure from the public cloud provider community during the first quarter of 2016 is likely to be relatively short- lived, according to IDC. The market watcher’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker revealed a softening in demand for servers, storage and Ethernet switches for use in public cloud environments during the first three months of 2016. While investments in cloud IT infrastructure have risen to account for a larger percentage of global IT spend, IDC’s report acknowledges the slowdown in demand for IT kit from the public cloud provider community negatively affected first-quarter sales growth. “A slowdown in hyperscale public cloud infrastructure deployment demand negatively impacted growth in both public cloud and cloud IT overall,” said IDC computing platforms research director Kuba Stolarski. “ Private cloud deployment growth also slowed, as 2016 began with difficult comparisons to the first quarter of 2015, when server and storage refresh drove a high level of spend and high growth. “As the system refresh has mostly ended, this will continue to push private cloud and, more generally, enterprise IT growth downwards in the near term,” added Stolarski. The IDC report showed that cloud infrastructure accounted for around 32.3% of overall IT spend during the first quarter, having risen from 30.2% over the past 12 months . The amount generated by sales of private cloud infrastructure grew by 6.8% year-on-year to $2.8bn, while the public cloud achieved revenue growth of 1.9% amounting to $3.9bn. Conversely, the revenue generated by non-cloud IT infrastructure was down by 6% year-on-year, on the back of an overall drop in demand for on- premise servers and storage. 2016-07-06 12:15 Datacentre Editor

52 New partnership delivers cloud solution for the insurance industry Insurance companies have slightly different software needs from other businesses. They need to expand accounts, drive renewals, streamline the new policy acquisition process and manage claims. Now cloud specialist Vlocity and insurance solution provider Insurity are announcing a partnership that will deliver a cloud solution for insurance businesses. "Insurity is focused on driving insurers' modernization and transformation initiatives -- and we work with more than 100 insurers. Providing targeted, effective and efficient policy and plan service interactions across all channels is what strengthens customer relationships," says Lani Cathey, senior vice president at Insurity. "Our work with Vlocity will bolster our own suite of core processing solutions, including our Insurance Enterprise View (IEV) data solution, tapping into specialized data repositories and insurance enterprise systems built on insurance industry standards". Combining the well-known capabilities of the Salesforce platform with Vlocity's insurance industry-specific cloud apps and Insurity's core processing applications and data solutions, it allows insurers to benefit from an integrated solution. This helps them improve customer satisfaction and referrals, streamline operations and eliminate paper by digitizing key business processes. In addition it increases business agility and uses the cloud to reduce the cost and time taken to deploy new offers. "Vlocity is committed to empowering insurers to 'go digital' and optimize their operations based on insurance industry best practices. Our work with Insurity -- a leader in helping insurance organizations modernize and transform their core processing and customer-facing initiatives -- delivers an integrated solution to better serve our mutual customers," says Ron Young, vice president and general manager of Vlocity Insurance. "This partnership addresses core industry needs: insurance organizations need insurance-specific capabilities, they seek all the benefits of the cloud, and they want digitized and paperless business processes from customer engagement to administration". You can find out more about the solution on the Vlocity website . Photo Credit: 2jenn / Shutterstock 2016-07-06 12:08 By Ian

53 Tesla Autopilot Crash Under NHTSA Investigation The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an inquiry into the autopilot system in Tesla's Model S following the death of a driver who was using the system. In a statement posted on the Tesla Motors website on June 30, the company acknowledged the inquiry and characterized the incident as "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. " The NHTSA said in a statement Tesla had alerted the agency to the crash, which occurred on May 7 in Williston, Fla. The Levy Journal Online , which covers Levy County, Fla., where the crash occurred, described the accident based on an account provided by the Florida Highway Patrol. A tractor-trailer was traveling west on US 27A and made a left turn onto NE 140 Court as the Tesla driver was heading in the opposite direction. The Tesla passed underneath the 18-wheeler and its roof collided with the truck. It then continued along the road before striking two fences and a utility pole. "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied," Tesla said in its statement. "The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. " The failure of Tesla's computer vision system to distinguish the truck from the similarly colored sky appears to have been compounded by radar code designed to reduce false positives during automated braking. Asked on Twitter why the Tesla's radar didn't detect what its cameras missed, CEO Elon Musk responded , "Radar tunes out what looks like an overhead road sign to avoid false braking events. " The driver of the Model S, identified in media reports as 40-year-old Joshua D. Brown from Canton, Ohio, died on the scene. The driver of the truck, 62-year-old Frank Baressi, told the Associated Press that Brown was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen" at the time of the crash. A spokesperson for the Florida Highway Patrol did not immediately respond to a request to confirm details about the accident. In its June 30 statement, Tesla said drivers who engage Autopilot are warned to keep both hands on the wheel at all times. Autopilot, despite its name, is intended as an assistive feature rather than an alternative to manual control. The incident has stoked doubts about the viability of self-driving cars and the maturity of Tesla's technology. Clearly, a computer vision system that cannot separate truck from sky in certain light conditions could use further improvement. It was unclear at press time whether Tesla will face any liability claims related to its code or sensing hardware. However, Tesla insisted in its statement that, when Autopilot is used under human supervision, "the data is unequivocal that Autopilot reduces driver workload and results in a statistically significant improvement in safety when compared to purely manual driving. " In April, at an event in Norway, Musk said, "The probability of having an accident is 50% lower if you have Autopilot on," according to Electrek. That may be, but data isn't the only consideration. When human lives are at stake, perception and emotion come into play. Automated driving systems will have to be demonstrably better than human drivers before people trust them with their lives. Yet, perfection is too much to expect from autopilot systems. Machines fail, and fallible people are likely to remain in the loop. In aviation, automation is common. It has prompted concerns that it degrades the skills pilots need when intervention is called for. If the same holds true for cars with autopilot systems, we can expect to become worse drivers, less able to respond to emergencies, even as our autopilot systems reduce fatalities overall. There may be no getting around the fact that, given current vehicle designs, driving down a highway at high speed entails some degree of risk, whether a person or a computer is at the wheel. 2016-07-06 12:06 Thomas Claburn

54 IBM Opens Blockchain-Oriented, Bluemix Garage In NYC In the digital economy, blockchain transactions are believed likely to replace many existing electronic transactions and provide a hard–to-crack record of the event that is captured in multiple locations. Anticipating a new generation of blockchain-based financial systems, IBM is opening a Bluemix Garage in New York City in hopes of attracting future blockchain developers to its Bluemix cloud. Blockchain was the innovation captured in the implementation of Bitcoin, where the execution of an electronic transaction also became its accounting record. As one transaction follows another, a chain of such records is built up on multiple computers that can be reconstructed by different participants in the chain. The process provides a distributed general ledger that's and hard to tamper with from the outside. A whitepaper produced by the IBM Institute for Business Value cites the benefits that blockchain systems will bring to their users, including improving the security and integrity of transactions while reducing the friction involved in completing them. The paper goes so far as to say that in the future, blockchain transactions will allow organizations to reorganize into institutions capable of more fluid changes and exchanges with other organizations: Blockchain technology has the potential to obviate intractable inhibitors across industries. As frictions fall, a new science of organization emerges, and the way we structure industries and enterprises will take novel shape. An implementer of blockchain could produce new mobile banking and wealth management applications. Mizuho Financial Group in Tokyo recently announced a pilot project to test blockchain as a means of virtual currency settlements. The pilot came out of the IBM garage in Tokyo. It's exploring how payments in different currencies can be quickly settled, potentially leading to the launch of new financial services, according to IBM's June 28 announcement. The Mizuho project makes use of Hyperledger open source code. Hyperledger is a blockchain-supporting project hosted by the Linux Foundation. Blockchain is now also the topic of developer conferences, such as the Fintech conference in Washington, D. C., on Aug. 2. IBM emphasizes application development skills, web development, transaction systems, use of analytics, cognitive computing, and advanced IBM systems such as Watson at its garage facilities. The Bluemix Garage will be established at 315 Hudson St. in SoHo at a campus run by Galvanize, a technology education service. The area is already the home of many of the city's technology startups. Galvanize advertises that its courses will turn out a data scientist or financial technology expert in 12 months of full-time coursework. IBM opened a Bluemix Garage in San Francisco last year at a building occupied by Galvanize. Big Blue has also added Bluemix garages in Toronto, Tokyo, London, Nice, and Singapore. Company spokesmen have said in the past they plan to open one in Melbourne, Australia, as well. [Read IBM Opens Fourth Bluemix Garage in France .] The garage will also include access to consultants with expertise in IBM Design Thinking , IBM's methodology for moving from creative idea through iterative product design and into production. The garage is also a place where developers can test drive the Bluemix cloud. They have access to tools, open source code, and IBM software. IBM would be happy to see more developer activity on Bluemix at a location close to its Watson AI system headquarters in New York. It's also been a partner with the city in encouraging startups to use the city's Digital NYC platform , where infant companies can get connection services and a chance to collaborate with 8,000 other startups already using it. At its New York garage, IBM wants "to advance the science of blockchain, helping to remove complexity and make it more accessible and open. Financial services, supply chains, IoT, risk management, digital rights management and healthcare are some of the areas that are poised for dramatic change using blockchain," according to this week's announcement. 2016-07-06 11:05 Charles Babcock

55 Google's robot cars recognize cyclists' hand signals — better than most cyclists Biking alongside manually driven cars can be a nightmare for both the biker and the driver. Bikers can be fast. They weave in and out of traffic and sometimes human drivers toe the line when deciding how much space to give them — and sometimes they don't. But now, thanks to Google 's many in-house bikers, the company's self-driving car not only knows how to navigate around cyclists but can recognize, understand and remember their hand signals. "Cyclists often make hand signals far in advance of a turn, and our software is designed to remember previous signals from a rider so it can better anticipate a rider's turn down the road," Google wrote in its monthly self- driving report. This is an important aspect for a self-driving car that shares the roads with pedestrians and manually driven cars. While automakers and tech companies can outfit a car with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to- infrastructure technology to enable communication between two cars or between cars and things like traffic signals, communicating with a pedestrian is much more difficult. A robot car needs to not only be able to communicate its intentions to pedestrians but also understand a pedestrian's intentions. Detecting and understanding human gestures is a hugely important part of that. That means the technology is ostensibly capable of understanding things like a pedestrian waving a car by when it's, say, at a stop sign. Google wouldn't exactly be the first to the punch — Mercedes demonstrated its capability to understand human gestures with its concept car — but at a time when some autonomous technology has yet to even navigate shared roads much less around pedestrians or cyclists, it's certainly a good sign. Google's robot car will even surrender the entire lane to the cyclist if they're showing signs of moving closer. It might strike some drivers as overly polite, but for a robot-driven car, erring on the cautious side while navigating around humans is probably the best bet. "For example, when our sensors detect a parallel-parked car with an open door near a cyclist, our car is programmed to slow down or nudge over to give the rider enough space to move towards the center of the lane and avoid the door," Google's report read. "Whether the road is too narrow or they're making a turn, we respect this indication that cyclists want to claim their lane. " 2016-07-06 10:25 Johana Bhuiyan

56 Uber App Update To Track Driver Behavior Uber soon will know the answer to a question raised by bumper-stickers on many vehicles traveling America's highways: "How am I driving? " In a forthcoming update to the app used by Uber drivers, the transportation platform company has implemented safety telematics that measure the braking, acceleration, and speed of the vehicles used by its drivers. The update also adds notifications designed to promote better driving, like reminders to take breaks and to mount the phone used for the driver app on the dashboard rather than keeping it in-hand. It adds daily driving reports that compare driving patterns to those of other drivers. The update coincides with the approach of the Fourth of July in the US, a holiday consistently marred by driving fatalities. Uber says its driver app improvements can help reduce driving risks. "Today too many people are hurt or killed on the roads," wrote Uber chief security officer Joe Sullivan and MADD national president Colleen Sheehey-Church in a blog post on Wednesday. "While alcohol is the leading cause of traffic crashes, there are other behaviors that can put people at risk -- for instance if drivers are on drugs, haven't gotten enough sleep or are distracted. " Data can help Uber drivers operate more safely. But it also helps Uber defend itself against competitors that would see the company hobbled by regulation, and against critics who claim the company's business practices are unsafe. To counter its detractors, the company published data showing a correlation between declining DUI arrests and Uber usage. The Atlanta police department, the company said, reports that arrests for drunk driving fell from 2,243 to 1,535 between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2016 -- a 32% decline. During that period, Uber pickups surged, suggesting a possible correlation. Uber is careful to avoid claiming credit for the DUI arrest decline, because correlation is not causation. But Sullivan and Sheehey-Church said in their blog post that Uber riders see a link between the service and reduced drunk driving. Certainly there's some interaction there. With the addition of telematic data about driver behavior, Uber should be able to make an even stronger case about safety of its service, particularly compared to other transportation options that may not have drivers under comparable surveillance. Access to a broader set of data about how its drivers actually drive will allow the company to identify risky drivers and to correlate rider complaints with real measurements of vehicle braking, acceleration, and speed. Uber began tracking driver behavior in Houston last November, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company says it plans to introduce the new telematics features in its driver app in 11 cities over the next few weeks. It is, however, not the first business to collect information about its drivers. Fleet management companies have been collecting telematic data for years. More recently, insurance companies like Allstate have begun offering a rate discount for drivers who accept telematic monitoring. In the years ahead, such technological oversight is likely to become difficult to avoid, because theoretical privacy risks will have trouble competing with the prospect of saved lives. [Read Google, Uber, Ford Form Self-Driving Car Coalition .] Studies indicate that telematics lead to better driving. The SAMOVAR research program conducted in Europe, for example, found that simply recording vehicle data led to a 28.1% decrease in the accident rate over a 12-month period, a result attributed to driver awareness that behavior can be checked. There's a potential downside for Uber, however. By amplifying its capacity for driver oversight, Uber runs the risk of making its contract drivers look like employees to government regulators. Uber recently settled a challenge to its classification of drivers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding a judicial ruling on the issue. But that does not preclude future litigation, and being able to exercise control over how work is done -- how drivers drive -- is one of the factors the IRS considers when evaluating whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. 2016-07-06 10:06 Thomas Claburn

57 Predictive Analytics, Wearables Data Driving EHR Growth Healthcare providers have been investing in electronic health record (EHR) technology over the past several years, and the trend shows no sign of letting up. That's according to a new report from market research firm Technavio that looked at the size of the market, its expected growth, and the trends that will impact it over the next several years. The research firm is forecasting the global EHR market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 5%, exceeding $28 billion by 2020. "There is greater adoption of EHR in developed economies as compared to developing economies owing to the IT budget constraints in developing countries," lead analyst Amit Sharma, wrote in a July 4 statement. "The adoption of EHR systems in the European healthcare IT market is increasing at an exponential rate so as to increase the quality of patient care. " Technavio identified three big trends that are impacting the market and driving the growth of EHR. The first is the increased adoption of predictive analytics. The research firm noted that predictive analytics integrated with EHR technology has led to emerging research opportunities. [How is Penn Medicine using EHR data with analytics? Read Penn Medicine Using Data to Save Patient Lives .] For instance, one use-case is for medical teams to use predictive modeling technology integrated with cloud-based EHR solutions to monitor the spread of the flu in real-time and predict where the virus will spread next. In another implementation, the University of Colorado Health has implemented predictive analytics in EHR systems to increase the efficiency of operating rooms. Wearables and other health and fitness devices used by patients represent another area of growth for EHR and healthcare applications. Indeed, healthcare CIOs interviewed by InformationWeek have also said that data collection by fitness and other healthcare devices is a significant emerging trend for IT healthcare. Connecting these devices with patient electronic health records could allow doctors and other medical providers to access health data including heart rate, glucose level, and cholesterol levels. Using the information gathered, doctors will have the most recent and relevant information about the patient in order to prepare electronic prescriptions based on the information gathered. Technavio noted that Apple, Google, and Samsung have all created their own health and fitness applications and devices. Apple, working as a third-party app developer in partnership with Nike, has developed the cloud-based platform called HealthKit to store an individual's health information metrics such as blood pressure, heart rate, and weight. Apple has also partnered with the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals to access patient health information. Microsoft offers HealthVault , which can serve as a repository for consumers to store their downloaded medical records and data uploads from their wearable fitness devices. (Google shut down its consumer health record effort in June 2011, but has since launched its own fitness app.) Another big trend driving continued investment in EHR is the integration of these health records with telemedicine efforts. Technavio said that telemedicine-based technologies provide a framework for performing remote monitoring, again via sensors for detection of blood glucose, blood pressure, heart rates, and other data. "The major challenge for vendors in the market will be to integrate EHR, telemedicine, and other IT systems of hospitals seamlessly and to make devices interoperable," Sharma noted. 2016-07-06 10:05 Jessica Davis

58 The New IT: Driving Business Innovation With Tech For years, IT professionals have been exhorted by their leaders, their colleagues, and assorted industry pundits to better connect IT to business goals. It's a core strategy many have neglected because they're locked away in data centers. However, in the course of my business, I am starting to see an increase in the number of IT leaders using specific strategies to focus on deriving real business outcomes from the technology they use every day. The approaches they're trying include modernizing infrastructure, exploring ecommerce, and looking for opportunities with connected devices, mobile, wearables, and the sharing economy. Traditionally, IT executives have focused on buying various components, such as servers, storage, and software from different vendors, assembling the pieces like a puzzle into their own systems, and hiring specialized staff to maintain the systems. With this model, the IT organization ends up spending more money than it should, and dedicating too much time, on an endless cycle of integration, configuration, tuning, and testing. [Worried about keeping secure in the cloud? Read 7 Ways Cloud Computing Propels IT Security .] As digital work environments become commonplace, forward-looking IT leaders are not content to sit back while a chief digital officer gets to own the company's modernization budget. Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending will total $3.49 trillion at the end of 2016, a decline of 0.5% from 2015 spending of $3.5 trillion. Instead, IT and non-IT leaders alike are choosing to spend on nontraditional digital and business technology solutions. Business technology buyers are actively finding ways to free up capital, invest in new technologies, and deploy new capabilities for new business opportunities. They're shifting investment toward modern, agile capabilities, such as cloud computing, sharing services, and bring your own device. I'm seeing many traditional industries -- such as banking, insurance, and government -- adopting what I call "new IT" approaches to reduce capital expenditure, modernize systems, and free up budget for new business- relevant initiatives. From where I sit, the "new IT" transition has not been easy. Poor visibility is perhaps the biggest challenge I see holding IT teams back from digital innovation. I'm talking about poor visibility into business goals, application delivery, technology operations, delivery costs, and how the customer is affected. Visibility is further limited by new force-multipliers, such as the proliferation of user-driven applications, an increase in the number of connected systems, new automation tools, and adoption of serverless techniques like "X"-as-a-service and APIs. Instead of trying in vain, like King Canute , to turn back this digital tide, "new IT" leaders are starting to accept this complexity and focus on improving visibility into their many disparate systems. For example, one of our customers in online retail has deployed a new reporting capability to establish a direct line-of-sight into all the stages of digital service delivery -- from planning to development, through quality assurance and staging, and into ongoing operations. This view enables the company to efficiently allocate resources, stay on top of the unexpected, and spend less time on troubleshooting. Even better, the company is able to drive digital innovation in product development, market engagement, customer loyalty, and business value. DevOps is another approach I am seeing "new IT" leaders use to enable business innovation. The fifth annual RightScale State of the Cloud Survey polled more than 1,000 IT professionals. According to the survey, respondents who said they their enterprises had adopted DevOps increased from 66% in 2015 to 74% in 2016. More than 80% of respondents said they are now using DevOps principles for application delivery. I work with one large SaaS business that commits new feature code daily, and provides product teams with feedback on exactly how customers are using its service. Working closely with both Dev and Ops teams, business leaders can try out new capabilities, iterate quickly, and measure real business results. They can then rapidly double down on successful innovation, while quickly pivoting when things don't go quite as planned. With the right systems and technologies in place to deliver insight, DevOps connects application delivery with business goals and customer experiences, and helps business leaders work directly with IT on iterative, innovative approaches. Every company is becoming an analytics company as new types of data pour in from new digital devices, systems, and applications. This data has incredibly valuable information on customers, product, partners, and operations, but even the most analytically oriented company is challenged by the amount and diversity of data received. "New IT" leaders meeting this challenge most successfully appear to be those who connect these many data sources together to establish a common data fabric. This is accessible and meaningful, not only for IT to solve development and performance problems, but also for business leaders to gain actionable business insights. For example, one gaming business I am working with has started tracking and analyzing website metrics every day, not only measuring application speeds and feeds, but also uncovering customer activity such as wagers made, new users signing up, money paid out, and cancelled subscriptions. Connecting IT delivery directly with business goals is enabling the company to make data-driven technology decisions, creating measurably better business outcomes. To stay competitive, organizations need to drive innovation, not only with their products and services, but also in business approaches and finding new strategies to exceed business goals. By modernizing infrastructure, ensuring visibility, exploring new technologies such as cloud computing, and adopting techniques such as streamlined DevOps and common data fabrics, IT can sit at the center of business development and take an organization to new heights. Aligning IT with business goals from the get-go gives companies a competitive edge and sets the standard for success. 2016-07-06 08:06 Andi Mann

59 Starship Technologies To Test Robot Delivery Service People on the streets of London, Düsseldorf, Bern, and other European cities will soon see robots rolling along the sidewalk to deliver prepared food, parcels, and retail goods to nearby customers. Starship Technologies , a robotics company launched two years ago by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, says it plans to announce on Wednesday four industry partners that will be testing its delivery robots: Just Eat, a European food delivery company; Hermes, a German parcel delivery company (not to be confused with the similarly named French luxury goods maker); Metro Group, a major German retailer; and Pronto.co.uk, a food delivery service based in London. The four companies later this month will begin tests with real customers to assess the viability of automated product deliveries. A similar program is being developed for cities in the US. Starship has been conducting proof- of-concept tests without real customers for the past nine months. The Starship robot doesn't look much like a starship or the sort of anthropomorphic robot depicted in classic science fiction. It resembles a cooler with a sunroof, six wheels, and an antenna. In a phone interview, Starship Technologies' COO Allan Martinson mentioned hearing the robot compared to a cooler and said the similarity wasn't obvious to research and development personnel based in the often chilly northern city of Tallin, Estonia, where coolers don't have quite the cultural relevance as they do in more southern climes. The robot, which for better or worse has no name, is mostly autonomous , relying on on-board cameras and GPS for obstacle-avoidance and navigation. But it is overseen by a human controller at a remote facility when performing its duties. Martinson said during internal testing, one person has overseen as many as four robots at once. The robot was designed for making deliveries to customers within two or three miles of local stores, at a cost that's 10 to 15 times less than existing local delivery options. Eventually, the service is expected to cost about $1.50 per delivery, though Martinson said that the robots could become even more cost effective over time as the technology becomes more widespread. The robot can accommodate about 20 to 25 pounds of goods. Frank Rausch, CEO of Hermes Germany, said in a statement that the goal of employing robots is to provide better customer service. "At Hermes we believe that parcel delivery's main goal is to fully satisfy the customers' needs in receiving their online shopping orders as fast and convenient as possible," he said. "Nobody likes to spend hours waiting for the courier just to have a parcel delivered. " Martinson said the proof-of-concept testing has provided the company with a lot of insight into the social aspects of human-robot interaction, a particularly important issue because Starship's robots will be travelling on public sidewalks and crossing public roads. Presently, most interaction with mobile robots occurs on private property, in controlled settings like a hospitals, hotels, or theme parks, excluding encounters with Tesla cars operating under autopilot. During proof-of-concept testing, Martinson said, Starship's robots have operated in 39 cities and 12 countries. In more than 5,000 miles travelled, the robots met about 400,000 people. One of the most interesting findings, Martinson said, was that people's reactions have been fairly uniform. Between 60% and 80% of people don't pay attention to the robot, he said, and the rest are almost all positive interactions. He said that people may show more interest when they have time to spare, as they tend to have on weekends. "There have been only a few incidents with people under the influence of something or trying to show off," Martinson said, adding that none of the incidents resulted in personal injury, property loss, or damage to the robot. [See IBM Watson: Machine-of-All-Trades .] The robot requires customers to meet it at their doors or at the bottom of stairs, since it can't climb. "We notify the consumer that food or groceries have arrived," Martinson said. "As part of our initial testing, we have seen that people really don't mind [coming out to meet the robot]. " Martinson expects robotic delivery will exist alongside more traditional delivery systems for some time, depending on how businesses and customers respond. He sees it as an economic enabler. "It's something that local restaurants never dreamed they'd have," he said. Politicians and regulators, said Martinson, have been supportive because the robots align with common civic priorities, like reducing damage to the environment, reducing road congestion , helping people with disabilities and the elderly, and promoting economic development and employment. The company recently received approval from Washington, DC to test its robots on city streets, through the city's Personal Delivery Device Pilot Act of 2016. 2016-07-06 08:06 Thomas Claburn

60 Google is working to make every website viewable in VR Reading your favorite website may be a whole new experience in the near future. As part of its Chromium project Google is apparently working at bringing virtual reality support to its browser. According to Google's François Beaufort , the Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev channels have a setting that “allows users to browse the web while using Cardboard or Daydream-ready viewers.” Virtual reality is likely to gain wider traction with Google's browser. Daydream is Google's upcoming virtual reality platform, which we got to see for the first time at Google I/O this year. Cardboard is the low-rent VR option that transforms your phone into a VR headset with a viewer that follows Google's guidelines. This work by Google should spur the web's ability to work with virtual reality. While the Samsung browser can visit sites in the company's Gear VR headset, the experience right now is a little clunky. 2016-07-06 07:49 Derek Walter

61 New Tor-powered backdoor program targets Macs Security researchers have found a new backdoor program that allows attackers to hijack Mac systems and control them over the Tor network. The new malware has been dubbed Backdoor. MAC. Eleanor by researchers from antivirus vendor Bitdefender and is distributed as a file converter application through reputable websites that offer Mac software. The rogue application is called EasyDoc Converter. Once installed it displays a fake interface where users can supposedly drag and drop files for conversion, but which in reality doesn't do anything. In the background, the application executes a shell script that installs multiple malicious components in a folder called “/Users/$USER/Library/.dropbox. " The Dropbox name is used to make the malware harder to spot and has nothing to do with the legitimate Dropbox file synchronization software. The Eleanor malware has three components: a Web service with a PHP application, a Tor hidden service that allows attackers to connect to the affected systems over the Tor anonymity network and an agent that posts the Tor access URLs for infected systems to the Pastebin website. The PHP application served by the Web service is actually a backdoor that allows attackers to view, edit, rename, delete, upload, download and archive files on the system; to execute shell commands and scripts written in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java and C; to open a reverse shell to the attackers' server; to connect to MySQL, SQLite and other databases; to view the process list and to send emails with attachments. Another component of this application allows attackers to capture images and videos using the system's webcam. The Tor component connects the computer to the Tor network and makes its rogue Web service accessible via a .onion URL. This type of URL can only be accessed from within the Tor network. The Pastebin agent takes the system's .onion URL, encrypts it with an RSA public key and posts it on Pastebin where attackers can find it and use it. The oldest Pastebin post identified by the Bitdefender researchers as being created by the Eleanor backdoor is dated April 19. But the company could not establish the total number of infected machines, because different Eleanor samples upload URLs to different Pastebin accounts and they don't have all the samples. The good news is that the app is not digitally signed by an Apple-approved certificate, so users will see security warnings on the latest OS X version if they try to install it. On OS X El Capitan (10.11) users would actually need to perform a manual override in order to install the application. 2016-07-06 07:46 Lucian Constantin

62 Testing GTX 1080 SLI Performance with Dual Palit GeForce Cards Nvidia's new top of the line GPU arrived with quite a bang. The GeForce GTX 1080 allows for no- compromise 4K gaming on a single GPU. In our full review we found that even with the eye candy turned all the way up it was possible to achieve playable performance in all the latest titles. And yet in spite of this, that didn't mean it was able to hit 60 fps at all times. Hitting that lofty target requires more than any single card on the market can deliver. The solution? Two GTX 1080s, of course. In this article, we're taking a close look at the GTX 1080's dual-card SLI performance at 4K resolution to see exactly how much more graphics- crunching horsepower that second GPU brings to the table. The SLI owners club has remained somewhat exclusive in the past, and the new GeForce 10xx series won't be changing that. If anything, it'd bound to become more limited than before due to the expensive new high-bandwidth SLI bridge. The new specification, SLI HB (High Bandwidth) simultaneously utilizes two linked interfaces to double available bandwidth between linked GPUs. Nvidia claims the extra bandwidth is required to adequately drive high resolution displays. So, along with the second GTX 1080 graphics card, we also picked up a 3-slot SLI HB bridge. The GTX 1080s in question are Palit’s GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition graphics cards, which we'll look at briefly before going into the benchmarks. When compared to Nvidia's Founders Edition, Palit's GameRock Premium Edition is... larger. This behemoth of a card measures 285mm long and stands 133mm tall. It also occupies three expansion slots for good measure. The GameRock PE’s size isn’t superficial either. Under that massive fan shroud is one of the largest heatsinks we have ever seen on a graphics card. All told, there's around 120mm x 185mm worth of aluminium fins, standing 30mm tall. Additionally, they are linked together using not just three 8mm thick copper heatpipes, but also with an additional two 6mm pipes. These copper heatpipes connect to a large copper base which is 15% larger than the previous base used by Palit's JetStream coolers. Cooling that huge array of fins are two 100mm Smart Fans featuring TurboFan Blade design, which Palit says has been 'inspired by the power of jet engines'. The “Smart Fan” part comes from the fact that the dual fans rotate in opposite directions to 'reduce airflow conflicts and effectively improve overall cooling performance'. It is an intriguing design choice, though Palit makes no concrete claims regarding performance. Underneath the cooler is an equally large PCB - and on it, users will find an upgraded power design featuring both an 8-pin PCIE power connector, and additional 6-pin PCIE power connector for greater power input. Out of the box, the Palit GTX 1080 GameRock PE comes clocked at 1746MHz resulting in a boost clock speed of 1885MHz. That is a 9% boost to the base clock out of the box, which is very good for a GTX 1080. The GDDR5X memory has also been boosted from 5000MHz to 5250MHz resulting in an effective clock speed of 10.5GHz for a memory bandwidth of 336GB/s. Palit has also capped their card off with some fancy RGB lighting and a nice big backplate. Pricing isn’t yet known due to poor availability, but we expect Palit will be charging a small price premium over the $600 MSRP. Scaling in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt isn’t too bad with HairWorks disabled. Enabling this feature, however, seems to kill SLI scaling. At any rate, here we see that adding a second Palit GTX 1080 boosts performance by 64% for an average of 82fps at 4K. In comparison, the GTX 980 Ti graphics cards only enjoyed a 42% performance boost when taking advantage of SLI. A lone Palit GTX 1080 GameRock PE rendered a very playable 57fps at 4K in Rise of the Tomb Raider, though at times it did drop as low as 36fps. Adding a second card boosted the average frame rate by 60% to 91fps, while the minimum frame rate saw a 67% performance boost. These aren’t quite ideal scaling results, but it still made for a very satisfying gaming experience at 4K. 2016-07-06 19:56 Steven Walton

63 Oracle must pay $3bn compensation to HPE over Itanium support Oracle has, once again, been ordered to pay $3bn in compensation to HPE over its 2011 decision to discontinue software support for Itanium-based servers, just a year after it acquired HPE's rival, Sun... 2016-07-07 00:01 Graeme Burton

64 Cisco and IBM to partner on collaboration tools and analytics Cisco and IBM have announced plans for a partnership that will combine their collaboration and analytics technologies in a bid to fight back against a new breed of collaboration companies. IBM’s Watson... 2016-07-07 00:01 Dan Worth

65 65 Engineer models heart valves, wind turbines for better designs, performance -- ScienceDaily And then Ming-Chen Hsu, an Iowa State University assistant professor of mechanical engineering, searched his computer for another video and clicked play. This time the tip of a wind turbine blade appeared on his monitor, constantly moving, flexing and vibrating as the blade rotated around the rotor hub. Red indicated air moving at a relative speed of 52 meters per second over the top of the blade; blue and green marked the slower air around the blade. These are computer models featuring technologies called computational mechanics, fluid-structure interaction and isogeometric analysis. They show the flow fields and stresses that mechanical systems have to withstand. And they're part of a toolkit Hsu and his research group are developing to improve the design, engineering and operation of all kinds of machines. "If we are able to use computers to model and simulate these engineering designs, we can save a lot of time and money," Hsu said. "We don't have to build and test every prototype anymore. " Hsu said it would be impractical, for example, for the wind energy industry to build and test full-scale prototypes of each and every idea for improving the performance of wind turbines. Instead, the wind energy industry can opt for computational models. Hsu said they're based on complex mathematical equations. They're full of data. And studies show they're accurate. Using the models, "We can predict the real physics of the problems we are looking at," he said. And so those videos showing blood flowing through an artificial heart valve or the vibrations of a wind turbine blade are a lot more than colorful graphics. To engineers, they can be as good as full-scale prototypes for studying durability and performance. Hsu has a background in computational mechanics and started modeling wind turbines during his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. He started modeling heart valves as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. He's been at Iowa State since the fall of 2013 and has built a research group that currently includes doctoral students Austin Herrema, Chenglong Wang, Michael Wu and Fei Xu plus undergraduate student Carolyn Darling. The group is now working on two wind turbine studies and an engine project: • They're modeling the performance of the "Hexcrete" concrete wind turbine towers being developed by Sri Sritharan, Iowa State's Wilson Engineering Professor in Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. The goal is to use prefabricated concrete to build taller wind turbine towers that can access the steadier winds at 120 meters and higher. The project is primarily supported by the U. S. Department of Energy. • They're also developing software to help engineers design wind turbine blades. The software will bridge a wide gap between blade design tools and performance simulations. The project is supported by a National Science Foundation grant that established Iowa State's graduate program in wind energy science, engineering and policy. • And Hsu's research group is modeling the performance of the rotors inside gas turbines. The models will help engineers design the next generation of turbine engines. The project is supported by a grant from the U. S. Army Research Office. Hsu, who teaches courses in fluid mechanics, said the modeling can be applied to all sorts of questions about a machine. In wind turbines, for example, the models can provide answers about material stress and fatigue, rotor aerodynamics, blade design, the wake behind turbines and power efficiency. "Ten to 15 years ago, computational fluid-structure interaction was new to everyone," Hsu said. "But with the success of this field, more and more methods are being picked up by industry. Our computational methods are improving engineering designs. " 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

66 How to tame your robot -- ScienceDaily Now programming robots is not just for those with years of coding knowledge, it's for anyone who wants to experience what it's like to simply wave at a robot and have it wave back. Gannon designed Quipt, open-source software that turns a human's motions into instructions a robot can understand. She designed it while in residence at Autodesk Pier 9 in San Francisco. When she left for her residency, she had been working with industrial robots at Carnegie Mellon University for a few years. She was close to making a big change. "I wanted to invent better ways to talk with machines who can make things. Industrial robots are some of the most adaptable and useful to do that," she said. But they are also some of the most dangerous. The U. S. Department of Labor has a special website devoted to "Industrial Robots and Robot System Safety. " These robots are big, and they have to be programmed by people with years of training. That programming takes place "basically with a joystick," according to Gannon. Programmers move the robot to a place, record a point and iteratively build up a motion path for the robots to remember. "Then the robot will repeat that task 24/7. That is their world," Gannon said. But not anymore. Quipt replaces the joystick technique. Its software stitches together the robot with a motion capture system, which are cameras that look into a space and let the robot see where it is. "I gave this robot -- this big, powerful dumb robot -- eyes into the environment," Gannon said. When the robot looks with its motion-capture eyes, it sees tracking markers on a person's hand or clothes. Now it can track a person while remaining a certain distance away, it can mirror a movement, or it can be told to avoid markers. Which means that potentially these robots are a lot safer -- and a lot smarter. Gannon imagines a world where they aren't just welding parts on an assembly line. "I think what's really exciting is taking these machines off of control settings and taking them into live environments, like classrooms or construction sites," Gannon said. Gannon collaborated with visiting artist Addie Wagenknecht and the Frank- Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry to develop a robot that could rock a baby's cradle according to the sound of the baby's cry. This software is a cousin to another of Gannon's projects that makes technology more hands-on -- last year Gannon released Tactum, which takes the software guesswork out of 3-D printing. In fact, Tactum projects an image directly on your body, and with your own hands you can manipulate the image to make it fit or look exactly how you like. Together with a projector, which produces the image on your skin, and a sensor, which can detect your skin and how you're touching it, the software updates the 3-D model that you're creating. When you're ready to print, you just simply close your hand and your design goes to the 3-D printer. Gannon was drawn to CMU's College of Fine Arts when the School of Architecture added new fabrication equipment. "I felt like I had the keys to the candy shop," she said. "My research is really playing in the field of computer science and robotics, but the questions I'm able to ask those specific domains is conditioned by my architectural background. It's really a spatial answer, how to control or interact with a robot. That, in my mind, is an architectural answer to this problem," she said. Golan Levin, director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at CMU, is one of Gannon's doctoral thesis advisors. He thinks her work could change how people design architecture, clothing and furniture, as well as influence industrial design and the arts. "Madeline is remarkable for the way in which she brings together an acutely sensitive design intuition with a muscular ability to develop high- performance software," Levin said. "The kind of work she is doing could not be achieved by a collaboration between a designer and engineer; it takes a single person with a unified understanding of both. " Stephen Lee, head of CMU's School of Architecture, has a philosophy that students learn best when they learn by making. He has attended Gannon's presentations and hired her to teach undergraduate architecture courses. "I think project-based learning and the maker culture are revolutionizing both the academy [K-12 & university] and practice [more slowly]. She is front and center in these new ways of learning and doing," Lee said. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

67 Bioinformatics software developed to predict effect of cancer-associated mutations: Software analyzes 40,000 proteins per minute - - ScienceDaily That is why the three researchers began to work on the bioinformatics tool. So José Antonio Rodríguez had the biological question; Asier Fullaondo, the knowledge of bioinformatics tools and databases; and Gorka Prieto, the programming skills. Initially, these PhD holders developed a piece of software (WREGEX, available for the scientific community on the UPV/EHU's server) that can be used to predict and automatically seek out 'functional motifs' (the small groups of amino acids that develop specific tasks in a protein). They tested the programme to predict 'motifs' that move a protein from the nucleus to the cytoplasm of a cell, the so-called 'nuclear exportation signals'. At the end of this research phase in 2014, a paper was published in the journal Bioinformatics. But, as José Antonio Rodríguez pointed out, "in research the answer to one question opens the door to more questions. " The question on that occasion was: Which proteins in a sequence of amino acids could have a functional cancer-mutant 'motif'? The team took another step and combined the information on the sequences of all known human proteins with the COSMIC catalogue that gathers the mutations linked to cancer. Thus appeared a new version (WREGEX 2.0) that allows a normal protein to be compared with the same mutant one so as to be able to predict 'functional motifs' that have been modified and which could be linked to cancer. "You may also have experience in how a motif functions and you want to find out which proteins it could appear in and whether it appears modified into cancer. With this software you can obtain candidates to start to study," explained Gorka Prieto. Once the bioinformatics programme had been developed, it had to be tested and to do this they carried out a "cell exportation trial'. They again chose various candidates that could constitute a motif responsible for moving the protein outside the cell nucleus. They checked their functioning and, after modifying them according to the tumour mutations described in the COSMIC catalogue, they ran the trial again. That way, they certified that the candidates acted as an 'exportation signal', that the mutation affected the way they worked, and that the software was therefore valid. So this tool combines three types of information: the protein sequences, the functional motifs and the cancer mutations. "One of the main features of WREGEX 2.0 is that it can simultaneously study highly complex proteomes with masses of proteins and combine information, in the case of the trial, with cancer mutations; but the door is open for using other databases containing information about other types of mutations. The advantage, moreover, is that 40,000 proteins a minute can be analysed, while with other programs the analysis of a single protein took several minutes," explained Asier Fullaondo. So with this software it is possible to predict that the alteration in a protein may influence the development of disease, not just cancer. So far, thirteen pieces of research have already used this computing tool. Researchers in China, Japan, Korea, Germany and the United States have accessed the server. In the meantime, the multidisciplinary tandem formed by the three PhD holders is already thinking about continuing with the work to improve the tool. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

68 Computing a secret, unbreakable key: Researchers develop the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution -- ScienceDaily Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo developed the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD allows two parties, Alice and Bob, to establish a shared secret key by exchanging photons. Photons behave according to the laws of quantum mechanics, and the laws state that you cannot measure a quantum object without disturbing it. So if an eavesdropper, Eve, intercepts and measures the photons, she will cause a disturbance that is detectable by Alice and Bob. On the other hand, if there is no disturbance, Alice and Bob can guarantee the security of their shared key. In practice, loss and noise in an implementation always leads to some disturbance, but a small amount of disturbance implies a small amount of information about the key is available to Eve. Characterizing this amount of information allows Alice and Bob to remove it from Eve at the cost of the length of the resulting final key. The main theoretical problem in QKD is how to calculate the allowed length of this final secret key for any given protocol and the experimentally observed disturbance. A mathematical approach was still needed to perform this difficult calculation. The researchers opted to take a numerical approach, and for practical reasons they transformed the key rate calculation to the dual optimization problem. "We wanted to develop a program that would be fast and user-friendly. It also needs to work for any protocol," said Patrick Coles, an IQC postdoctoral fellow. "The dual optimization problem dramatically reduced the number of parameters and the computer does all the work. " The paper, Numerical approach for unstructured quantum key distribution, published in Nature Communications presented three findings. First, the researchers tested the software against previous results for known studied protocols. Their results were in perfect agreement. They then studied protocols that had never been studied before. Finally, they developed a framework to inform users how to enter the data using a new protocol into the software. "The exploration of QKD protocols so far concentrated on protocols that allowed tricks to perform the security analysis. The work by our group now frees us to explore protocols that are adapted to the technological capabilities" noted Norbert Lütkenhaus, a professor with IQC and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

69 Computer security: With Boxmate malicious programs have no place left to hide -- ScienceDaily No matter how well-tested our software may be, hackers keep on finding vulnerabilities to exploit or control systems at will. "The attackers are always one step ahead," says Andreas Zeller, professor of computer science at Saarland University and researcher at the Center for IT Security, Privacy and Accountability (CISPA). "The core problem of existing security systems is that the attack needs to have been observed at least once to be able to recognize it the next time -- and then, you have to update everything again and again. " This threat is particularly prominent in the upcoming "Internet of Things," where hundreds and thousands of devices can become potential targets. A new approach called "Boxmate" is now set to prevent other programs from surreptitiously changing their behavior, as this would be part of or a result of a hidden attack, or a backdoor exploit. Developed by Zeller together with graduate students Konrad Jamrozik and Philipp von Styp- Rekowsky, Boxmate systematically generates program inputs in order to investigate the program's regular behavior. "During this automatic testing, we log which critical data -- say locations or contacts -- and which critical resources -- microphone or Internet access -- the program is accessing to perform these tasks," Zeller explains, "and the test generator ensures that all visible features actually are exercised. " During production, the program then gets placed into a "sandbox," an automated watchdog which oversees the operation of the program in question -- and which raises an alarm whenever some data is being accessed that was not already accessed during testing. If the program is compromised or exhibits previously unseen malicious behavior, the sandbox will catch and prevent the attack. The nicest feature of Boxmate, says Zeller, "is that malicious programs no longer have a place to hide. " Indeed, if a program wants to use certain kinds of data later on, it will already have to access it while being tested by Boxmate -- and thereby expose what it is doing. "Any hidden functionality will be disabled by the sandbox," says Zeller, "and this will make it hard for attackers. " But wouldn't the sandbox also raise alarms during normal usage? "Our test generator explores behavior so well that during regular usage, we normally have no alarms at all," says Zeller, who has already tested Boxmate on more than a hundred different apps with his team. Modern mobile systems request authorizations for every access to sensitive data like the camera, contacts, and the microphone. "With Boxmate, we already know from testing that these are being used, and how," says Zeller. The current implementation of Boxmate protects apps on Android smartphones. However, the concept can equally be applied on the desktop, servers, or embedded systems, and it requires no changes to existing programs. Zeller has already applied for a worldwide patent for the technology underlying Boxmate, so licensing is already possible. To permanently establish Boxmate as a comprehensive security tool for industry and commerce, Zeller's research group has now joined forces with industry partner Backes SRT. This Saarland University spin-off has developed, for instance, the "SRT AppGuard" app, a security program available as a free app and already downloaded more than one million times. "Boxify," the extended, commercial version of AppGuard, works together with Boxmate and will also be presented at Cebit. Zeller financed the research on Boxmate with funds from an ERC Advanced Grant. He had received the highest award of the ERC in 2011, with his proposal for "SPECMATE -- Specification Mining and Testing. " 2016-07-06 19:54 feeds.sciencedaily

Total 69 articles. Created at 2016-07-07 00:01