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100 articles, 2016-02-23 12:01 1 Samsung Galaxy S7 edge vs Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Which one is best for you? (3) Samsung's new Galaxy S7 edge will soon arrive in stores across the globe, giving consumers yet another great option to choose from in the space. Naturally, many of you will also be considering Apple's iPhone 6s Plus for your next big , so how does Samsung's latest and greatest fare against it? Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 edge will soon arrive in stores across the globe, giving consumers yet another great option to choose from in the phablet space. Naturally, many of you will also be co… 2016-02-22 16:45:54+00:00 8KB betanews.com 2 Samsung showcases heatpipe-cooled Galaxy S7 family with f/1.7 aperture cameras, IP68 rating and more (2) Samsung on Sunday announced two new additions to its Galaxy family of mobile devices, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. 2016-02-23 11:14:41 3KB www.techspot.com 3 John McAfee says he'll decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone for free with his team of super hackers (2) John McAfee, developer of the first commercial anti-virus program and current presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, has entered the debate surrounding Apple’s refusal to create a backdoor that will enable the FBI to access the iPhone 5c used by… 2016-02-23 11:14:41 2KB www.techspot.com 4 wants to turn your old computer into a speedy '' (2) There's no shortage of options when it comes to deciding what to do with an old computer once it has been replaced. Repurposing an old machine is certainly a noble cause but when it takes 10 to 15 minutes just… 2016-02-23 11:16:57 1KB www.techspot.com 5 Bethesda is working on three long-term projects different than anything else they've done (2) During a recent speaking engagement at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard said the company is currently working on three long-term projects that are completely different than anything they've put out to date. … 2016-02-23 08:37:43 2KB www.techspot.com 6 IBM says its new software links all your IT to the cloud The digital-transformation imperative looms large in the business world today, but it's not (2) always clear how on-premises software and data should fit into the picture. IBM hopes to help. 2016-02-23 02:53:00 3KB www.cio.co.nz 7 Most Americans support the FBI over Apple, Pew study finds The finding reflects a tendency in the U.S. to prioritize national security over civil liberties (2) 2016-02-22 14:48:00 4KB www.infoworld.com

8 AI Video Winners Announced 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 3KB www.i- programmer.info 9 Vulnerability Revealed In GNU C Library 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 3KB www.i- programmer.info

10 Vulkan 1.0 3D Graphics API Now Available 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 3KB www.i- programmer.info 11 Kotlin JVM 1.0 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 4KB www.i- programmer.info 12 Open Sources iOS Testing Framework 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 2KB www.i- programmer.info 13 Atom 1.5 Released Programming book reviews, programming tutorials,programming news, C#, Ruby, Python,C, C++, PHP, Visual Basic, Computer book reviews, computer history, programming history, joomla, theory, spreadsheets and more. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 3KB www.i- programmer.info 14 Yahoo In Retrenchment Again 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 5KB www.i- programmer.info 15 Google's Cloud Vision AI - Now We Can All Play 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 2KB www.i- programmer.info 16 Sense From Silk Labs 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. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 4KB www.i- programmer.info 17 HTC prices Vive VR headset at $799 ($200 more than the Rift), will ship in early April HTC's Vive VR headset, considered by many to be the only serious competitor to the Oculus Rift, now has a price and release date. If you were put off by the "high" price of the Oculus Rift, HTC won't provide… 2016-02-23 11:14:41 2KB www.techspot.com 18 Researchers develop a robotic third arm to give drummers a helping hand (video) As someone who briefly played drums in a college band, I can appreciate how helpful having a third arm would be when it comes to hammering out complicated solos. It seems that researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology also… 2016-02-23 11:15:25 3KB www.techspot.com 19 Sling TV now has over 600,000 subscribers, sources say Sling TV, the $20-per-month over-the-top Internet television service from Dish Network, has consistently added to its repertoire since its debut in early 2015. The continued investment has apparently paid off as the streaming service now has more than 600,000 paying… 2016-02-23 11:15:25 2KB www.techspot.com

20 Samsung Portable SSD T3 1TB Review The new Samsung Portable SSD T3 drives build upon the T1's strong foundation with a few key upgrades and capacities all the way up to 2TB. From a performance point of view little appears to have changed but the T1 already topped our performance charts for USB storage. Notable upgrades include the change to a USB Type-C connector and a more durable metal case. Samsung Portable SSD T3 1TB Review. 2016-02-23 11:15:25 5KB www.techspot.com 21 'Fallout 4' wins Game of the Year at 19th annual DICE Awards To the surprise of virtually nobody, Fallout 4 took home top honors as Game of the Year at the 19th annual D.I.C.E. Awards last night. Bethesda's hit action role-playing game joined Ori and the Blind Forest, Rocket League and The… 2016-02-23 11:16:57 1KB www.techspot.com 22 Weekend Poll: What are you most looking forward to at MWC 2016 for your next phone upgrade? Mobile World Congress 2016 will be kicking off soon and we’ll be there to bring you the latest and greatest in the mobile world. Traditionally the show has been associated with cell phones, but you can expect to see everything… 2016-02-23 11:16:57 1KB www.techspot.com 23 Smartwatch shipments soared 316 percent in Q4 2015, outpaced Swiss watches for the first time I've taken multiple jabs at the usefulness of smartwatches over the past couple of years. To many (myself included), they simply don't serve a purpose or fill a need – they're a solution waiting for a problem to happen. … 2016-02-23 11:17:34 2KB www.techspot.com 24 Sky Fortress is the first 'Just Cause 3' DLC, check out the trailer here The first expansion pack for Just Cause 3 is just around the bend and if you thought the game was pretty wild as-is, just wait until you get a load of what's to come. 2016-02-23 11:17:34 1KB www.techspot.com 25 Sony announces trio of Xperia X at MWC 2016 Sony has announced three new Xperia phones at MWC 2016 that are set to compete in the all important mid-range segment. Launched as part of the new Xperia X family, the Xperia X, Xperia XA and Xperia X Performance all… 2016-02-23 11:17:37 2KB www.techspot.com 26 Building an Empathy Driven Product Vision Savita Pahuja and Mirana Kerner, agile coaches at Palo-IT in Singapore, ran a workshop at the Agile Tour Singapore conference on the importance of creating an emotional connection when preparing a product vision, and how visualisation techniques can help. The talk covered Empathy Driven Product Vision – the art of creating an impactful product vision using emotions and magic of visual effects. 2016-02-23 11:00:58 2KB www.infoq.com 27 Particle.io Ships the Electron, a Small Cellular IoT Board Particle.io has begun shipping the Electron, an Arduino-compatible cellular Internet of Things (IoT) board geared for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. The Electron enables remote IoT devices to communicate with the cloud in situations where no Wi-Fi connectivity is available, but 2G or 3G mobile wireless connectivity exists. The Electron is a followup to Particle's Photon. 2016-02-23 11:05:39 2KB www.infoq.com 28 Google’s Offers Some Support to Apple on its FBI Encryption Fight Google has made its first comment on the Apple/FBI encryption fight, with Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai offering Tim Cook some limited support via a series of Tweets: 2016-02-23 07:45:42 3KB www.infoq.com

29 'Carmageddon: Max Damage' announced for next-gen consoles Stainless Games has revealed a new entry in the Carmageddon franchise. Carmageddon: Max Damage will tempt gamers with more than 30 metal mangling vehicles designed to mow down the competition (and any unfortunately pedestrians that get in the way). 2016-02-23 08:36:34 1KB www.techspot.com 30 Intel says move to 10-nanometer chips still on track for 2017 Intel posted a job listing on its website last month in which it mentioned that mass production of products using its 10-nanometer manufacturing technology would begin approximately two years from the date the listing was posted (January 21, 2016). 2016-02-23 08:36:34 1KB www.techspot.com 31 Waves of disruption reshape IT service management landscape We look at how technology commoditisation, open source and software as a service are changing the service management software market 2016-02-23 08:18:34 3KB www.computerweekly.com 32 T-Mobile launches pre-orders of the Samsung Galaxy S7, adds bonuses Samsung has recently unveiled its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S7, a follow-up in the same line the company has been producing for years now. Regardless of what you think of it, it's sure to be popular, and getting widespread adoption requires carriers to be on board. Samsung has recently unveiled its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S7, a follow-up in the same line the company has been producing for years now. Regardless of what you think of it, it’s sure to… 2016-02-23 05:57:53+00:00 2KB betanews.com 33 Q&A with Andrey Breslav on the Kotlin 1.0 Release After three months in beta, the Kotlin team has announced the release of Kotlin 1.0, which aims to stabilize both API and ABI of the language. InfoQ has spoken with Andrey Breslav, lead Kotlin designer at JetBrains. 2016-02-23 07:02:35 6KB www.infoq.com 34 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it Irony alert: bug brands Russians as occupiers when translating from Ukrainian 2016-02-23 06:23:55 3KB www.v3.co.uk 35 A Glimpse at the Future of Containers in the Enterprise As interest in containers continues to grow, industry experts gathered at the Container Summit to discuss the technology and its future. 2016-02-23 06:09:37 1KB www.eweek.com 36 Microsoft's Next Lock Screen updated with fingerprint reader support and more Microsoft today updated its Next Lock Screen app for Android devices to include a number of new features, including fingerprint reader support, Smart Contacts, Smart Lock, and more. 2016-02-23 03:32:01+00:00 1KB www.neowin.net 37 Amazon elevates general free shipping qualification to $49 Amazon announces a price hike for its minimum spending amount for orders to qualify for free shipping. The price hike will put Amazon's free shipping requirements in-line with other major retailers. 2016-02-23 03:18:01+00:00 2KB www.neowin.net 38 Bitcoin consultants form Flux political party in Australia In a bid to shake up Aussie politics, Nathan Spataro and Max Kaye create a new party whose voting would be directly influenced by its participants and potentially supported by blockchain technology. 2016-02-23 03:02:01+00:00 3KB www.neowin.net

39 GitHub Enterprise is coming to Bluemix GitHub's popular code-sharing service for developers has long been available in a self- hosted enterprise version, and now it's coming to IBM's Bluemix cloud platform. 2016-02-23 02:53:00 2KB www.cio.co.nz 40 Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition available for pre-order The Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition is now available for pre-order. The phone represents the highest spec phone so far which runs the open source - Ubuntu. It'll set you back $369.99. 2016-02-23 02:46:01+00:00 2KB www.neowin.net 41 Building Docker Images from a Container - Developer.com It is easy to get started building Docker images if you are already familiar with using containers. Study the typical workflow by using a simple example. 2016-02-23 00:00:00 8KB www.developer.com 42 How to Expand App Reach by Supporting Multiple Screen Sizes - Developer.com Learn how to expand app reach by supporting multiple screen sizes. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.developer.com 43 Java 9 to address GTK GUI pains on Bringing Java current with the latest edition of the toolkit will prevent app failures due to multiple GTK versions 2016-02-22 21:53:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 44 Razer Raises At A $1.5B Valuation, With $75M From China’s Digital Grid For Immersive Gaming Razer, the gaming technology company based out of Southern California, has raised another round of funding, a Series C that values it at $1.5 billion,.. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 3KB techcrunch.com 45 Investors, Entrepreneurs Upbeat On Energy Storage, China And The Internet Of Things For the last 15 years, the Cleantech Forum has been organized by the Cleantech Group. Most recently it took place in San Francisco on January 25-27, 2016... 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 9KB techcrunch.com 46 Mark Suster On Falling Valuations And LA’s Tech Scene TechCrunch sat down with Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures. One of the most active investors in Los Angeles, Suster spoke of how local.. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 1KB techcrunch.com 47 “Tough Sledding” For New And “Marginal” Funds In 2016, Says LP Most institutional investors are notoriously circumspect. Chris Douvos is not like most institutional investors. In fact, Douvos, a managing director with.. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 5KB techcrunch.com 48 Toshiba Nixes Wearvue, Its Smart Glasses, Less Than One Week Before Launch Toshiba has canceled its smart glasses less than one week before the devices were to start shipping. In an announcement today, the Japanese electronics.. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 2KB techcrunch.com 49 SpaceX’s SES-9 Launch And Why They Land Rockets At Sea This Wednesday at 6:46 pm EST, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the SES-9 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida with their Falcon 9 launch.. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 3KB techcrunch.com

50 Explore, troubleshoot and diagnose your network with PortScan Freeware developer The SZ has shipped a new version of PortScan, its one-stop network toolkit for Windows XP and later. We last checked out the program way back in 2012, so the new release seems like a good time to look at it again. Freeware developer The SZ has shipped a new version of PortScan, its one-stop network toolkit for Windows XP and later. We last checked out the program way back in 2012, so the new release seems li… 2016-02-22 18:20:15+00:00 3KB betanews.com 51 From the air back to the ground -- Telecoms are returning to their roots with Gigabit internet Outside of those directly involved in the telecommunications industry, what goes on behind the cellular and wireless networks may be a mystery. Outside of those directly involved in the telecommunications industry, what goes on behind the cellular and wireless networks may be a mystery. The truth is that telecoms is advancing just as fast … 2016-02-22 18:16:13+00:00 4KB betanews.com 52 AppFolio reports 4Q loss GOLETA, Calif. _ AppFolio Inc. on Monday reported a loss of $3.9 million in its fourth quarter. AppFolio expects full-year revenue in the range of $100 million to $104 million. AppFolio shares have dropped 5 percent since the beginning of the year. 2016-02-22 18:13:00-05:00 1KB www.cnbc.com 53 Moveable type: iClever Tri-folding Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard [Review] A few months back, I took a look at the iClever Portable Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard and I was impressed. Now iClever is back with an updated version of the keyboard, the iClever Ultra Slim 3 Color Backlight Bluetooth Keyboard. A few months back, I took a look at the iClever Portable Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard and I was impressed. Now iClever is back with an updated version of the keyboard, the iClever Ultra Slim 3 Color… 2016-02-22 17:45:48+00:00 4KB betanews.com 54 Ballistic unveils six-sided protection cases for Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge smartphones If you are a fan of the Android operating system, Samsung smartphones and tablets are some of the best. The company's devices are beautiful, well-built and full of features. More importantly, the company is reliable for support; sure, OS updates aren't as frequent or timely as a Nexus device, but Galaxy phones aren't abandoned like some others. If you are a fan of the Android operating system, Samsung smartphones and tablets are some of the best. The company’s devices are beautiful, well-built and full of features. More importantly, … 2016-02-22 17:43:00+00:00 3KB betanews.com 55 Android banking and payment apps at risk from Acecard Trojan A new Android banking Trojan is now bypassing security measures -- the Acecard Trojan is capable of attacking users of nearly 50 different online financial applications and services. A new Android banking Trojan is now bypassing Google Play security measures — the Acecard Trojan is capable of attacking users of nearly 50 different online financial applications and service… 2016-02-22 16:37:22+00:00 3KB betanews.com 56 Huawei and Nexusguard partner to offer DDoS protection DDoS attacks are one of the most worrying threats that enterprises face. Chinese hardware company Huawei and security specialist Nexusguard are launching a new joint solution that offers enterprises and internet service providers state-of-the-art DDoS protection using software-defined networking (SDN). DDoS attacks are one of the most worrying threats that enterprises face. Chinese hardware company Huawei and security specialist Nexusguard are launching a new joint solution that offers enterprise… 2016-02-22 16:14:41 2KB betanews.com

57 When Law Enforcement Software Goes Too Far On-board software warns the police about your prior criminal activity and your basic thoughts on law enforcement before they ever arrive on the scene. 2016-02-22 16:00:09+00:00 3KB news.filehippo.com 58 First impressions on the Vector Luna smartwatch, which claims 30 days of battery life The Vector Luna is a smartwatch that works with iOS, Android and Mobile, comes in a stylish design and claims to offer 30 days of battery life. These are my first impressions of the device. 2016-02-22 15:52:01+00:00 6KB www.neowin.net 59 HTC One X9 coming to Europe and Asia this month You may remember the One X9 as a China specific premium, mid-range smartphone launched back in December by HTC, but now the company is bringing the device to more markets starting this month. 2016-02-22 14:50:01+00:00 1KB www.neowin.net 60 Save up to 59% off the First Generation Lytro 16GB or 8GB Camera via Deals Today via Neowin Deals you can save over a hundred dollars on a First Generation Lytro 16GB or 8GB Camera for a limited time - the first consumer camera to capture the entire light field! 2016-02-22 14:08:01+00:00 2KB www.neowin.net 61 SanDisk unveils Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive When USB flash drives hit the mainstream, many consumers -- including myself -- were shocked by the small dimensions. I remember staring in amazement, thinking of how many floppy disks would fit on one. When USB flash drives hit the mainstream, many consumers — including myself — were shocked by the small dimensions. I remember staring in amazement, thinking of how many floppy disks wo… 2016-02-22 13:28:04+00:00 3KB betanews.com 62 HP Elite x3 Brings To Businesses HP bets big on Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile with its Elite x3, designed to be your smartphone, laptop, and desktop. 2016-02-22 13:05:00 4KB www.informationweek.com 63 Registry Finder adds 'search keys by modified date' Open source Registry editor Registry Finder has added the ability to find Registry keys modified within a date range. Open source Registry editor Registry Finder has added the ability to find Registry keys modified within a date range. This has many computer forensic applications, such as seeing the keys modified … 2016-02-22 12:51:10+00:00 2KB betanews.com 64 Popular Linux distro hit by hacked version on official site over the weekend Mint downloaded on Saturday may leave a bad taste in your mouth 2016-02-22 12:47:00 3KB www.techradar.com 65 New tool uses machine learning to personalize emails Most marketing email gets personalized using a static template which limits the amount of information that can be tweaked for each recipient. Most marketing email gets personalized using a static template which limits the amount of information that can be tweaked for each recipient. Marketing automation company Boomtrain is launching a n… 2016-02-22 12:16:45 2KB betanews.com 66 unveils TAB3 10 Business tablet As the BYOD trend continues to grow throughout SMBs and enterprises alike, more and more mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are being introduced into the workplace. As the BYOD trend continues to grow throughout SMBs and enterprises alike, more and more mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are being introduced into the workplace. With this in mind, L… 2016-02-22 11:57:47+00:00 2KB betanews.com 67 Why Apple's shameless fight with the FBI is all about ego, not just cause After spending the last few days soaking up as much as possible on the Apple-FBI San Bernardino iPhone spat, the evidence -- in my eyes -- has become crystal clear. Apple's planted itself on the wrong side of history here for numerous reasons, and is using nothing less than a finely scripted legalese in defending its ulterior motives. After spending the last few days soaking up as much as possible on the Apple-FBI San Bernardino iPhone spat, the evidence — in my eyes — has become crystal clear. Apple’s planted … 2016-02-22 10:57:40+00:00 13KB betanews.com 68 Crank Software brings a new level of sophistication to embedded UI development with Storyboard Suite 4.2 at Embedded World 2016 New release of Storyboard Suite delivers innovative enhancements to Add Life and dimension to GUI design 2016-02-22 10:48:09+00:00 2KB sdtimes.com 69 Tips on how to start a successful tech business Starting any business can be fraught with difficulties, but a tech business can be even trickier. We look at what things you should do to make your business a success. Starting a business is the dr… 2016-02-22 10:21:39+00:00 6KB betanews.com 70 Verizon to buy XO Communications' fiber-optic business U.S. wireless phone provider Verizon Communications said it would buy XO Communications' fiber-optic network business. 2016-02-22 10:19:36-05:00 2KB www.cnbc.com 71 Cyanogen launches the MOD platform, bringing Microsoft apps even closer to Android users Cyanogen is launching the MOD platform, that allows OEMs, carriers, devs and users to embed functionality deeper into Android. And the first to take advantage is Microsoft with Cortana and Skype. 2016-02-22 10:10:01+00:00 2KB www.neowin.net 72 Mobile App Dev: 3 Trends That Will Shake Up Your Strategy Industry analyst Peter Crocker outlines three emerging technology trends that will have you rethinking your organization's mobile development strategy. 2016-02-22 10:06:00 5KB www.informationweek.com 73 Sony unveils Xperia X line up of Android Smartphones, as well as the Xperia Ear Sony has announced three new Xperia X smartphones, from the mid-to-high end with the entry level featuring a Snapdragon 650 SoC and the higher end an 820 processor for the extra burst of speed. 2016-02-22 09:46:01 3KB www.neowin.net 74 Outsourcing Data Science: What You Need To Know More companies are creating data science capabilities to enable competitive advantages. Because data science talent is rare and the demand for such talent is high, organizations often work with outsourced partners to fill important skill gaps. Here are a few reasons to consider outsourcing. What can go right and wrong along the way? 2016-02-22 08:06:00 7KB www.informationweek.com 75 US DOD Commits To Aggressive Surge To Windows 10 Microsoft have successfully sold the US military on Windows 10. Will others now follow? 2016-02-22 08:00:21+00:00 2KB news.filehippo.com 76 Samsung bundles complimentary Gear VR with S7 and S7 edge pre-orders Starting February 23rd, Samsung will start pre-orders of the recently announced S7 and S7 edge. Those that pre-order will also receive a complimentary Gear VR and games. 2016-02-22 07:46:02+00:00 1KB www.neowin.net

77 Is 2016 finally the year of upgradable phones? The launch of LG's 'modular' G5, could finally usher in the long-promised modular phone 2016-02-22 07:18:00-08:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 78 Chinese devs abuse free Apple app-testing certs to install pirated apps Sideloading technique for testing iOS apps empowers malware on non-jailbroken devices 2016-02-22 07:16:00-08:00 5KB www.infoworld.com 79 8 Reasons Cloud Email Is A Smart Move Now If you've been dragging your feet on migrating your company's email to a cloud service, here's why it's time to reconsider. 2016-02-22 07:06:00 3KB www.informationweek.com 80 Hacker Explains How He Put 'Backdoor' in Hundreds of Linux Mint Downloads A lone hacker who duped hundreds of users into downloading a version of Linux with a backdoor installed has revealed how it was done. Lefebvre said in a blog post that only downloads from Saturday 2016-02-22 06:35:00 1KB www.linux.com 81 Cities, not cornfields, draw data centers Metro areas are prime areas for development of multi-tenant data centers, study finds, as 'data centers reside where people are' 2016-02-22 04:45:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 82 Samsung announces next-gen flagship smartphones Both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge look very similar to last year’s models, raising questions about how they’ll do against the iPhone 2016-02-22 04:38:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 83 Ericsson working with AWS to make carriers more agile The cloud effort comes as Ericsson up to help operators handle more traffic and IoT devices 2016-02-22 04:28:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 84 Adobe rolls out new enterprise app creation service The Experience Manager Mobile service can help business users without a lot of coding know-how to build professional-looking apps 2016-02-22 04:25:00-08:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 85 Mark Zuckerberg outlines the future of Facebook Facebook's CEO first dreamed of VR as a teen and now sees it as the future of social media 2016-02-22 04:18:00 4KB www.infoworld.com 86 Inside HP's plan to turn smartphones into wire-free laptops HP returns to the smartphone market with the Elite X3, and has a three-year plan for success 2016-02-22 04:10:00-08:00 5KB www.infoworld.com 87 Beware of Hacked ISOs If You Downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th! Clement Lefebvre writes: I’m sorry I have to come with bad news. We were exposed to an intrusion today. It was brief and it shouldn’t impact many people, but if it impacts you, it’s very 2016-02-22 02:10:00 1KB www.linux.com 88 Northern local councils miss SME targets Local government organisations in the north of England are failing to support local IT SME companies with supply contracts 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com

89 UK CIOs over-confident about cyber security, study shows UK firms are operating from a reactive security posture and tending to symptoms, rather than causes, and yet still believe they can detect threats much faster than the industry average, a study shows 2016-02-22 00:00:00 3KB www.computerweekly.com 90 IBM Extends Support for Swift Programming Language The IBM Swift runtime preview and Swift Package Catalog will help bring Swift to the cloud to simplify app development. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 4KB www.eweek.com 91 Social media technology, rather than anonymity, is the problem Problems of anti-social behaviour, privacy, and free speech on social media are not caused by anonymity but instead result from the way technology changes our presence. That's the startling conclusion of a new book by an expert on the information society and developing media. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.sciencedaily.com 92 European consortium develops new approaches for dealing with Big Data Big Data is a major factor driving knowledge discovery and innovation in our information society. However, large amounts of data can only be used efficiently if algorithms for understanding the data are available and if these algorithms can also be appropriately applied in highly scalable systems with thousands of hard drives. Big Data thus presents complex challenges for software developers, as the necessary algorithms can only be created with the aid of specialist skills in a wide range of different fields, such as statistics, machine learning, visualization, databases, and high-performance computing. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 3KB www.sciencedaily.com 93 Improved robotic testing systems New mathematical models can give us better and cheaper robotic systems. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.sciencedaily.com 94 How is a developing brain assembled? NIH 3-D software tracks worm embryo's brain development A new, open-source software that can help track the embryonic development and movement of neuronal cells throughout the body of the worm, is now available to scientists. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 6KB www.sciencedaily.com 95 Warning labels should be introduced to prevent digital addiction, research suggests Labels and could encourage responsible use of digital devices and raise awareness of potential side effects, suggest authors of a new report. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 3KB www.sciencedaily.com 96 New tech automatically 'tunes' powered prosthetics while walking When amputees receive powered prosthetic legs, the power of the prosthetic limbs needs to be tuned by a prosthetics expert so that a patient can move normally -- but the prosthetic often needs repeated re-tuning. Biomedical engineering researchers have developed software that allows powered prosthetics to tune themselves automatically, making the devices more functionally useful and lowering the costs associated with powered prosthetic use. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 3KB www.sciencedaily.com 97 Speed-reading your microbiome Researchers have built a microbiome analysis platform called QIIME (pronounced “chime” and short for “Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology”). This software will now be more readily accessible to hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world through BaseSpace, a cloud-based . 2016-02-22 00:00:00 5KB www.sciencedaily.com 98 Powerful tool predicts wave behavior at all depths of sea A new harbor or windmill park at sea will continuously undergo the forces of breaking water waves. Those waves have, on their way from the deepest ocean to more shallow coastal waters, undergone lots of changes. Researchers developed mathematical models for very fast calculation of the wave behavior, for each water depth and taking into account slopes, quay walls or ships. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.sciencedaily.com 99 Python Study Guide: Installing Python - Developer.com Python is the third most commonly used language on GitHub. You should be learning it. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 4KB www.developer.com 100 Encrypted traffic security analysis a top priority for 2016, says Dell Security Decryption and inspection strategies are necessities, with nearly 65% of all internet traffic encrypted, says the latest threat report from Dell Security 2016-02-22 00:00:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com Articles

100 articles, 2016-02-23 12:01

1 Samsung Galaxy S7 edge vs Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Which one is best for you? (3) Samsung's new Galaxy S7 edge will soon arrive in stores across the globe, giving consumers yet another great option to choose from in the phablet space. Naturally, many of you will also be considering Apple's iPhone 6s Plus for your next big smartphone, so how does Samsung's latest and greatest fare against it? Unlike the previous comparison between Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s , which the former flagship won fair and square, it will be much more difficult to find a winner between Galaxy S7 edge and iPhone 6s Plus. The two are much more similar than their smaller counterparts, making for a much closer fight. But, which one is best for you? Big vs Small First off, let's talk a bit about the differences between Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, and between iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to better understand Samsung's and Apple's philosophies for their two flagship phablets and why this battle is much more heated. As I explained in my original coverage of Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, there are three main differences between the two flagships: screen size, screen shape and battery capacity. Galaxy S7 has a 5.1-inch display, while Galaxy S7 edge packs a 5.5-inch panel that is curved (hence the edge in its name). The former has a 3,000 mAh battery, while the latter has a 3,600 mAh battery. They are virtually identical otherwise. With iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple has not created two flagships as similar. The differences are much more significant here, because iPhone 6s Plus not only has a bigger screen -- 5.5-inch as opposed to 4.7-inch -- but its screen also has a much higher resolution -- 1,080 by 1,920 compared to 750 by 1,334. The battery is also significantly larger -- 2,750 mAh vs 1,715 mAh -- and its main camera also gets the added benefits of optical image stabilization. As you can see, there is a much larger gap between iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus than between Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. It is as if iPhone 6s was not cut from the same cloth as its bigger brother. Meanwhile, Galaxy S7 edge is basically just a bigger Galaxy S7 with two curves on the side of its screen. I suggest reading the previous article first, which is linked in the opening paragraph, because in some areas the same impressions and conclusions will be drawn due to hardware or software similarities. Display Galaxy S7 edge has the display with the higher resolution, but iPhone 6s Plus' screen is not really that far off. In practice, both will be quite similar in terms of sharpness, even though their resolutions are not the same. Past a certain point, it is harder to tell the difference. Galaxy S7 edge, like Galaxy S7, has an active display which can show information during standby. The 3D Touch technology in Apple's flagship lets users hard press on the screen to get different contextual menus depending on the application. Galaxy S7 edge's display does have a slight edge -- no pun intended -- over iPhone 6s Plus' panel, thanks to the higher resolution. But, really, that is like splitting hairs. Both are great, and you should be very happy either way. Cameras In terms of imaging, we are looking at 12 MP cameras on the back, with optical image stabilization in each case, and 5 MP cameras on the front. Both flagships can handle 4K video recording, and 1080p at higher frame rates. The differences are in the aperture of the lenses. Whereas Galaxy S7 utilizes F/1.7 lenses on the front and rear, iPhone 6s Plus has to make do with F/2.2 lenses. The smaller the number, the larger the aperture. The larger the aperture, the better the low light performance. That is basically why this matters. In well lit areas, both should produce great photos and videos, however. But, because of that extra low light potential afforded by Galaxy S7 edge's cameras, it wins this round. Build and Design What I said in my earlier comparison between Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s holds true here as well, so I will not rehash it. Both phablets look great, and both use premium materials. It boils down to whether you like the glass build of the Galaxy S7 edge or the metal-clad design of iPhone 6s Plus more. You can't go wrong either way. Performance Just as above, the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s comparison again holds true here as well. Again, read the previous comparison for more information; but the gist of it is that their performance will be too close to call, and very similar in real life. There is no winner or loser here. Battery Performance When it comes to battery life, Galaxy S7 edge and iPhone 6s Plus are, however, different. Galaxy S7 is better equipped for a strong showing here, thanks to that notable difference in capacity. That said, you are still looking at all-day battery life with iPhone 6s Plus, even longer depending on your usage. Still, Galaxy S7 edge comes out ahead in this regard. Storage Since there is no notable difference between Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, and iPhone 6s Plus in terms of storage, my observations from the previous comparison apply in full here as well. As I explained before, Galaxy S7 comes out ahead in this area because it comes with more storage on the base model -- 32 GB as opposed to 16 GB -- and a microSD card slot for expansion by up to 200 GB. Most people will be perfectly fine with the base model. Meanwhile, iPhone 6s Plus will be pricier if you want more storage than the 16 GB model offers, but the fixed storage tiers also come with better performance compared to microSD cards. My advice is to pony up for the 64 GB version, which will add to the cost, as the 16 GB model is not future-proof enough to recommend for anything more than very light use. Software As above, software-wise, Galaxy S7 is basically identical to Galaxy S7 edge. The same holds true for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. So, it all boils down to whether you want Android 6.0 Marshmallow and slower updates or iOS 9 and faster updates. Mobile Payments Same goes for mobile payments, which are possible with both Android flagships. Galaxy S7 edge, however, will not be the best option here because Apple Pay is more widely embraced than Samsung Pay. If you want to buy things with your new phablet, my advice is to go with iPhone 6s Plus. Anything Else You Should Know? The rest of the specs are too similar to warrant a comparison, so, at the end of the day, it looks like Galaxy S7 edge is the better option overall, winning in the screen, camera, battery performance and storage departments. It only loses to iPhone 6s Plus in the mobile payments area, so it looks like a clear victory. However, iPhone 6s Plus should not be easily dismissed because in practice it is a very competent phablet that does plenty of things well. And, if you want an iOS smartphone, it is the best that you can get. Like I said the last time, it comes slightly short of its Samsung-made rival. Galaxy S7 edge is the better phablet for people who are not too caught up in the Android vs iOS fight, and it just makes more sense to buy from a financial point of view. For these reasons, it wins this head to head. 2016-02-22 16:45:54+00:00 By Mihăiță Bamburic Published 16 hours ago

2 Samsung showcases heatpipe-cooled Galaxy S7 family with f/1.7 aperture cameras, IP68 rating and more (2) Samsung on Sunday announced two new additions to its Galaxy family of mobile devices, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. The Samsung Galaxy S7 features a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display (2,560 x 1,440 / 577 PPI) with an always-on feature that's powered by a quad-core SoC (two cores operating at 2.15GHz and two operating at 1.6GHz) alongside 4GB of RAM. FYI, international markets will get an octa-core chip (four cores operating at 2.3GHz and four cores clocked at 1.6GHz). Both chips are built on a 14-nanometer manufacturing process, Samsung said, and utilize an internal heatpipe cooling system to ensure overheating won't be an issue. The Galaxy S7 edge , meanwhile, packs a larger 5.5-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED Edge display (2,560 x 1,440 / 534 PPI) that's powered by the same SoC and 4GB of RAM. Both handsets come with a 12-megapixel Dual rear-facing camera with f/1.7 aperture lens and optical image stabilization as well as a 5-megapixel selfie camera, also with an f/1.7 aperture lens for improved performance in low light situations. Samsung says the CPU in its new smartphones is 30 percent faster than what's found in the Galaxy S6 and the GPU is about 60 percent faster. The two smartphones will be offered in your choice of 32GB or 64GB of local storage that's expandable via microSD card slot unlike its predecessors. Both phones feature LTE Category 9, wireless charging that's compatible with WPC and PMA, NFC, MST, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual- band Wi-Fi, MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, ANT+, USB 2.0 and a variety of embedded sensors. They also come IP68 rated for liquid and dust resistance meaning the devices can be submerged in a meter and a half of water for up to 30 minutes without incurring damage. The smaller Galaxy S7 packs a 3,000mAh battery while the larger edge is powered by a 3,600mAh. Neither is removable but it's still an improvement over the devices they replace without a change in their footprint. Both handsets will ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow as we saw them in action on the demo floor already running the OS smoothly with the usual Samsung skin. The Galaxy S7 and S7 edge will be available starting mid-March. Pricing hasn't yet been announced although the company did say that anyone who orders a new Galaxy phone will receive a Gear VR as a free gift. AT&T will begin accepting pre-orders for both phones on February 23 with devices landing in stores March 11. 2016-02-23 11:14:41 Shawn Knight

3 John McAfee says he'll decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone for free with his team of super hackers (2) John McAfee , developer of the first commercial anti-virus program and current presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, has entered the debate surrounding Apple’s refusal to create a backdoor that will enable the FBI to access the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. McAfee, who has been no stranger to controversy in recent years, has offered to unlock the iPhone in question free of charge. He says he’ll be able to do this with his team of “prodigies” who possess “talents that defy normal human comprehension.” The way that the eccentric millionaire describes his crew makes them sound like they are straight out of 90’s movie Hackers. McAfee says it’s because of their “24-inch purple mohawk(s), 10-gauge ear piercings” and “tattooed face(s)” that these “best hackers on the planet” don’t work for the FBI. They also demand half-a-million dollars a year and smoke weed while they work, apparently. He added that only 25 percent of the team are hardcore coders, the rest are social engineers. If McAfee and his cyber A-team can’t crack the iPhone, which, he says, will be achieved primarily using social engineering and take three weeks, he has offered to eat his shoe on the Neil Cavuto show. In the op-ed article that McAfree wrote for Business Insider , he joins the rest of the tech world in supporting Tim Cook’s decision to not make an iPhone backdoor for authorities to access the device. He claims that if this happens, it would be “the beginning of the end of the US as a world power.” McAfee finished off by saying that if the FBI doubted his ability to do the job, they just need to Google ‘Cybersecurity legend’ and “see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million.” 2016-02-23 11:14:41 Rob Thubron

4 Neverware wants to turn your old computer into a speedy 'Chromebook' (2) There's no shortage of options when it comes to deciding what to do with an old computer once it has been replaced. Repurposing an old machine is certainly a noble cause but when it takes 10 to 15 minutes just to boot into Windows, what good can it really server? New York City startup Neverware has a pretty great idea – transform that old clunker into a speedy " Chromebook. " And now, you can give it a try without wiping your hard drive thanks to a new dual boot option. have been one of the surprise hits of the past few years. Unlike netbooks which attempted to run desktop-class versions of Windows on underpowered hardware, Chromebooks utilize a lightweight (albeit limited) OS that's far less demanding. As a result, manufacturers have been able to churn out slim Chromebooks that are deceptively quick and affordable enough to cause major disruptions in the entry-level laptop market. Odds are, your old laptop or desktop is probably still faster in terms of raw processing power than most new Chromebooks so you'll end up with a very usable system absolutely free. If you're interested in giving it a try, you can learn all about installation over on Neverware's website . 2016-02-23 11:16:57 Shawn Knight

5 Bethesda is working on three long-term projects different than anything else they've done (2) During a recent speaking engagement at the D. I. C. E. Summit in Las Vegas, Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard said the company is currently working on three long-term projects that are completely different than anything they've put out to date. Howard, who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at next month's Game Developers Choice Awards, said the games are big and crazy Bethesda-style games. Unfortunately for fans, he declined to elaborate further and instead said the company will talk about them at a future date. In the meantime, Bethesda has plenty to keep itself – and fans – busy for the foreseeable future. Earlier this week, the studio published a roadmap detailing the first three expansion packs for the popular action role-playing game. Automatron, Wasteland Workshop and Far Harbor are slated to launch over the next few months and we're told that additional DLC is also in the pipeline. The extra content prompted Bethesda to increase the price of its season pass from $29.99 to $49.99 although anyone that buys it before March 1 can lock in the cheaper rate. In related Fallout 4 news, Howard hinted that there's at least one cool secret in the game that players have yet to find (to the best of his knowledge, anyway). Naturally, Howard didn't spoil the surprise but did say that it is related to a terminal. 2016-02-23 08:37:43 Shawn Knight

6 IBM says its new software links all your IT to the cloud (2) The digital-transformation imperative looms large in the business world, but it's not always clear how on-premises software and data fit into the picture. IBM says it can help. The company on Monday announced a new series of “connect” tools for IBM Cloud that are designed to make it easier for companies to extend existing IT investments to the cloud. "There are billions of dollars of investment and install-days in IT that will not and should not disappear," said Jim Comfort, CTO and general manager for architecture with IBM Cloud. "But we must make it easier to make it more relevant in the cloud. " A key piece of the offering is WebSphere connect, which extends IBM's longstanding WebSphere middleware to the cloud. With more than 200 million global instances, WebSphere boasts the largest population of Java developers of any platform, IBM says. Now, those developers can connect their apps to the cloud more easily. The tool also extends WebSphere access to a whole new community of Node.js and Swift developers. From now on, all WebSphere customers will access new feature updates via the cloud, IBM said. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are a big part of IBM's integration effort, and that's the focus of API connect, another piece of its new suite. API connect aims to let any client publish its IT as an API, making it easy to find, call and connect over the cloud. It also enables the automated creation of APIs and provides built-in security and governance, IBM said. App connect is a new software-as-a-service offering that provides hundreds of pre-built connectors to cloud and on-premise applications, with a focus on making life easier for line-of- business professionals. Targeting analysts, developers, data scientists and data engineers, meanwhile, DataWorks is a service based on Apache Spark that makes it possible to prepare and move data from on- premises or off-premises sources to an analytics cloud ecosystem for analysis and visualization. Message connect is a new BlueMix service that links IBM's Message Hub portfolio to the BlueMix Message Hub for connectivity to open message formats like Apache Kafka , while z/OS connect creates APIs and RESTful interfaces for apps running on IBM z Systems. DB2 Connect focuses on helping companies connect developer tools, desktops, mobile devices, application server software and applications directly to their mainframe DB2 data. Finally, WebSphere Blockchain connect is a new service available to all WebSphere customers that provides a "safe and encrypted passage" from a blockchain in the cloud back to the enterprise, IBM said. The new z/OS connect tool is available now. WebSphere connect will be delivered in the first quarter of this year, followed by the remaining connect offerings in the second quarter. Overall, the goal is to enable companies to connect to any data, application or transaction system, "unlocking billions in investments and allowing you to move with speed to assemble the parts you need," Comfort said. With similar goals in mind, IBM on Monday also announced a partnership with VMware that will help VMware users extend their existing workloads from on-premises software-defined data centers to the cloud. The two companies will jointly market and sell new offerings for hybrid cloud deployments. Tags IBM More about Apache 2016-02-23 02:53:00 Katherine Noyes

7 7 Most Americans support the FBI over Apple, Pew study finds (2) Most Americans believe that Apple should help the FBI unlock a smartphone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino mass shooting, according to a study released today by the Pew Research Center. Fifty-one percent of those asked said they believe Apple should unlock the iPhone to help the FBI with its investigation, while 38 percent said it should not unlock the phone, to protect the security of its other users. Eleven percent of respondents had no opinion either way. Pew found that a majority of Americans think Apple should help the FBI unlock the iPhone Depending on how you look at it, that could suggest only a small majority side with the FBI (51 percent versus 49 percent who oppose it or are undecided), or it could suggest a clear majority in the FBI's favor (51 percent to 38 percent). Pew tends to favor the 51 percent to 38 percent comparison, said Alec Tyson, a senior researcher at Pew. "It's a fairly complex issue, and replying 'I don't know' is a perfectly legitimate response," he said. Of those who do have an opinion, most clearly side with the FBI. The survey quizzed 1,002 adults by telephone between Feb. 18 and Feb. 21, half via cell phone and half on a landline. Early last week, a magistrate judge ordered Apple to modify its iOS software so that the FBI can bypass security protections on the phone's lock screen to access the data inside. Investigators say the phone could possibly hold clues to finding more terrorists. Apple is fighting back and will appeal the order. Modifying the software would weaken security for all users, it said, putting them at risk of data theft and other crimes. The FBI insists the modification would apply only to the iPhone used in San Bernardino, but Apple says the order could open the door to more invasive requests in future. "Should the government be allowed to order us to create other capabilities for surveillance purposes, such as recording conversations or location tracking? This would set a very dangerous precedent," CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Q&A on Apple's website. The stand-off has been making headlines, and the Pew survey found that 75 percent of those asked had heard either a lot (39 percent) or a little (36 percent) about the issue. That's a high level of awareness compared to other studies, Tyson said, suggesting people are paying attention. If the public is leaning in the FBI's favor, it shouldn't be a surprise, he said. "Over recent years when it comes to antiterrorism efforts, we find the public tends to prioritize keeping the country safe over concerns about civil liberties. " That wasn't so clearly the case following the 2013 Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, but the pendulum has swung the other way since the rise of ISIS, Tyson said. To illustrate, he pointed to another Pew study conducted in December. "Public concerns that antiterrorism policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties have fallen to their lowest level in five years (28 percent)," Pew said then. "Twice as many (56 percent) now say their greater concern is that these policies have not gone far enough to adequately protect the country. " Given that reality, a showing of 38 percent in support of Apple might not be a bad result for the company, especially given that there are nuances to the argument Apple is trying to make. Another factor is that while many people favor security in the abstract, they might be less willing to see their own personal data put at risk, Tyson said. According to the latest study, among those who personally own an iPhone, the views were more evenly divided, with 47 percent saying Apple should help unlock the phone, and 43 percent saying it should not. Whatever the public's view, it shouldn't influence the outcome of Apple's legal case. "The courts should not be swayed at all," said Susan Hennessey, managing editor of Lawfare and a former attorney in the Office of General Counsel at the NSA. But it could influence future legislation in this area. "Certainly public opinion is enormously important for future legislative efforts," she said. 2016-02-22 14:48:00 James Niccolai

8 AI Video Winners Announced So who needs the Oscars... The winners of the AAAI video competition have been announced and you could say who needs AI as we picked one of the winners without the help of any advanced data processing. The tenth AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) video competition awards were presented on February 15th in Phoenix. Of the 24 videos submitted six received awards. The best video award went to Which was my personal choice and that of David Conrad when we first reported on it. You have to admit that it is a nice idea: However we didn't do so well picking the other winners. No one on the I Programmer team picked the Best Robot Video although on watching it again I can't think why - it's great! Mike James did, however, pick the winner of the Best Student Video. He liked it because it was on a topic that he's very interested in - and it is a very polished presentation. We also didn't pick the winner of the Most Entertaining Video although with hindsight, a wonderful prediction tool, it was blindingly obvious that anything called "Finding Linda" should have won - perhaps it was the subtitle that put us off! Most Entertaining Video:Finding Linda - A Search and Rescue Mission by SWARMIX. We also failed to spot the last two winners. Best Application of AI: Save the Wildlife, Save the Planet: Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security. Although the odds of winning would have had to be adjusted up, Baysian style of course, if anyone of us had noticed the "Heros" reference in the title and the shamefully blatant use of the acronym PAWS. The lengths some people will go to, to win a video competition. The final winner is the crowd-selected people's choice award and I guess our votes must have been too evenly distributed for us to make a difference. Well that about wraps it up from the red carpet, or perhaps that should be "read" given the academic nature of the gathering, for this year. Watch out for next year's competition and if you are into AI why not consider making a video. In case you are wondering what the strange things with a "pin" in the top are that the winners are holding then I should tell you that they are "Shakeys" named after the pioneering Shakey robot, built at SRI, Stanford and far more valuable than any Oscar. To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Administrator

9 Vulnerability Revealed In GNU C Library A patch has been released for a buffer overflow bug that was discovered in the glibc DNS client side resolver. The vulnerability potentially affects hundreds of thousands of internet connected devices and publicizing it increases the risk! Details of the bug, the solution and ways to trigger the buffer mismanagement it is designed to fix are contained in a Patch message circulated by Red Hat's Carlos O'Donell. A buffer overflow, the situation that occurs when a program or process tries to store more data than its allocated memory, theoretically provides the opportunity to introduce malicious code. It is therefore very worrying that one has been found in gilbc, the popular collection of open source code widely used in Linux. It affects versions 2.9 and later and dates back to 2008. The following details are given on the Google Security blog: The glibc DNS client side resolver is vulnerable to a stack-based buffer overflow when the getaddrinfo() library function is used. Software using this function may be exploited with attacker- controlled domain names, attacker-controlled DNS servers, or through a man-in-the-middle attack. The blog post also explains how it came to Google's attention: Recently a Google engineer noticed that their SSH client segfaulted every time they tried to connect to a specific host. That engineer filed a ticket to investigate the behavior and after an intense investigation we discovered the issue lay in glibc and not in SSH as we were expecting. Looking into it, after having crafted a working exploit, the Google security team found that the glibc maintainers had been alerted to the issue back in July 2015 and that Florian Weimer and Carlos O’Donell of Red Hat had been working on it in the interim. The two companies then collaborated on the development and testing of the patch that has now been released on Tuesday. Google has developed exploit code for the flaw but is not making that software publicly available. However, it has published a "non-weaponized" proof of concept that can be used to test if systems are vulnerable. Although many versions of Linux are implicated - Red Hat has confirmed that affected products include multiple versions of RHEL server, workstation and desktop products - Android appears to be in the clear. Google has also pointed out the while remote code execution is possible, it isn't not straightforward as it requires bypassing the security mitigations present on the system, such as ASLR. However, the fact that so much is now known about the bug, which goes by the alias CVE-2015- 7547, actually makes apps and hardware devices more vulnerable until patches are implemented. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Editor

10 Vulkan 1.0 3D Graphics API Now Available After a few delays the Khronos Group has released version 1.0 of the Vulkan API - which is often referred to as the next generation version of OpenGL. How will this change things? Graphics programmers seem to be living their lives in a time reversal stream compared to every other programmer on the planet. In other areas the move is toward an ever-increasing abstraction and a hiding of the details of the hardware. Graphics programmers have made moves in this direction in the past with 3D APIs such as early versions of DirectX, which operated in "retained mode", but today the move is away from such things and back to the hardware - well it sort of is. There are lots of graphics programmers who are very happy with the level of abstraction in APIs such as OpenGL and perhaps would like things to continue to evolve in this way. However, graphics is still a computationally demanding task and, while other areas of programming have benefited from enough hardware improvement to indulge in software abstraction, graphics always needs still more hardware. Even with the availability of GPUs to speed things up, the need to address the specific capabilities of the hardware to squeeze the last drop of performance out has been important. In fact the existence of GPUs has made this even more attractive, with real-time high quality graphics only just out of reach. Put simply, for the 3D CAD community OpenGL is more than enough and well worth using for the simplification it offers. For the real-time graphics programmer it is time to move to Vulkan and pay the price of increased complexity and hardware dependence. Vulkan is a development on AMD's Mantle a proprietary low level API and it stands alongside rather than replacing OpenGL. At the moment overall support is low so don't expect to see lots of new games that run 10 times faster than the old ones. Nvidia has release a driver which passes the conformance tests for Windows and Linux. There is a driver from Qualcomm which passes the test for Android, but AMD's beta driver has not yet reached conformity. Vulkan is in competition with the latest DirectX, i.e. version 12, and with Apple's Metal API. However, Metal isn't as low level as Vulkan - it is more something between DirectX 11 and 12. It is argued that developing using Vulkan has the huge advantage of being platform independent and open source whereas DirectX 12 is tied to Windows 10 and Metal is tied to Apple. The biggest problem is that it is very early days for Vulkan and there are few tools. Perhaps one day soon the hardware, or perhaps more likely the software, will develop to the point where graphics programmers can join the mainstream and start moving towards increased abstraction and further away from the hardware. Until then we have Vulkan 1.0. The New OpenGL - Vulkan and SPIR-V To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Administrator

11 Kotlin JVM 1.0 Jetbrains has released Kotlin 1.0, its open source general purpose programming language for JVM and Java. If you're wondering if the world needs yet another programming language, this one might have what it takes to be worth learning. Jetbrains is best known for its Java IDE IntelliJ, and the developers there seem to have put a lot of thought into what makes a language attractive. According to a blog post announcing the release, Kotlin has been developed to be: "a pragmatic programming language for JVM and Android that combines OO and functional features and is focused on interoperability, safety, clarity and tooling support. " The pragmatism is perhaps the most important aspect of Kotlin; the developers wanted to make it a good tool, so the interoperability with existing code and infrastructure came top of the list. Andrey Breslav, lead language designer of Kotlin, says that: "Kotlin would have been a whole lot easier to design and develop if not for the Java interop, Maven integration, Android compatibility! It would definitely be more elegant in many ways. But elegance, though highly appreciated, is not the primary goal here, the primary goal is being useful. And the less our users have to re-learn, re-invent, re-do from scratch, the more they can re-use, the better. " Kotlin can be used for server, desktop and mobile Android apps. It comes with its own standard library, and can interact with all Java libraries. The pragmatic approach meant the developers avoided inventing another packet manager and build system; as they point out, Maven and Gradle already exist with huge numbers of plugins. In contrast, the developers worked to make JDK-compatible collection interfaces to support the masses of Java code that work with JDK collections. Java 6 byte code support is also present to support the people who are still running Java 6. One area where the developers of Kotlin have moved away from current practice is that of null references. These can result in null reference exceptions, or in Java in NullPointerExceptions, NPEs. Kotlin’s type system is designed to eliminate NPEs, except if there's an explicit call to throw one; if external Java code has caused one; or if there's some data inconsistency with regard to initialization (an uninitialized this available in a constructor is used somewhere). Kotlin has apparently been production ready for some two years, and has been used internally at JetBrains for writing their own products, including IntelliJ IDEA, JetBrains Rider, and JetBrains Account & E-Shop among others. The delay in releasing version 1.0 was apparently because the designers were: Kotlin is open source under an Apache 2.0 licence and has over 100 contributors to date. JetBrains say it has over 20 people working on it full time and that it is committed to it for the long term. There's an online mini-ide that you can try alongside a set of sample problems to illustrate the basics of the language. To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Administrator

12 Google Open Sources iOS Testing Framework Google has released EarlGrey, a native iOS UI automation test framework that enables you to write clear, concise tests, as an open-source project on GitHub under the Apache license. Used in-house by Google for functional testing of apps such as YouTube, , , Google Translate, . it is now available to all and can be added to Xcode projects using CocoaPods or by manually adding it in. According to the Google Open Source blog, the key features offered by EarlGrey include: It works in conjunction with the XCTest framework and integrates with Xcode’s Test Navigator so you can run tests directly from Xcode or the command line (using xcodebuild). Google has a track record for open sourcing useful tools - GWT () being an obvious example. Another Google Apple-related tool, its Java To Objective-C Translator was also open sourced a few months after GWT in 2012. The EarlGrey repository on GitHub has an example that demonstrates features and functionalities of the framework and should help you get started using it. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Editor

13 Atom 1.5 Released Github has released a stable version of its Atom open-source text editor with support for more operating systems. Alongside Atom 1.5, the developers have also launched a beta of Atom 1.6. Atom was released in 2014 as GitHub's cloud hosted editor. It was created by taking the source code of , the open source browser that Chrome is based on, and customizing it to work with the Atom web app. While this is mainly an HTML/JavaScript based web app, it doesn't run in a browser. It can be extended using JavaScript, and is Node.js based. The changes to Atom 1.5 start with improvements to CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) softwrap. Previous versions of Atom considered every character to have the same width when performing soft-wrapping. The new version makes a distinction between default characters, double width characters, half width characters and Korean characters. The marker index has benefitted from performance improvements. Markers are used in Atom to handle cursors, selections, the autocomplete suggestion box, and find result markers. The change to the indexing will improve performance for all these cases. Other changes are more minor; you can disable Atom autoupdating, you can cascade windows below existing ones when working in Mac OS X, and the release-notes package has been removed "to reduce confusion on updates". The developers are now concentrating on Atom 1.6, with the beta improvements including the addition of block decorations. Decorations are one of the ways you can customize Atom. They have a simple API that gives you ways to customize the editor, but until now there was no way to display things between lines of text and have the subsequent lines move position. A block decoration lets you insert a DOM node before or after a certain line, and have it follow the line as the buffer changes. The new API means developers can create things such as inline diffs, code evaluation, and image previews. The 1.6 beta also improves the handling of multi-pane displays. There's a new API for top and bottom bars, along with a new pending tabs API. To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Administrator

14 Yahoo In Retrenchment Again Yahoo held its annual Mobile Developer Conference yesterday and unveiled an updated version of Flurry, its mobile analytics platform. However delegates were warned of a gloomy outlook for mobile in the coming year which can be considered a reflection of Yahoo's own troubled future. Mobile is one of Yahoo's key areas and in view of the fact that Flurry now supports over 250,000 developers, Yahoo has redesigned the Flurry Web dashboard. It now has a flatter look aimed to provide a: “faster, more intuitive way to view data.” The updated Flurry also adds analytics support for tvOS app and will let developers serve ads directly and manage the trafficking, targeting and tracking of ad campaigns. Currently an opt-in for existing users, the new look will roll out gradually over the next few months. In addition there's a new Flurry Analytics app for iOS and Android that provides a mobile dashboard. Flurry and the release of a tvOS developer kit was the upbeat aspect of the conference. In the second keynote, Simon Khalaf, Yahoo’s senior vice president of publishing products, warned developers of the slowdown in the mobile space calling 2016 "a year of pause and reflection". In forecasting a difficult year signalling the end of "mobile 1.0 he drew parallels between mobile and web arguing: "It’s the seventh year, and there’s something about the number 7. With Web 1.0, it was the crash, so everyone is jittery end of mobile 1.0. In the next year, we’re going to see mobile 2.0, like the same with how Web 1.0 crashed and the movement of Web 2.0 a few years later. " Khalef's pessimism must be heightened by his position in the company. On Wednesday Yahoo's plan to phase out all but four of its digital content channels had been announced. Yahoo Tech is getting the axe although some its staff, including former New York Times columnist and originator of the Missing Manuals series David Pogue is moving to Yahoo News. These cuts are the first of many. In its recent earnings call, Yahoo revealed plans to cut its workforce by 15% - around 1,600 employees by the end of the year. The company is facing worse than a slow down. Based on "confidential internal data", subscription website The Information.com reported: Daily active users going to Yahoo’s home page fell 16.5% between the first week of December 2014 and the same period in 2015, the data show, while those going to Yahoo Mail dropped by 11.5%. The same metric for Yahoo Search fell 8.8%. In each case, time spent by users dropped by an even greater proportion, suggesting Yahoo is losing some of its more-engaged users. Yahoo Labs is another a victim of the cuts as revealed in a Tumbler post by Yoelle Maarek who reports that both Yahoo’s Chief Scientist, Ron Brachman, and VP of Research Ricardo Baeza- Yates, will be leaving the company and that going forward: Our new approach is to integrate research teams directly into our product teams in order to produce innovation that will drive excellence in those product areas. We will also have an independent research team that will work autonomously or in partnership with product partners. The integrated and independent teams, as a whole, will be known as Yahoo Research. Maarek, formerly VP of Research now becomes leader of Yahoo Research. To anyone who has followed the story of research at Yahoo there will be a sense of deja vu. Back in 2012 Yahoo laid off many of its research team, many of whom found a new home with Microsoft. It was Marissa Meyer who in the following year recruited a substantial number of PhDs to Yahoo Labs which initiated some interesting projects. Indeed only last month Yahoo Labs released the largest ever set of data to be made available for general use. If Marissa Mayer can manage to put research at the heart of the business, Yahoo might experience a real resurgence of fortune. Now it seems that is not going to happen and that the writing is on the wall for all of Yahoo. Introducing the all new Flurry Analytics To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Editor

15 Google's Cloud Vision AI - Now We Can All Play Google announced Cloud Vision at the end of 2015, but it was in limited preview until now. Now, not only can we get our hands on the beta, we have inital pricing to work out if it is worth it. The Cloud Vision API offers Google's computer vision system to anyone who wants to use it and there is a free tier. The list of processing options given is: As noted previously face detection is supported but not face recognition - to avoid privacy problems. Of course what really matters is the price. The service is free until March 1st and after that charges will apply. The following rates are for up to 20 million uses per month; beyond that, you will have to talk to Google: The free tier of 1000 uses per month seems like a good way of finding out or experimenting. It could even be useful in education. The documentation points out that as a beta the API is subject to change and that it isn't intended for real time use in critical applications. So don't try to make use of it for robot guidance, for example. To use the API you have to enable it in the developer console and provide a way to pay for what you might use. The simplest way of using the API is to send an image, Base64 encoded in a JSON structure that carries the data and what you want to do to it. Send the JSON to the endpoint and you get JSON back carrying the results. You can also pass a url to an image stored in rather than having to upload the image each time. The Flaw In Every Neural Network Just Got A Little Worse To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Administrator

16 Sense From Silk Labs Sense is a device that sets out to be the eyes, ears, and brain of your modern household. The first product from Silk Labs, it is available for pre-order on Kickstarter and has already exceeded its $100,000 funding goal. Silk Labs is the new venture founded by Andreas Gal, formerly the CTO of Mozilla. We reported his leaving Mozilla back in June 2015 when he announced: "I am departing Mozilla to create a new venture in the Internet of Things space, an open field that presents many of the types of challenges and opportunities that drive our passion for the Web. " Gal had been with Mozilla for almost 7 years and his big contribution was Boot to Gecko, which went on to become Firefox OS so it's not surprising that Silk is a software platform designed to be extensible by developers. Silk Labs, which has Brendan Eich on its board, is currently a13-person team and Sense is its inaugural product. Perhaps surprisingly, as Silk Labs already has backing of $2.5 million plus additional funding, Sense was launched as a Kickstarter project with the relatively modest goal of $100,000 to take it from concept to market. That target has already been exceeded with all 400 of the $225 pledges snapped up in less than 3 days. These were in two batches of 200 - with and without the free Silk SDK. You can still obtain one of the Early Bird models by making a pledge of $249 and those with the SDK are proving more popular than those without. Sense is essentially a box containing a wide-angle camera, infrared sensor, accelerometer, microphone and a status light. As this video shows it is designed to connect with other smart- home products, like Sonos speakers, Nest thermostats, or Philips smart bulbs. Given that it has a camera and a microphone users interact with Sense using voice and gestures. However, its goal is to do more than act as a hub to control devices with a single app. Instead Sense is capable of detecting the difference between people and animals and of distinguishing different people. Silk Labs wants Sense to learn about its users and adapt to their needs using machine learning designed to recognize patterns. Unlike other home control solutions which are cloud based services, Sense runs applications locally on the device itself, providing for privacy and security. Another feature is that Silk has been designed to be extensible and will have the tools to be used by developers to create apps that run on Sense to make users home more intelligent and personal. As the promo on Kickstarter puts it: Silk is built by the same team that created Firefox OS, so we know how to build great platforms for developers. We understand the importance of simple tools and APIs that give power to developers without compromising user privacy. We know how to foster an ecosystem of developers, and we are excited to do this again with Silk (and Sense) for the home. It goes on: If you know JavaScript then you already know how to write Silk apps. That's because Silk is built on Node.js, and yes, your favorite JavaScript tools and npm modules will work just fine. Let's hope that Silk Labs has the element of entrepreneurial flair that is required to make this new platform a success. It is a bit disappointing that the first devices won't ship until December. The IoT spaces needs good products but it needs them now and not in 10 months time. 2052-05-04 00:00:00 Editor

17 HTC prices Vive VR headset at $799 ($200 more than the Rift), will ship in early April The Taiwanese technology company revealed at Mobile World Congress that its Vive VR headset, built in collaboration with Valve , will retail for $799 – a full $200 more than the Facebook-owned competition is commanding. For that price, buyers will receive the headset itself, two wireless controllers with haptic feedback (one for each hand) and a pair of "Lighthouse" laser base stations for tracking purposes. It's worth mentioning that the Oculus Rift doesn't include any motion-based controllers, instead shipping with a standard Xbox One controller (and two games: Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale). Motion controllers for the Rift are slated to arrive later this year although pricing remains a mystery at this hour. As UploadVR notes , the consumer version of the Vive is virtually (no pun intended) identical to what was shown at CES back in January. The only notable difference to the actual hardware is a more ergonomic head strap. There's also a new feature called Vive Phone Services that lets you place and receive calls and text messages without removing the headset and a front-facing camera to connect users to the "real world. " Other notables include an internal microphone and Bluetooth connectivity (presumably to use the aforementioned smartphone features). Like the Rift, the Vive VR comes with a pair of games: : The 2050 Archives from and Northway Games' Contraption. HTC recommends an Intel Core i5-4590 / AMD FX 8350 equivalent processor or better, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 or greater, at least 4GB of RAM, an HDMI 1.4 / DisplayPort 1.2 video output or newer, at least one USB 2.0 port and Windows SP1 or newer to get the best experience out of the Vive VR. HTC will begin accepting pre-orders on February 29 with plans to ship in early April. 2016-02-23 11:14:41 Shawn Knight

18 Researchers develop a robotic third arm to give drummers a helping hand (video) As someone who briefly played drums in a college band, I can appreciate how helpful having a third arm would be when it comes to hammering out complicated solos. It seems that researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology also thought that drummers could use a helping hand, and have developed a robotic limb to help boost their skills. The project, from the University’s Center for music technology, aims to push the limits of what humans can do with robotics. The “smart arm” can be strapped to a drummer’s shoulder, and responds to human gestures and the music it hears. When the drummer moves to play the high hat cymbal, for example, the robotic arm maneuvers to play the ride cymbal. If the drummer then switches to the snare, the mechanical arm shifts to the tom, and so on. "If you augment humans with smart, wearable robotics, they could interact with their environment in a much more sophisticated manner," Georgia Tech Professor Gil Weinberg said in a statement. "The third arm provides a much richer and more creative experience, allowing the human to play many drums simultaneously with virtuosity and sophistication that are not otherwise possible. " What makes the arm especially smart is that it can it listen to the music being played in a room and improvise based on the beat and rhythm. It can slow down and speed up the tempo depending on what a musician plays. The robot limb uses built-in accelerometers to sense distance and proximity, so it won’t put a stick through a drum skin or get in the way of the drummer's actual arm. To make the robotic arm move naturally, the researchers used motion-capture technology. The next step for the team is to link the arm with the drummer’s brain activity. The researchers are experimenting with an electroencephalogram (EEG) headband that detects brain patterns. It’s hoped that this will eventually allow the arm to react when a musician simply thinks about changing the tempo. The ultimate aim is, of course, to expand the technology beyond musical instruments. “Imagine if doctors could use a third arm to bring them tools, supplies or even participate in surgeries. Technicians could use an extra hand to help with repairs and experiments,” said Weinberg. “Music is based on very timely, precise movements. It’s the perfect medium to try this concept of human augmentation and a third arm.” Check out the video below to see the arm in action. 2016-02-23 11:15:25 Rob Thubron

19 Sling TV now has over 600,000 subscribers, sources say Sling TV , the $20-per-month over-the-top Internet television service from Dish Network, has consistently added to its repertoire since its debut in early 2015. The continued investment has apparently paid off as the streaming service now has more than 600,000 paying subscribers according to people familiar with the company's numbers as reported by The Wall Street Journal. In a regulatory filing last August, Dish said it had 169,000 Sling TV subscribers at the end of March. Since that time, however, the company has been mum on its subscriber count. That's led to plenty of speculation as to how well (or poorly) the service has performed since launching publicly last February. Sources claim Sling TV's growth as of late has been helped by the college football playoffs. What's more, the company is expecting similar growth next month as a result of March Madness – the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. One of the big questions surrounding Sling TV is whether it's attracting new customers or simply "stealing" subscribers from traditional pay-TV outfits. In a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said the vast majority of its customers are not currently pay-TV subscribers. Elaborating a bit further, Lynch said that either they have never had pay-TV because they are 25 years old and it never crossed their mind to pay for television or they cut the cord sometime during the past five years. 2016-02-23 11:15:25 Shawn Knight

20 Samsung Portable SSD T3 1TB Review Upon release the T1 series was $180 for the smallest 250GB model, $300 for the 500GB unit that we tested and $600 for the 1TB flagship. Now 13 months later the T1 pricing has been adjusted somewhat and the huge 1TB model can be had for just $360, 40% less than its debut price. Having lowered its T1 series to a new price bracket, Samsung has made room for a newcomer -- no, not the T2 series, but rather T3. The new Samsung Portable SSD T3 drives will be available in four capacities ranging from 250GB all the way up to 2TB. The company tells us that the T3 features several significant upgrades based on the T1's consumer feedback. The key upgrade as far as we can tell is the change from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1, providing the T3 series with the easier to use and more convenient USB Type-C connection. That being said, let's move on to discover all of said significant upgrades. Samsung has enjoyed a lot of success with its SSDs over the past few years and its current drives are as good as ever. The SSD 850 Pro is the world's fastest 2.5" SATA SSD, while the SSD 850 Evo is arguably the best value going. Both are based on Samsung's proprietary 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology which overcomes cell-to-cell interference by stacking cell layers in 3D like manner. Stacking 32 cell layers of cells on top of one another allows for greater density and more performance without an increase in size, while overcoming the interference and manufacturing challenges which had previously limited progress. Having already proved this technique with the SSD 850 range, Samsung released an external portable SSD known as the T1 in early 2015. The T1 was essentially an mSATA 850 Evo stuffed in a sleek enclosure with a SATA to USB 3.0 adapter card. The 850 Evo 500GB boasts read and write speeds of 540 to 520MB/s over SATA 6Gb/s. Since USB 3.0 offers slightly less bandwidth, the T1 was limited to read and write throughputs of 450MB/s. Now we have the T3, though from a performance point of view little appears to have changed. Samsung is still claiming the same sequential 450MB/s performance despite upgrading to the USB 3.1 spec. There's good reason for this however as the T3 is based on the USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gbps) spec rather than Gen2 (10Gbps). As the T3 is still based on an mSATA SSD the dimensions are similar to the original model. The T3 measures just 74.0mm wide, 10.5mm thick and 58mm deep, or a fraction larger than the T1. The heaviest T1 model came in at just 30 grams while the T3 2TB model will tip the scales at 51 grams, and while that's much heavier, it's still extremely light. Being compact and light, the T3 feels sleek but it also looks the part thanks to a mostly metal enclosure. The T1 features an all-plastic enclosure and didn't look or feel particularly durable. The T3's metal case with shock-resistant internal frame increases the durability for tough environments. It can withstand up to 1500G of force and will survive a drop of up to two meters. Included in the package is an 11cm USB 3.1 Type-C to Type-A cable that's been custom designed for the T3, though there is nothing special about the cable besides its appearance. The cable is short because the T3 is designed to be used much like a thumb drive and thanks to its lightweight design it can hang from the cable safely while it's plugged in. If you want a longer wire, any USB 3.1 Type-C cable will do the trick. On that note it would have been great if Samsung also included a USB 3.1 Type-C to Type-C cable as well. Samsung's portable SSD works effortlessly with both Windows and Mac PCs using the exFAT file system, eliminating the hassle of having to reformat for every type of computer. The T3 can connect with not just PCs but also Android mobile devices and large screens (Smart TVs). This means users can now send content to and from PCs, access content through Android mobile devices, and view multimedia on large screens, including TVs, with ease and reliability. The T3 also comes coupled with a brand-new complementary Samsung Portable SSD Android mobile app to make password changes and remaining capacity checks easy and convenient. Additionally, those concerned with security will appreciate the T3's support for AES 256-bit hardware encryption along with an optional password to access the drive. Samsung has included some basic software to set up the T3 for the first time and this lets you apply a password. The MSRPs for the various T3 models are set at $130 for the smallest 250GB model, $220 for the 500GB unit, $430 for the 1TB model that we are testing, and $850 for the flagship 2TB drive. Samsung backs the series with a three-year warranty. Ideally, we would have appreciated an extended five-year warranty, particularly for the $850 2TB drive. 2016-02-23 11:15:25 Steven Walton

21 'Fallout 4' wins Game of the Year at 19th annual DICE Awards To the surprise of virtually nobody, Fallout 4 took home top honors as Game of the Year at the 19th annual D. I. C. E. Awards last night. Bethesda's hit action role-playing game joined Ori and the Blind Forest, Rocket League and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as winners of at least three awards. Other notable winners include Star Wars Battlefront (Action Game of the Year), Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Adventure Game of the Year), Mortal Kombat X (Fighting Game of the Year), Super Mario Maker (Family Game of the Year) and Fallout Shelter (Mobile Game of the Year). Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima became the 21st person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) Hall of Fame while the late Satoru Iwata posthumously became the fifth recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. Below is the complete list of winners: 2016-02-23 11:16:57 Shawn Knight

22 Weekend Poll: What are you most looking forward to at MWC 2016 for your next phone upgrade? Mobile World Congress 2016 will be kicking off soon and we’ll be there to bring you the latest and greatest in the mobile world. Traditionally the show has been associated with cell phones, but you can expect to see everything from accessories, to tablets, chips, fitness trackers, action cameras, VR and more. While MWC officially starts on February 22, announcements will start earlier than that. Samsung and LG have events set for Sunday where we’ll get a first (official) look at the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5. Also joining the MWC party for the first time is Xiaomi, which specializes in high-spec but affordable devices and might introduce two new versions of its flagship Mi phone. Of course there will be much more in store with companies like Sony, Acer, Blackberry, HTC, Huawei, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft all headed for Barcelona. Expect to have a big presence at MWC 2016 too. In this weekend's open forum we want to ask what are you most looking forward to at MWC 2016? We've included a poll with some of the rumored announcements and confirmed showings so far but be sure to chime in on the comments as well. 2016-02-23 11:16:57 Jose Vilches

23 Smartwatch shipments soared 316 percent in Q4 2015, outpaced Swiss watches for the first time I've taken multiple jabs at the usefulness of smartwatches over the past couple of years. To many (myself included), they simply don't serve a purpose or fill a need – they're a solution waiting for a problem to happen. Nevertheless, major technology brands have continued to pump out the high-tech wearables and slowly but surely, consumers have started to come around. In fact, smartwatch shipments during the fourth quarter of 2015 actually surpassed those of traditional Swiss watches for the first time ever according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. Global shipments of smartwatches hit 8.1 million in Q4 2015, up from just 1.9 million in the year- ago quarter. Swiss watch shipments, meanwhile, slid to 7.9 million during the same period, down from 8.3 million in Q4 2014. Or in other words, smartwatch shipments grew by 315.6 percent while Swiss watch shipments fell by 4.8 percent. Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, said the Swiss watch industry has been very slow to react to the development of smartwatches. In fact, Mawston likened the Swiss watch industry to the (incorrect) myth about ostriches sticking their heads in the sand and hoping smartwatches will go away. That's not to say that every Swiss watchmaker has been ignoring the smartwatch trend. Tag Heuer, for example, launched an Android Wear smartwatch of its own late last year. Priced at $1,500, the Tag Heuer Connected Watch was a hot seller during the holidays and forced the company to ramp up production to meet demand. 2016-02-23 11:17:34 Shawn Knight

24 Sky Fortress is the first 'Just Cause 3' DLC, check out the trailer here The first expansion pack for Just Cause 3 is just around the bend and if you thought the game was pretty wild as-is, just wait until you get a load of what's to come. Sky Fortress is the first of three DLC packs included in the Just Cause 3: Air, Land & Sea Expansion Pass. Square Enix promises to deliver new missions, challenges, enemy types, gadgets, weapons, unique vehicles and in the case of Sky Fortress, drones... lots of drones. This particular DLC includes a new Bavarium Wingsuit and Bavarium Splitter assault rifle, among others. Square Enix community manager Lee Williams said players can expect an additional 3-4 hours of gameplay in Sky Fortress. Williams also posted a teaser of the second DLC pack, Mech Land Assault. That expansion and Bavarium Sea Heist will be released by the end of the summer, he said. Sky Fortress arrives next month for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Those with Square Enix's $24.99 season pass will receive each DLC a week before anyone else. If you'd rather go the individual pack route, Sky Fortress will cost you $11.99. Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web. 2016-02-23 11:17:34 Shawn Knight

25 Sony announces trio of Xperia X smartphones at MWC 2016 Sony has announced three new Xperia phones at MWC 2016 that are set to compete in the all important mid-range segment. Launched as part of the new Xperia X family, the Xperia X, Xperia XA and Xperia X Performance all feature the same premium-feeling construction and rounded glass fronts, with different spec variations under the hood to accommodate for different budgets. The cheapest of the bunch is the XA with a MediaTek MT6755 processor, 5-inch 720p display, 2,300 mAh battery and 16GB of internal storage. You do get 2GB RAM and 13MP/8MP cameras, though, along a near bezel free design. The standard Xperia X gets bumped to a Snapdragon 650 processor with 3GB of RAM, 1080 display, 2,700 mAh battery and 32GB of storage, while the X Performance uses Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 820 instead. The latter two also feature several camera upgrades, including a 13-megapixel front-facing camera and the same 23-megapixel rear camera as in the Z5. But the most interesting new camera feature is something called Predictive Hybrid Autofocus, which Sony claims will be able to track moving objects and predict where they will go, adjusting the focus on the fly to capture fast movement without any blur. The phones will launch in four colors including white, black, gold and rose gold this summer. Sony did not mention release dates or prices during the event. You can watch the announcement in the video embeded below. 2016-02-23 11:17:37 Jose Vilches

26 Building an Empathy Driven Product Vision Savita Pahuja and Mirana Kerner, agile coaches at Palo-IT in Singapore, gave a talk at the Agile Tour Singapore conference on the importance of creating an emotional connection when preparing a product vision, and how visualisation techniques can help. The session was titled “Empathy Driven Product Vision – the art of creating an impactful product vision using emotions and magic of visual effects” The session started with the presenters providing some background to their approach, drawing on ideas from Human Centred Design , incorporating iterative feedback loops and tapping into the visual creativity which they stated everyone has. It’s not about being able to draw well, rather using a simple drawing to convey an emotive message. They listed some key questions which the approach can help product owners and teams work through, and use to inspire the product development: They pointed out some specific benefits from the approach: The workshop participants then split into small groups and worked together under the direction of the presenters to prepare a product vision, drawing a picture of the target state which the teams want to achieve by launching a product. The teams had to appoint a product owner and come up with a vision of success for their product. The process has three steps An example of a completed vision map is: 2016-02-23 11:00:58 www.infoq.com

27 Particle.io Ships the Electron, a Small Cellular IoT Board Particle.io has begun shipping the Electron , an Arduino-compatible cellular Internet of Things (IoT) board geared for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. The Electron enables remote IoT devices to communicate with the cloud in situations where no Wi-Fi connectivity is available, but 2G or 3G mobile wireless connectivity exists. The Electron is a followup to Particle's Photon , a similar device that uses Wi- Fi for communicating. Each Electron includes a SIM (subscriber identity module) that permits 2G or 3G wireless communication in more than 100 countries. To facilitate getting connected, Particle became a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) for cellular-connected hardware. Through this arrangement, Particle provides the SIM cards for each Electron and manages the cellular connectivity through the Particle dashboard, "giving you the power to control your devices, their SIMs, and the data they consume. " The hardware core of the Electron is the STM32 ARM Cortex M3 , a 32-bit Flash microcontroller. Particle highlights the following additional Electron features : Writing in Ars Technica, Sean Gallagher noted : In addition to using Wiring, the same application framework used by Arduino "sketches," developers can write code for Electron in C, C++, or ARM assembly code to get closer to the metal. There's also Particle.js, an implementation of the Node.js JavaScript framework that runs on Electron and the other Particle hardware tools. The Particle site outlines the full list of development tools that can be utilized for creating Electron applications. Particle provides documentation on how to set up and use the Electron, how to develop Electron applications, and how to interact with Particle's cloud APIs. The Particle Community is available for asking questions and interacting with other developers who are working with the Electron and other Particle products. 2016-02-23 11:05:39 www.infoq.com

28 Google’s Sundar Pichai Offers Some Support to Apple on its FBI Encryption Fight Google has made its first comment on the Apple/FBI encryption fight , with Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai offering Tim Cook some limited support via a series of Tweets : Important post by @tim_cook. Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy. We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism. We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders. But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent. Looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue. Pichai’s comments come after self-exiled former US government employee Edward Snowden offered this assessment : This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means @google picked a side, but it's not the public's. On his Daring Fireball blog John Gruber draws attention to Pichai's repeated use of the word “could” and asks “Could Pichai’s response be any more lukewarm?” He’s not really taking a stand, and the things he’s posing as questions aren’t actually in question. I’m glad he chimed in at all, and that he seems to be leaning toward Apple’s side, but this could be a lot stronger. Cook has previously described privacy as a moral issue. At EPIC’s Champions of Freedom event in Washington last June Cook spoke remotely to the assembled audience and stated: Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security. We can, and we must, provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it. He has also been critical of Google and others for not taking security as seriously as, in his view, Apple does. Given this context it is not overly surprising that Pichai’s response stops short of a full backing for Cook, and he has at least made a statement. By contrast, according to , representatives of Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon have all so far declined to comment. 2016-02-23 07:45:42 www.infoq.com

29 'Carmageddon: Max Damage' announced for next-gen consoles Stainless Games has revealed a new entry in the Carmageddon franchise. Carmageddon: Max Damage will tempt gamers with more than 30 metal mangling vehicles designed to mow down the competition (and any unfortunately pedestrians that get in the way). The Carmageddon franchise holds a special place in my heart. Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now was one of the first PC games I purchased and played shortly after receiving my first computer way back in 1998. For those not familiar, Carmageddon is all about causing chaos while driving a collection of vehicles hell-bent on destruction. In earlier renditions, you could achieve victory in one of three different ways: pass through all of the checkpoints before everyone else, destroy all of the competition or earn the win by killing every pedestrian in the map. Carmageddon: Max Damage will be the latest game in the franchise since Carmageddon: Reincarnated arrived last year thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign . Carmageddon: Max Damage will be racing onto the scene later this year for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. No word yet on when – or if – Stainless Games is planning to bring the title to the PC. 2016-02-23 08:36:34 Shawn Knight

30 Intel says move to 10-nanometer chips still on track for 2017 Intel posted a job listing on its website last month in which it mentioned that mass production of products using its 10-nanometer manufacturing technology would begin approximately two years from the date the listing was posted (January 21, 2016). This caught the attention of The Motley Fool's Ashraf Eassa who wrote a column on the matter. It was of particular interested because in mid- 2015, Intel admitted that difficulties in the move to 10-nanometer had pushed the first round of consumer products based on the advanced manufacturing process back to the second half of 2017. Initially, 10-nanometer products were to arrive in the marketplace this year. Intel's public relations team reached out to the publication and said the job listing contained "errors" and that it would soon be taken down. Sure enough, the listing in question has since been pulled. The PR team clarified that its first 10-nanometer products were still on track to arrive sometime in the second half of 2017. Moving to a smaller manufacturing process has numerous benefits including (but not limited to) lower power consumption (which leads to better battery life) and improved performance as more transistors can fit on a single chip. 2016-02-23 08:36:34 Shawn Knight

31 Waves of disruption reshape IT service management landscape There are cycles in technology, such as today's social, mobile and cloud disruption, which affect how technology and the business interact, manage technologies and respond to business demand. Service management software suppliers follow these cycles, providing tools to manage not only the technologies but also their consequences in terms of scale, workload volumes and business models. Today's cycle is influenced by the 2008 economic crisis and technology disruptions. Both have a profound impact on the way businesses define their interactions with technology, which has a ripple effect on infrastructure and operations (I&O) organisations and the way they select service management tools. There are three major trends that influence how I&O organisations select service management tools: Optimisation, transformation and the adoption of alternatives. First, I&O organisations optimise their service management toolset to reduce costs. Because most I&O organisations tend to acquire and select tools reactively and tactically, their service management and, in particular, their infrastructure management tool portfolio accumulates deadwood and duplicates over the years. CA Technologies stated that there was a decline in old enterprise software revenues in 2014, claiming this was due, primarily, to a decrease in sales of certain mature product lines. The effect of the crisis was that many I&O groups started to streamline their portfolio of tools. For example, a worldwide insurance company inventoried 130 management tools used in its datacentres in early 2015 and started a deduplication effort to reduce this number to 80. Second, the I&O infrastructure transformation is well under way. Business focus is on winning, serving and retaining customers , which is causing a disruptive wave. Innovation, speed of service delivery and quality are all differentiators for businesses. To increase speed and quality, I&O professionals are favouring new infrastructure models such as converged infrastructures and hybrid models based on public and private clouds that include several infrastructure and service management tools. Enterprises are shifting more of their core production workloads to the cloud. In his keynote at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2015 show, GE CIO Jim Fowler reported that his company will move more than 60% of its global workloads to AWS. Again and again, Truths about the higher cost, lower security and startup-only nature of the public cloud are being challenged as innovative business leaders seize the opportunity to drive their business forward. Third, as most of the I&O budget goes to supporting legacy systems of record, I&O organisations expect to find potential savings in alternative management solutions such as open source software and software as a service (SaaS). Cloud-based solutions such as New Relic and ServiceNow show that there is a viable alternative to the traditional on-premise acquisition and deployment of service management solutions. 2016-02-23 08:18:34 Jean-Pierre Garbani

32 T-Mobile launches pre-orders of the Samsung Galaxy S7, adds bonuses Samsung has recently unveiled its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S7 , a follow-up in the same line the company has been producing for years now. Regardless of what you think of it, it's sure to be popular, and getting widespread adoption requires carriers to be on board. One such carrier, T-Mobile, is trying to sweeten the deal in an effort to grab more customers. This involves the handing out of bonuses and there are several to be had if you pre-order this latest handset. Those pre-orders open today, February 23rd, and those who participate get a fairly good deal. The device comes for $0 down and $27.92 for 23 months. In addition, the company is throwing is six Samsung VR games and one year of Netflix. "There are millions of Samsung fans who’ve been waiting for this day and only the Un-carrier will unleash the full power of Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge with fantastic benefits like Music Freedom, Binge On, Mobile Without Borders and more", says John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. "These new devices combined with the Samsung VR bundle and a year of Netflix on us are a win for consumers who want the hottest new Samsung superphone". The company claims that in the past year it has more than doubled the size of its 4G LTE network, stating that it covers 305 million Americans. You can sign up here if you're interested in the S7 and the "un-carrier". 2016-02-23 05:57:53+00:00 By Alan Buckingham Published 3 hours ago

33 Q&A with Andrey Breslav on the Kotlin 1.0 Release After three months in beta, the Kotlin team has announced the release of Kotlin 1.0, which aims to stabilize both API and ABI of the language. The four beta releases leading to release candidate and then to 1.0 have brought many changes to the language, to the standard library, and to Kotlin IDE. In particular, the focus on the standard library has been to clean up its API and reduce is footprint to make it better suited for Android apps. On the language side, in addition to many changes aiming to round up the language syntax and/or semantics, the binary format has been finalized and some legacy bytecode peculiarities removed. Regarding tools, a new algorithm has been rolled out to improve dependency detection, which will make incremental compilation much faster, according to JetBrains. Additionally, the main Kotlin plugin for IntelliJ IDEA now includes the Android plugin, so Android is supported out of the box. Andrey Breslav, lead Kotlin designer at JetBrains, also clarified what Kotlin’s plans are regarding backward compatibility. Specifically, Kotlin will strive to ensure that new code can be compiled and run against old binaries (ABI/API backward compatibility), and that old binaries can run against new binaries (ABI forward compatibility). At the source level, the goal is ensuring that new compilers will compile code that older compilers did. InfoQ has spoken with Breslav. What were the motivations for the creation of Kotlin? When we started in 2010, our initial motivation was that we wanted a better language to develop our products on the JVM, and we realized that many other people want the same. Some alternatives to Java existed at the time, but they didn’t quite fit our requirements (some people have different requirements, and for them those languages work perfectly). Our requirements were: static typing: for maintainability of large code bases; smooth migration path: for gradually introducing the new language to our existing code bases affecting the rest of the code as little as possible tooling quality: we believe that being productive with a language depends largely on the tooling; ease of learning and understanding: in our teams, we do not separate “library writers” from “library users”, and we want all our developers to be equally productive with the language they are using. I would say that Kotlin is still unique on the JVM in combining all four of the qualities listed above. Kotlin has reached 1.0. Could you summarize the meaning of this milestone? Many people were using Kotlin even before the release, but an official 1.0 means a lot in terms of guarantees. Quite a few times people came to us saying that their organizations won’t consider adopting Kotlin until it reaches 1.0, which is perfectly understandable. Now, with 1.0 out, Kotlin “officially exists”, so one can feel safe using it in production. This is largely backed by language evolution concerns: from now on we are committed to backward compatibility, i.e. changes made in the subsequent versions of the language and the standard library won’t break the binaries compiled with the previous versions. So, when you deploy Kotlin code, you can be as sure about it as about your Java code. Backward compatibility is the primary reason why it took us about five years to release 1.0. Before saying that we won’t make any breaking changes, we had to be sure that the our design is practical, not only elegant. And we believe that this is only possible when the language is used in production. So we used Kotlin in our own products at JetBrains for about two years by now, and we are pretty confident about it. This is not to say that the initial design was perfect from the start: the production use at JetBrains and other projects revealed some important issues. We had time to fix those and validate the fixes further. Svetlana Isakova described Kotlin as “Swift for Android” at DroidCon-DE. More generally, can you explain how Kotlin fits into the current programming language landscape? “Swift for Android” is a catchy title coined initially by Mike Gouline which picked up very successfully. And the analogy is pretty fair, I would say: as for iOS developers Swift is a modern alternative to Objective-C, for Android developers Kotlin is a modern alternative to Java. But I would like to point out that Kotlin is not at all limited to Android. In terms of platforms and domains covered, Kotlin works everywhere where Java works: desktop, server-side, mobile — anywhere. We also generate byte code compatible with Java 6 to make it usable as widely as possible. The runtime is really small (about 800K), and we are paying specific attention to avoiding any runtime tricks that would prevent Kotlin code from running somewhere (i.e. no special class loaders or run-time packaging requirements, etc). Additionally, we are working on a JavaScript back-end for Kotlin (experimental for now) that broadens Kotlin’s context of applicability quite a bit: one will be able to develop web applications entirely in Kotlin. What’s on Kotlin’s future roadmap? There are many things, big and small, to be done. The aforementioned JS back-end is one of the big things. Then, there’s toolchain performance. Kotlin now has incremental compilation in IntelliJ IDEA: when you change something in the code, only the affected (not modules!) are recompiled. We want to provide the same experience to Gradle users, this is in the works. The upcoming 1.1 will be able to generate Java 8 byte code (along with Java 6), which enable many optimizations, e.g. for lambdas. In terms of language features we are not planning anything big for 1.1, but some restrictions may be lifted, e.g. for data classes. We also have some ideas about further reducing the methods count in the standard library, which is important for Android developers. As for more far-fetching plans, we, for example, are definitely going to support runtime modules when they are ready, and add async/await in some future versions of Kotlin. Kotlin 1.0 requires all code to be recompiled to clean up from code generated by previous versions. Along the same line, it makes into errors all language constructs that have been previously deprecated. It can be installed in IntelliJ IDEA through a prepackaged plugin , otherwise can be built from its GitHub repository. 2016-02-23 07:02:35 www.infoq.com

34 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it As a fan of Cossack dancing, Eastern Bloc architecture, vodka and pervasive government oppression, Sneak loves Russia. And while he accepts that Siberia is a vast and mostly empty land mass, capable of killing the unwary in numerous ways, he would not liken it to Mordor, the dark, ash-covered, orc-infested land in the south-east of Tolkien's Middle Earth. But, according to multiple reports, the all-seeing, all-knowing Sauron Google believes that Russia is in fact Mordor. Or more accurately a bug in the Google Translate tool translated the Ukrainian word for 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'. Not content with effectively calling Russia a nation of twisted, down-trodden creatures ruled by a brutal dictator, Google Translate went one step further by translating 'Russians' into 'okkupanty' meaning ‘occupiers' in Sneak's second language, that being English. C++ is his mother tongue. Then to pour a granary of salt into the virtual wound, Google translated the surname of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov into the Russian for 'sad little horse', according to The Telegraph. Sneak thinks that's rather cute in a slightly Eeyore way. Yes he knows Eeyore is a fictional donkey. Please don't write in. Now, that noise you're hearing is Sneak's irony alarm going off at full pelt, given that Ukraine is not exactly having the best time with Russia and pro-Russian rebels at the moment, particularly as in 2014 Russia annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine, simply because it could. Google has apologised for the error and blamed the automated aspect of Translate, but Sneak is not convinced that it was a bug and, to indulge the conspiracy theorist in him, believes that a disgruntled pro-Ukraine programmer decided to tweak Google Translate to offer this slight at Russian users. Back in his early years as an IT chap at Northern Rock, Sneak ended up dating a lovely Russian systems analyst called Natasha. She had a mononym. Next thing he knew she disappeared one evening after a heady mix of vodka and Kerplunk! and disappeared with Sneak's server room key card. Then the banking crisis happened, Northern Rock went under and Sneak took indefinite sick leave. The moral of the story is that annoying the Russians might not be wise, otherwise the road to Google's Mountain View HQ could end up being blocked by Soviet-era tanks with president Putin straddling a turret, topless and declaring "You shall not pass" to befuddled Google engineers. Or perhaps they will take it in good humour. After all as the video below explains: Russians love to boogie. 07 Jan 2016 2016-02-23 06:23:55 www.v3.co.uk

35 A Glimpse at the Future of Containers in the Enterprise With containers gaining increasing popularity in enterprise environments across a variety of industries to automate the deployment of applications, Joyent and others in the container ecosystem got together to give a state-of-the-state event at the Container Summit conference Feb. 10 in New York City. Although the cloud native world is adopting container technologies, such as Docker, only 8 percent of enterprises are using them in production, said Dave Bartoletti, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. Yet curiosity about containers is soaring. Bartoletti said questions from clients about containers and when and how to deploy them have increased by a factor of 10 in the last two years. Indeed, many of the speakers at the Container Summit said they were introduced to container technology in a previous job and moved it to their current role. Others simply adopted it as the proper thing to do. This eWEEK slide show looks at some of the scenes from the Container Summit and what industry experts had to say about the technology. 2016-02-23 06:09:37 Darryl K. Taft

36 Microsoft's Next Lock Screen updated with fingerprint reader support and more Microsoft updated its Next Lock Screen today with a number of new features to version 2.6. The firm promises that this is the app's biggest update to date. Here's what's new: For those that aren't familiar with Next Lock Screen, it's a Microsoft Garage project and it's considered by many to be one of the best lock screens in the Google Play Store. Here is the list of features: With Next Lock Screen and Microsoft's Arrow Launcher , it's quickly becoming clear that the best Microsoft experience might just be on Android. As these products continue to mature, it becomes easier to imagine a world where Microsoft uses Android as its primary . While we're still in the present, at least Next Lock Screen will now unlock when a fingerprint reader is pressed. You can grab Next Lock Screen from the Google Play Store right here . 2016-02-23 03:32:01+00:00 Richard Woods

37 Amazon elevates general free shipping qualification to $49 Amazon's Prime membership may start to look a bit more appealing going forward. After bumping the yearly cost for Prime from $79 or $99 last year , the online retailer has announced that it's going to increase its minimum spending amount per order for free shipping. The price jumps from the previous $35 minimum that was set by the company back in 2013 to $49 - a 40% jump. Prior to the price jump in 2013, the minimum order amount to qualify for free shipping was $25. The price jump can be attributed primarily to the increase in shipping costs, which Amazon says increased 37% in last year's Q4 earnings report. The new $49 price puts Amazon's free shipping spending qualification in line with major retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. While the rising costs to get products to customers is likely the driving force behind the free shipping threshold increase, it's also possible that Amazon is trying to encourage shoppers to buy into its Prime service. Constantly ordering beneath the new threshold would quickly cost you as much or more than a yearly Prime membership, creating a natural selling point for shoppers. Even though Amazon may not recoup as much in costs from frequent buyers, the company still saves on marketing since Prime members are very likely to re-up on their memberships year after year. The announcement did carry a brief moment of good news for book readers. While the price jump for free shipping will escalate to $49, book orders can still qualify for free shipping at $25 in certain circumstances. Amazon isn't detailing those circumstances at this time. Source: Amazon , via Wall Street Journal 2016-02-23 03:18:01+00:00 Chris Schroeder

38 Bitcoin consultants form Flux political party in Australia Over the last few federal elections, Australia has seen an increase in the number of minor political parties that have stood for election in both houses of Parliament in addition to traditional independent members. This has had an effect upon Australian politics where the major parties have had to negotiate with a varied and volatile crossbench in order to pass or block legislation. The policies that parties and their candidates take to an election aren't always the ones they uphold in parliament. Sometimes, there can be a change in party policy during a term, with members usually bound to toe the line unless given a conscience vote. Otherwise, for independents and members of micro parties, there may be scope to compromise their stance on particular issues in backroom deals with the major parties against the wishes of the voters who elected them. Flux, a new political party formed by Bitcoin consultants Nathan Spataro and Max Kaye, aims to change this situation and empower people to have their say on the issues that most concern them. The party will also not have any specific policies of its own. According to its website , Flux says that it "will automate away all the nitty-gritty to make this as simple and seamless as possible. This is where the magic happens. " This, unlike other political parties, would enable Flux to readily canvas its participants without waiting for an election or ballot, effectively giving them a connection directly into Parliament. In a system called "get-swap-vote", votes will be distributed by Flux amongst all of its participants, (which can even include other parties) who will each receive one vote per bill presented to Parliament. Participants can then swap votes with others in order to accumulate votes for the issues they care about. Afterwards, the actual vote takes place with participants able to vote yes, no or, interestingly, anywhere in between. Votes are then relayed in their final proportions to Parliament, essentially making elected representatives dumb proxies without the autonomy wielded by other members of the respective House. Alternatively, votes may be given to other participants such as community leaders, specialists, charities or even friends. Otherwise, votes may be accumulated over time to build "political capital" by abstaining from votes. As to how exactly this "voting economy" will actually be achieved remains to be seen. The Flux website does explain that the voting system will be fully transparent and will run on a "distributed public network" which can be "verified by everyone, everywhere, constantly, and consistently. " Given Spataro and Kaye's experience with Bitcoin, one might conclude that blockchain technology could exist at the core of Flux's vote management system. The idea may not be entirely far-fetched in the political arena with the UK Government recently urged to use blockchain technology to manage public money. Flux could present a radical change to the way Australians engage with politics by embracing the benefits of technology compared to more traditional methods employed by other parties. Source: news.com.au | Sydney Morning Herald 2016-02-23 03:02:01+00:00 Boyd Chan

39 GitHub Enterprise is coming to Bluemix GitHub's popular code-sharing service for developers has long been available in a self-hosted enterprise version, and now it's coming to IBM's Bluemix cloud platform. Thanks to a new partnership announced Monday, IBM and GitHub will deliver GitHub Enterprise as a dedicated service on Bluemix across private and hybrid cloud environments. The service gives corporate developers a new way to code and work with GitHub’s collaborative development tools in a private, controlled environment. "It's essentially GitHub as a service," said Jim Comfort, CTO and general manager for architecture with IBM Cloud. GitHub Enterprise will be available as a service through IBM's security-minded Bluemix Dedicated and Bluemix Local versions. It will be integrated with Bluemix’s portfolio of DevOps tools, including access to more than 140 application programming interfaces (APIs) and services. Integrated security-scanning technologies will help protect users from vulnerabilities that may arise during development, IBM said. GitHub boasts roughly 12 million users, including some 60,000 organizations. IBM is the first vendor to make GitHub Enterprise a "natural part" of its developer services, Comfort said. Pricing and availability details were not announced. Also on Monday, IBM announced Bluemix OpenWhisk, a new event-driven platform that lets developers build microservices that execute software code in response to events such as the clicking of a mouse or the receipt of sensor data from a surveillance camera. OpenWhisk is now available. Tags IBM More about 2016-02-23 02:53:00 Katherine Noyes

40 Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition available for pre-order Canonical and Meizu have announced that the Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition is now available for pre-order, priced at $369.99. The phone has the highest specs amongst all the phones currently available which run the open source operating system (OS) and is competitive when compared against top of the range Android offerings. The specifications given for the device include: a 5.7" 1080p AMOLED screen, 21.16 MP rear- facing camera, 5 MP front-facing camera, 32 GB storage, 3 GB RAM, 8 core Exynos 7420 processor with MALI T760 GPU, dual micro-SIM, and Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Canonical and Meizu has decided to make the device exclusively available through a joint partner - JD.com - which will offer the phone through its global e-commerce platform en.jd.com. For those unfamiliar, JD.com is China's largest online direct e-retailer, which supposedly offers 'a seamless online shopping experience for customers around the world.' Speaking about the device, Canonical CEO - Jane Silber - said: “Our partnership with Meizu continues to result in the creation of beautifully designed hardware that perfectly complements the Ubuntu user experience. Users are always at the heart of our work together - something that brings an intuitive and rewarding experience to consumers everywhere.” The Meizu PRO 5 handset running Ubuntu is being showcased at the on-going Mobile World Congress 2016 event in Barcelona. Ubuntu's stand is in Hall 3 (booth 3J30), visitors can get a hands-on experience with the device. In the last few days, Canonical announced that community ROMs for the OnePlus One and Sony Xperia Z1 were going to be released soon, perfect for anyone wanting to try out Ubuntu on an older device. Image via Ubuntu 2016-02-23 02:46:01+00:00 Paul Hill

41 Building Docker Images from a Container - Developer.com By Jeff Nickoloff This article was excerpted from the book Docker in Action It is easy to get started building images if you are already familiar with using containers. A union file system (UFS) mount provides a container's file system so any changes that you make to the file system inside a container will be written as new layers that are owned by the container that created them. Before you work with real software, this article will detail the typical workflow using a Hello World example. The basic workflow for building an image from a container includes three steps. First, you need to create a container from an existing image. You will choose the image based on what you want to be included with the new finished image and the tools you will need to make the changes. The second step is to actually modify the file system of the container. These changes will be written to a new layer on the union file system for the container. The relationship between images, layers, and repositories will be revisited again in this chapter. Finally, once the changes have been made the last step is to commit those changes. Once the changes are committed, you will be able to create new containers from the resulting image. Figure 1 illustrates this workflow. Figure 1: Building an image from a container With these steps in mind, work through the following commands to create a new image, named "hw_image. " If that seems stunningly simple, you should know that it does become a bit more nuanced as the images you produce become more sophisticated. However, the basic steps will always be the same. Now that you've gotten an idea of the workflow, you should try to build a new image with real software. In this case, you'll be packaging a program called . Git is a popular distributed version control tool. Whole books have been written about the topic. If you are unfamiliar with it I recommend that you spend some time learning how to use it. At the moment, however, you only need to know that it is a program that you are going to install onto an Ubuntu image. To get started building your own image, the first thing you will need is a container created from an appropriate base image: This will start a new container running the Bash shell. From this prompt you can issue commands to customize your container. Ubuntu ships with a Linux tool for software installation called "apt- get. " This will come in handy for acquiring the software that you want to package in a Docker image. You should now have an interactive shell running with your container. Next you need to install Git in the container. You can do that by running the following command: This will tell APT to download and install Git and all of its dependencies on the container's file system. When it is finished, you can test the installation by running the "git" program: Package tools like apt-get make installing and uninstalling software easier than if you have to do everything by hand. However, they provide no isolation to that software and dependency conflicts occur often. You can be sure that other software you install outside of this container will not impact the version of Git you have installed. Now that Git has been installed on your Ubuntu container you can simply exit the container: The container should be stopped but still present on your computer. Git has been installed in a new layer on top of the ubuntu:latest image. If you were to walk away from this example right now and return a few days later, how would you know exactly what changes were made? When you're packaging software it is often useful to review the list files that have been modified in a container, and Docker has a command for that. Docker has a command that shows you all of the file system changes that have been made inside of a container. These changes include added, changed, or deleted files and directories. To review the changes that you made when you used APT to install Git run the following command: Lines that start with an "A" were files that were added. Those starting with a "C" were changed. Finally, those with a "D" were deleted. Installing Git with APT in this way made several changes. For that reason, it might be better to see this at work with a few specific examples: Always remember to clean up your workspace: Now that you've seen the changes that you've made to the file system, you're ready to commit the changes to a new image. Just like most other things, this involves a single command that does several things. You use the docker commit command to create an image from a modified container. It is a best practice to use the -a flag that signs the image with an author string. You should also always use the -m flag, which sets a commit message. Create and sign a new image that we'll name, "ubuntu-git" from the "image-dev" container where you installed Git: Once you've committed the image, it should show up in the list of images installed on your computer: Make sure it works by testing git in a container created from that image: Now you've created a new image based on an Ubuntu image and installed Git. That is a great start, but what do you think will happen if you omit the command override? Try it to find out: Nothing appears to happen when you run that command. That's because the command you started the original container with was committed with the new image. The command you used to start the container that the image was created by was "/bin/bash. " When you create a container from this image using the default command, it will start a shell and immediately exit. That's not a terribly useful default command. I doubt that any users of an image named ubuntu-git would expect that they would need to manually invoke git each time. It would be better to set an entrypoint on the image to "git. " An entrypoint is the program that will be executed when the container starts. If the entrypoint is not set, then the default command will be executed directly. If the entrypoint is set, the default command and its arguments will be passed to the entrypoint as arguments. To set the entrypoint, you'll need to create a new container with the --entrypoint flag set and create a new image from that container. Now that the entrypoint has been set to "git," users no longer need to type the command at the end. This might seem like a marginal savings with this example, but many tools that people use are not as succinct. Setting the entrypoint is just one thing that you can do to make images easier for people to use and integrate into their projects. When you use docker commit, you commit a new layer to an image. The file system snapshot is not the only thing included with this commit. Each layer also includes metadata describing the execution context. Of the parameters that can be set when a container is created, all of the following will carry forward with an image created from the container: If these values were not specifically set for the container, the values will be inherited from the original image. Let's examine a detailed example. This example builds two additional layers on top of Busybox. In neither case are files changed, but the behavior changes because the context metadata has been altered. These changes include two new environment variables in the first new layer. Those environment variables are clearly inherited by the second new layer, which sets the entrypoint and default command to display their values. The last command used the final image without specifying any alternative behavior, but it is clear that the previous defined behavior has been inherited. Now that you understand how to modify an image, take the time to dive deeper into the mechanics of images and layers. Doing so will help you produce high quality images in real world situations. 2016-02-23 00:00:00 www.developer.com

42 How to Expand App Reach by Supporting Multiple Screen Sizes - Developer.com Imagine you were the user of an application. You have just tried the application on your phone and love it and install it on another device like a tablet. The application works but the experience doesn't seem right. Sometimes, it feels that the app does not seem to provide the same rich experience that you enjoyed on the mobile phone. Ever been in those ? As application developers, we need to account for the application running on various types of devices. As the Android platform matures, and more devices in various forms factors run Android, we need to make sure our application does not suffer the same fate as described above. Let's take a look at a few concepts that help us understand how best to leverage the Android platform capabilities. This represents the actual screen size of the device, measured diagonally. There are four generalized sizes: small, normal, large, and xlarge. This represents the quantity of pixels within a physical area of the screen. Android supports the following densities: Figure 1: Diagram showing mapping of screen size and screen density Image credit: Google.com This represents the screen orientation from the user's point of view. It can be either landscape or portrait. This represents the total number of pixels on the screen. Android can provide "density independence" for applications in two possible ways: We do this by specifying all layout dimension values in dp units or with "wrap_content". This instructs the system to scale bitmap drawables appropriately. It is possible that this can result in pixelated bitmaps. To avoid this, we can use an alternate strategy of providing alternate bitmaps resources for different densities,. The application also can declare in the application manifest which screen sizes are supported. This is done via the element in the manifest. There are two other strategies to support multiple screens: Here is the algorithm that Android uses to provide the best possible display on the screen: In this article, we learned how to expand app reach by supporting multiple screens. I hope you have found this information useful. Vipul Patel is a technology geek based in Seattle. He can be reached at [email protected]. You can visit his LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/pub/vipul- patel/6/675/508 . 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Vipul Patel

43 Java 9 to address GTK GUI pains on Linux Plans are afoot to have Java 9 accommodate the GTK 3 GUI toolkit on Linux systems. The move would bring Java current with the latest version of the toolkit and prevent application failure due to mixing of versions. The intention, according to a Java enhancement proposal on openjdk.net, would be to support GTK (GIMP Toolkit) 2 by default, with GTK 3 used when indicated by a system property. Java graphical applications based on JavaFX, Swing, or AWT (Advanced Window Toolkit) would be accommodated under the plan, and existing applications could run on Linux without modification with either GTK 2 or 3. The proposal was sent to the openjfx-dev mailing list by Oracle's Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java platform group at the company, which oversees Java's development. Java 9 is expected to be available in March 2017. "There are a number of Java packages that use GTK. These include AWT/Swing, JavaFX, and SWT. SWT has migrated to GTK 3, though there is a system property that can be used to force it to use the older version," the proposal states. "This mixing of packages using different GTK versions causes application failures. " The issue particularly affects applications when using the Eclipse development platform. The proposal also notes that while GTK 2 and 3 are now available by default on Linux distributions, this may not always be the case. Also identified as GTK+, the cross-platform toolkit features widgets and an API and is offered as free software via the GNU Project. It has been used in projects ranging from the Apache OpenOffice office software suite to the Inkscape vector graphics editor to the PyShare image uploader. An alternative to backing both GTK 2 and 3, according to the Java proposal, would be to migrate Java graphics to support only GTK 3, thus reducing efforts required in porting and testing. But this plan could result in a higher number of bugs not detected by testing, require additional effort with the AWT look and feel, and necessitate both or neither of JavaFX/Swing being ported. Such a port also would require more coordination between AWT and Swing. But a former Java official at Sun Microsystems questioned the demand for this improvement to Java. "I've not seen very many Java-based desktop applications on Linux, so not sure how big a market this is addressing,” said Arun Gupta, vice president of developer advocacy at Couchbase and a former member of the Java EE team at Sun. More about Advanced Apache Eclipse Linux OpenOffice Oracle Sun Microsystems Toolkit 2016-02-22 21:53:00 Paul Krill

44 Razer Raises At A $1.5B Valuation, With $75M From China’s Digital Grid For Immersive Gaming Razer , the gaming technology company based out of Southern California, has raised another round of funding, a Series C that values it at $1.5 billion, TechCrunch has learned. The backing comes in part from China, specifically the Digital Grid subsidiary of IT company Hangzhou Liaison Interactive. Yesterday, Hangzhou published a statement (a link first published by Reuters ) confirming the 5.01%, $75 million investment in Razer, as well as its valuation. TechCrunch understands that the $75 million is part of a “much larger” Series C investment. Contacted by TechCrunch, Razer said it would not provide more details about other investors in at this time, nor the final size of the round. “We will provide more information later,” a spokesperson said. But the participation of Digital Grid — which has backed other companies in the area of smart devices and virtual reality — underscores the bigger direction that we have seen Razer take as a company in the recent years and its intention to keep pushing ahead into new ways of gaming. Razer — company tagline “For gamers. By gamers” — made its name originally around peripherals like mouse controllers and keyboards that improved the PC gaming experience. But it has used its strong brand within the gaming community to expand into gaming-optimized laptops and other consoles. And, to make gaming experiences more immersive, Razer has been doing a lot more with wearables and virtual reality devices , most recently with its new $200 Stargazer webcam . The Stargazer uses Intel RealSense tech to supercharge the video experience with artificial intelligence. The camera not only detects your motion and puts you deeper into the game’s action, but can be used for security ID and much more. But forging ahead with new hardware and specifically wearables — a relatively new and untested area of the market — comes at a price. The documents unveiling the Razer investment also make note of some of the company’s financials that detail a swing to a net loss in 2015, compared to a net profit in 2014. For some background on Razer’s fundraising story, as you might recall, in 2014 we uncovered (and later confirmed ) that Razer raised a strategic round of funding from Intel that valued the company at $1 billion. Others who have previously invested in Razer include Accel and IDG Capital Partners. Considering another potential investor, Razer has also worked on products with Lenovo , specifically computers designed for high-end gaming. The financial relationships behind that partnership has never been detailed. It’s not clear if Intel is part of this latest round, either, but interestingly Intel has invested alongside Digital Grid before. For example, the two were part of a $24 million round raised by Avegant, makers of Glyph, the VR headset that looks a bit like a pair of headphones when in rest mode. We will update this story as we learn more. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Ingrid Lunden

45 Investors, Entrepreneurs Upbeat On Energy Storage, China And The Internet Of Things For the last 15 years, the Cleantech Forum has been organized by the Cleantech Group. Most recently it took place in San Francisco on January 25-27, 2016. Energy storage, China and the Internet of Things (IoT) were key topics at the forum, with investors and entrepreneurs confident on their respective futures. Energy storage, in particular, was keenly discussed, with Vic Shao, CEO at Green Charge Networks , predicting “2016 will be the year of deployment for storage.” Anticipation around storage deployment has been gathering for a few years now. In 2014, Navigant Research predicted that worldwide revenue from energy storage would increase from $675 million in 2014 to $15.6 billion in 2024. Last year, Deutsche Bank reported that technological advancement could make energy storage a solution that could be deployed on a large scale within the next five years. Andrew Beebe, Managing Director at Obvious Ventures, sees similarities between energy storage today and solar energy a decade ago. “Energy storage is just like solar panels were 10 years ago. We are at an early stage of that process, but what we are about to see in storage is what solar did a few years ago,” says Beebe. While Silicon Valley has been the driving force behind major breakthroughs in storage technology, the development of energy storage has also been moving forward north of the border. For the past few years, Canada’s largest province (similar to a state), Ontario, has been building up its energy storage system. Strong interest from Ontario’s utility sector and a supportive ecosystem for cleantech, developed by both the national and provincial governments, have enabled Ontario to establish a lead in energy storage. Tom Rand, Managing Partner at ArcTern Ventures, agreed that while energy storage technology is developing well, more work still remains in understanding the characteristics of this new asset. “We’ve established a lead in technology, and are now working to develop operational capacity and awareness in our utility sector,” says Rand. Toronto-based NRStor , an energy storage project developer, and Hydrostor are two examples of energy storage development in Ontario. Last year, NRStor partnered with Tesla to bring the Powerwall Home Battery to Canada. Likewise, Hydrostor, one of the beneficiaries of the privately backed ArcTern’s investment, is partnering with Toronto Hydro, a municipal electricity distribution company, to develop underwater batteries. Lately, China has witnessed major policy developments related to climate change and clean energy. The U. S.-China Climate Agreement, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s announcement of a cap-and-trade system and a leaner and greener five-year plan have created a new model of economic development, which could not only curb energy usage, but also provide opportunities for cleantech entrepreneurs. Alex Shoer, CEO at Seeder, is one such entrepreneur who is looking to address energy efficiency in buildings. His company provides a marketplace that connects commercial building managers with green technologies for retrofits, as well as the capital to pay for it. “There’s a huge amount of development, but while there are mandates in terms of efficiency targets and sustainability in buildings, there’s a knowledge and access gap between available solutions, qualified providers and financing options,” says Shoer. But while Shoer has successfully started operating in China, he points out that entrepreneurs looking to enter the Chinese market need to pay special consideration to building partnerships and relationships. “In China and in many other developing countries, trust is the most important thing. It takes time and persistence to develop these ‘trust’ relationships, but one way to speed up the process is to work with, or work through, an existing trusted party or marketplace already on the ground,” he says. Leo Zhang, Senior Analyst at Cleantech Group, echoes Shoer’s sentiment. He emphasizes that finding the right partner also can help entrepreneurs navigate and enter the market, especially when companies have no presence in China. “China is heavily relationship-driven, so having local partners will open lots of doors, rather than going into it blindly by yourself. A partner can provide their infrastructure to scale-up the technology, or can be the pilot program to test your product,” says Zhang. The unique nature of doing business in China requires a collective approach to building relationships and trust. Albin Jourda, founder of French Cleantech , says that French companies are working together to establish these partnerships in China. “Building partnerships is one of the main challenges French companies may face in China. For this reason, the UMO (Union de Maîtrise d’œuvre), which is a group of six French companies, worked together and signed agreements for a period of 5 years with the city of Chengdu,” says Jourda The potential for IoT solutions to be deployed in the energy landscape has created opportunities to drive efficiencies, increase productivity and promote economic growth. Joe Costello, CEO at Enlighted , whose company was named in the 2015 Global Cleantech 100 and also won the North American Company of the Year award, believes that IoT is not only good for the environment and reducing costs, but also for creating new innovative tools for doing business. “Our clients who use the sensor technology save 50 to 75% of their energy costs,” says Costello, who was named the top American CEO in 1997 by Chief Executive Magazine. Enlighted’s client list includes Google, LinkedIn and HP. Costello, does, however, point out that the capital-intensive aspect of implementing sensor technology has hindered growth. To accommodate this, Enlighted created an innovative financing model for its customers. “This type of technology does require a large amount of capital. Small companies would require around $10 million, and large companies $100 million to implement our system. This was our biggest constraint to growth; so we put all the money down for our customers, and they pay us back from the energy savings that the system provides,” he explains. Through their innovative financing model, called GEO, Enlighted customers receive full energy benefits and have a sensor network that enables them to optimize commercial space with zero upfront cost. Even for large companies, IoT is gaining importance and being incorporated into their daily business activities. IBM, a company well-known to reshape itself, has made IoT “a major priority” for its business as the company continues to focus on its key growth initiatives. “IoT is a major priority for IBM, and is one of the new businesses that we have created as the company continues to innovate. IoT holds out the promise of more granular monitoring and optimization of process performance in just about any context — therefore, it will become integral to resource efficiency as one aspect of performance,” says Peter Williams, Chief Technology Officer, Big Green Innovations, at IBM. Aside from IBM’s business activities, the company is utilizing the benefits of IoT to improve daily operations within its buildings, manufacturing and, in particular, its data centers. “IBM is a heavy user of IoT in our buildings, manufacturing and in particular in our data centers, to optimize HVAC loads and building performance,” Williams adds. The benefits of IoT also stretch beyond advanced economies and, perhaps, create a greater impact. In Africa, the IoT is enabling customers to leapfrog over the conventional electricity grid and go straight to “mobile power” — in a similar way that they have already leapfrogged over conventional telecommunications grids to mobile communications. At the forefront, Jesse Moore, CEO at M-KOPA Solar , is using IoT for solar system metering and performance management, and his company has connected solar power to more than 300,000 homes in East Africa. “What’s exciting and perhaps unexpected is the fact that IoT is enabling low-income, off-grid customers to leapfrog straight to solar power,” says Moore. Moore continues to highlight how the multidimensional nature of IoT is also providing ways to improve customer service. “Data coming back from our solar systems tells us when a customer’s rooftop panel is in the shade, so we can advise them to move it to a better location. To be able to remotely support customers in remote and rural parts of East Africa is a magical thing!” he says, regarding the additional benefits of IoT. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Ankit Mishra

46 Mark Suster On Falling Valuations And LA’s Tech Scene TechCrunch sat down with Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures. One of the most active investors in Los Angeles, Suster spoke of how local startups are able to draw upon the city’s creative talent to bring content, commerce and communication platforms to the next level. He also commented on falling tech valuations. “By any definition we’ve been in a funding bubble for years,” said Suster. With a “massive increase of supply of capital undoubtedly valuations go up and you end up with overfunding.” 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Katie Roof

47 47 “Tough Sledding” For New And “Marginal” Funds In 2016, Says LP Most institutional investors are notoriously circumspect. Chris Douvos is not like most institutional investors. In fact, Douvos, a managing director with Venture Investment Associates — a fund of funds group that commits capital to venture capital, growth capital, and private equity groups — is very opinionated, comparatively. It’s a refreshing quality, particularly when looking for insights into how the people who fund venture firms are feeling about the industry right now. And according to Douvos, they are nervous, including because their venture customers are coming back to them a lot sooner for capital than they once did. He explained during a chat on Friday, which we’ve lightly edited for length. TC: There’s a lot of nervousness out there suddenly. Are you feeling it at VIA, or does it seem to you like this will pass? CD: A lot of people are worried right now that we’re in a game of musical chairs, and no one wants to be standing when the music stops. People think that 80 to 90 percent of the billion dollar companies will end up getting liquid for less than a billion dollars, and I think there’s truth to that. We’ve been in a market where capital has been relatively cheap, and we’re looking ahead to a market where capital will get more expensive potentially. TC: So VCs should be selling before things fall further? We wrote about secondary firms last week, and they say they’re getting a lot of calls . CD: LPS are definitely yelling at VCs to to put some ‘moolah in the coolah.’ They’re hammering their GPs to turn some of that [paper] value into actual cash because of what I call the exit sphincter. When the capital isn’t coming back [to institutional investors], it interrupts the flow of things. We give out money expecting it will come back with profits in a reasonable amount of time. When it doesn’t, we can’t put more money into the asset class because a.) we’re at the top of our allocation [to venture capital and b.) we’re out of money. We have a down-trending public market at the same time that [our] private investments are really inflated [and not exiting], so LPs are getting doubly crushed. TC: But you saw some money back. For example, one of your funds is True Ventures, which made an apparent fortune on its early check to . CD: We have seen money from Fitbit and there’s more on the way. We’re in some great funds. But now, all the funds we love are coming back in 2016. TC: You make it sound like you’re surprised. CD: As I look at my own portfolio, it’s fantastic: Data Collective, True [Ventures], First Round [Capital]. But as a result of these demand for new capital, it’s tough for new funds. It’s an industry-wide problem. People also invested faster than they have in the past. The fund deployment cycle has compressed from three to four years to two years, as companies started to come back to market more frequently for more fundraises. It used to be that a round would last a company 18 months, but in the last couple of years, it’s been more like 12 months, so you shortened the latency of a funding round by a third. TC: Does that aggravate you? CD: It’s symptomatic of a pendulum swing in the direction of founders in recent years. Entitled founders plus founder-friendly VCs equals trouble for LPs. Founders saw opportunities to raise more money, frequently, at ever higher valuations, with less dilution. Meanwhile their VCs were getting a quick mark-up. The way companies have been getting financed also made it easier not to focus on business building, which is bad for everyone – employees, VCs, and LPs. TC: What’s the bottom line? Think it we’ll see the venture industry shrink further? CD: I think we’re in a cycle with LPs where you’re not going to see a lot of new entrants. LPs are feeling tapped out, so I’d predict tough sledding for new funds, and that marginal funds will have trouble raising the same size funds that they’re accustomed to managing. As for shrinking further, I think the great shedding of VCs that took place around 2008 really dated back to 1999 and 2000 [because each fund is invested over a 10-year period, roughly]. I don’t think we’ll see a comparable number of bodies this time, aside from associates falling out, including through natural attrition. I do think we’re seeing an ongoing revolution between capital and ideas and labor. People have talked about the unbundling of venture capital, and it’s happening, and I think the idea of a venture firm will change and evolve further still. I’m certainly keeping a close eye on what new models might arise. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Connie Loizos

48 Toshiba Nixes Wearvue, Its Smart Glasses, Less Than One Week Before Launch Toshiba has canceled its smart glasses less than one week before the devices were to start shipping. In an announcement today, the Japanese electronics company said it made the decision to stop developing and selling Wearvue TG-1 as part of an effort to streamline its business portfolio and operations. The firm is struggling to recover from a $1.9 billion accounting scandal and has been hit with a 7.3 billion yen (about $65.7 million) from Japan’s Financial Services Agency for falsifying its 2011 and 2012 financial statements. As part of rehabilitation effort, Toshiba announced that it will restructure to reduce costs by cutting jobs and selling off some segments, including its medical equipment unit . A company representative told the Wall Street Journal that the Wearvue, which was announced on Jan. 13, had gained enough interest that it “wanted to consider until the very last minute” whether to cancel its release. Designed for enterprise use, the Wearvue was meant to free the hands of workers in factories and logistics centers by projecting lists and images onto its right-hand lens. The smart glasses were slated to be the first in a series of devices that would “contribute to upgrading working environment for various industries and services,” the company said last month. TechCrunch has emailed Toshiba for more information about whether it will cease developing all of its smart glasses. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Catherine Shu

49 SpaceX’s SES-9 Launch And Why They Land Rockets At Sea This Wednesday at 6:46 pm EST, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the SES-9 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida with their Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The mission will mark the company’s second launch of the year. Wednesday’s mission will be coupled with a first stage landing attempt on SpaceX’s autonomous drone ship, “Of Course I Still Love You.” The floating barge, like its sister ship “Just Read The Instructions,” is named after a starship in the late Iain M. Banks sci-fi novels. Sea-based rocket landings, are considered to be more difficult than ground-based landings. It’s a smaller target area and the drone ship itself is constantly moving because of the motion of the sea. Once SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage on land at Cape Canaveral back in December, it would be reasonable to question why all future launches aren’t attempted on stable ground. There was a lot of discussion around why SpaceX would choose a drone ship landing over a more stable landing pad. NBC News suggested that a drone ship provided “more flexibility in when and how launches can proceed.” On twitter, however, Elon Musk said that the primary reason has to do with the speed that’s required to send the payload into orbit. It seems like an issue of semantics, but Musk is saying that the root of the cause is really how fast that rocket needs to go in order to complete its mission. For orbital launches, a payload requires an arc-like trajectory and a sufficiently high velocity to complete an orbit around the Earth. In order to bring the first stage back to a launch pad, additional lateral maneuvers are required. This is on top of the deceleration maneuvers needed for all soft rocket landings. Depending on the rocket’s velocity and the mass of it’s payload, there may not be enough fuel to get back to the launch pad. Bringing a drone ship away from land and out closer to the trajectory of the rocket can reduce the fuel required for a landing. For certain missions, this may be the only option for rocket recovery. Of course sometimes there are other factors that play into that decision as well. SpaceX’s launch of NASA’s Jason-3 satellite included a drone ship landing not because of fuel issues, but because the company didn’t receive the necessary approval to bring the rocket back to land. The payload for Wednesday’s launch, the SES-9 communications satellite, needs to reach geostationary orbit. Satellites in geostationary orbit (over 35,786 kilometers above the Earth) are much higher than satellites in low Earth orbit (between 160 kilometers to 2,000 kilometers), and therefore require more power – and fuel – from rockets to get them there. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that SpaceX would choose to land their rocket on a drone ship for this particular mission. A full-duration static fire test was completed on Monday, which puts SpaceX on track for their scheduled launch on Wednesday. Recently, SpaceX has invested a lot of energy into their live stream coverage of launches. The coverage has included co-hosts that explain what’s happening throughout the launch and other interviews to provide more detailed background information about the mission. For Wednesday’s launch, SpaceX will be hosting their live stream on YouTube. 2016-02-22 20:16:00-22:00 Emily Calandrelli

50 50 Explore, troubleshoot and diagnose your network with PortScan Freeware developer The SZ has shipped a new version of PortScan , its one-stop network toolkit for Windows XP and later. We last checked out the program way back in 2012, so the new release seems like a good time to look at it again. The download is a compact 387KB, and there’s no installation required. Just unzip the single program executable. The various PortScan functions are organized across eight tabs: Scan Ports, Search Devices, Ping Devices, Traceroute, Speed Test, Whois, DNS and About. That last tab -- About -- is a good place to start, because the latest release doesn’t just give you the program version. There’s also a pile of information on your network setup, including host name, workgroup, IP address, network adapters and their individual details. The Port Scanner is smarter than you’d think. Multi-threading and an option to scan "only common ports" means it runs quickly, and you get a vast amount of information on some targets: MAC address, host name, open ports, server details, network shares and more. "Search Devices" may give you even more information about your connected network hardware, and there’s no setup involved, no address ranges to enter -- just click Start and it reports any results in a few seconds. Ping Devices runs your choice of ping type (3 short, large ping suite, continuous) against a specified IP address or server name, and displays a report. Traceroute also works more or less expected. Enter a target, the program repeatedly runs a traceroute, listing intermediate IP addresses, resolving their host names, listing the pings received, minimum, maximum and average response time. Speed Test is more impressive, with options to test your speed using 6 different sites and many more servers (it list all available SpeedTest.net servers and you can choose the one you need). Whois displays the registration details for your target domain. No surprises there. The package is rounded off neatly with a new DNS function, which interrogates the DNS server you specify for records relating to a given domain name. (Don’t have a DNS server address to hand? No problem, Google Public DNS is used by default.) PortScan has some issues. You can’t easily use the output of one module in another, perhaps running a continuous ping against a detected device. You’re only able to save some of the reports, and even those are strictly XML-only. Despite that, the program remains a handy network toolkit, especially useful when scanning for network devices or running internet speed tests. Give it a try. PortScan is a freeware application for Windows XP and later. 2016-02-22 18:20:15+00:00 By Mike Williams Published 15 hours ago

51 From the air back to the ground -- Telecoms are returning to their roots with Gigabit internet Outside of those directly involved in the telecommunications industry, what goes on behind the cellular and wireless networks may be a mystery. The truth is that telecoms is advancing just as fast as the rest of the world, and these quieter innovations are driving forces in the success of much of the technology we see featured in the news headlines today. Where we’ve been: 5G From 3G to 4G to 5G, the telecommunications industry has continually advanced the capabilities of its networks on a frequent basis, often looking to the next breakthrough even before the widespread adoption of its latest discovery. This is certainly what we’ve seen in the case of 5G - - what many end users might not know is that over half of the world’s population have mobile subscriptions for 2G service only (Tolaga Research analyst Phil Marshall). So what do we know about 5G now? As the Internet of Things has continued to gain momentum, the need for a network with the power of 5G is undeniable. With 2016 slated to be the year of the connected and self-driven automobile and Internet-connected devices everywhere you look, 5G is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The initial deployment of 4G networks was presented without clear requirements, raising the question as to if it was really an improvement over 3G. There are lessons to learn from this experience, such as ensuring a consensus on the network provisions is met ahead of implementation and deployment. As network bandwidth is already hitting bottlenecks on the 4G services, it’s clear that something needs to be done to keep up with new technologies. However, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on 4G deployment already, and the plan is not even complete yet. A new network would put additional burden on budgets, so consumers have to decide if they’re ready to increase their expenses for the ability to achieve the new network speeds. Where we’re going: Gigabit internet 5G is leading the charge as the new sought-after network, and although not completely standardized across the board, it has a general idea and timeline to work against. This includes faster and more reliable connections across devices for consumers, and general availability by 2020. While there will certainly be hurdles, 5G deployment is already well on its way. On a different end of the spectrum, Gigabit internet access is stirring up interest across the United States. The service is typically delivered over fiber optic lines and claims speeds up to 100x faster than the average broadband connection. Some big names are already offering the service, including AT&T, Google Fiber, Comcast and Cox. Gigabit internet will also encounter obstacles along the way, much like 5G. The deployment is physical (not virtual), and requires additional infrastructure to be built. This means that Gigabit internet can only be rolled out city by city, and service providers have to pick and choose where they bring the access while the cities they decide on have to ensure infrastructure and topography are aligned with the requirements to build a local fiber network. Where we are now The telecom industry is tired of being overlooked when it comes to sexy new technology -- when it comes to leading the charge for new technology trends and advancements, it’s telecom that makes it happen. Over the next five years, telecom will undergo a massive transformation that will include both 5G and Gigabit internet deployment -- telcos are bringing sexy back! Photo credit: wk1003mike / Shutterstock Ed Fox Vice President of Network Services at MetTel. He is responsible for the planning, deployment, and operations of MetTel's broadband, data, and VoIP network infrastructure. He has over 20 years of telecommunications and network experience managing massive organizational and customer growth at major telecommunications providers. 2016-02-22 18:16:13+00:00 By Ed Fox Published 15 hours ago

52 AppFolio reports 4Q loss GOLETA, Calif. (AP) _ AppFolio Inc. (APPF) on Monday reported a loss of $3.9 million in its fourth quarter. On a per-share basis, the Goleta, California- based company said it had a loss of 12 cents. Losses, adjusted for stock option expense, came to 10 cents per share. The property management software maker posted revenue of $20.4 million in the period. For the year, the company reported profit of $15.7 million, or 73 cents per share. Revenue was reported as $75 million. AppFolio expects full-year revenue in the range of $100 million to $104 million. AppFolio shares have dropped 5 percent since the beginning of the year. This story was generated by Automated Insights ( http://automatedinsights.com/ap ) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on APPF at http://www.zacks.com/ap/APPF Keywords: AppFolio, Earnings Report 2016-02-22 18:13:00-05:00 CNBC

53 Moveable type: iClever Tri-folding Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard [Review] A few months back, I took a look at the iClever Portable Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard and I was impressed. Now iClever is back with an updated version of the keyboard, the iClever Ultra Slim 3 Color Backlight Bluetooth Keyboard. There are a number of enhancements to the original design, the most noticeable of which is that the keys have now grown to full size. As you'll have guessed from the name, the keyboard is now also backlit, and there are also little kick-out legs to help improve stability. In terms of build quality, this updated model is just as solid as its predecessor. The same aluminium casing is present, and the hinges that facilitate folding are wonderfully robust and -- just as before -- the keyboard can be used with iOS, Android and Windows (OS X doesn't get a specific mention in the manual, but it does work -- Windows Phone, on the other hand, is singled out as not being supported). As this is essentially an upgraded version of the previous model, you know pretty much what to expect. The typing experience is simply wonderful, and the full sized layout (291 x 117 x 8.25mm) means that it's actually slightly larger than the keyboards built into many laptops. Folded up, the dimensions reduce to 166 x 120 x 14.8mm, as weighing as just 280 grams, it's hardly a major addition to your bag or pocket. It's not just the size that has changed for the new keyboard model, there's now a battery indicator -- something I noted was missing from the previous version. The extra size of the keyboard could have impacted upon the stability of the device, but this is something that iClever has taken care by including tiny kick-down legs on each side. As well as preventing the keyboard from rocking because of the fulcrum created by the hinge covers, the legs also feature rubberized feet to prevent slipping. Backlighting is a very nice touch for anyone looking to use the keyboard at night or in low light conditions, and iClever gives you the choice of what color you would like to use -- a quick key combo lets you cycle between red, blue and green. The keyboard can be used wirelessly over Bluetooth, or plugged in via USB. The 750mAh battery offers up to 300 hours of continuous operation, but this is only the case if you forego the pleasures of backlighting. With the keys backlit, longevity plummets to a mere 5 hours -- perhaps a sign that this is a feature that should only be enabled when it's really needed if you are going to be typing wirelessly rather than tethered with a USB cable. A full battery charge will take around 4 hours, and iClever says you can expect to enjoy 90 days of standby time, and expect a lifespan of 3 years. As with the previous model, the keyboard comes complete with a carry pouch that has enough room for the keyboard and its cable. In use, this really does not feel like a foldable keyboard -- it's a small form peripheral that offers everything you would expect from its full-sized counterparts; there are no compromises. If you like the look of the keyboard, you can pick one up on Amazon for $54.99 -- iClever Ultra Slim 3 Color backlight Bluetooth Keyboard. As before, this is a portable keyboard that comes highly recommended. 2016-02-22 17:45:48+00:00 By Mark Wilson Published 15 hours ago

54 Ballistic unveils six-sided protection cases for Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge smartphones If you are a fan of the Android operating system, Samsung smartphones and tablets are some of the best. The company's devices are beautiful, well-built and full of features. More importantly, the company is reliable for support; sure, OS updates aren't as frequent or timely as a Nexus device, but Galaxy phones aren't abandoned like some others. If you plan on buying the latest Samsung flagships, either the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge , you will probably want to protect your investment. Don't worry, Ballistic has you covered. The company announced new cases for those phones, with six-sided protection, that are absolutely gorgeous too. "The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, being announced late February with availability in March, will find its ideal match in Ballistic’s new line of protective cases. Ballistic is proud to announce two new series, Jewel Mirage and Urbanite Select. Both new series offer Ballistic’s well-known Six-Sided Drop Protection, and come fully equipped with Ballistic Corners, raised lips and corners and six-feet of drop protection. Users do not need to sacrifice personal style for all-over protection with Ballistic", says Ballistic. The company further says, "Jewel Mirage ($29.99) has a slim, sleek design with a sophisticated twist. Its laser etched metal designs, 'Retro' and 'Kasbah', in either gold or silver, take nothing away from the signature Ballistic protection promised with every case. Urbanite Select ($39.99), available in Dark Ash Wood, White Ash Wood or Buffalo Leather, is Ballistic's slimmest series yet, offering an elegant design with a user friendly experience. Its ultra slim, lightweight, pocketable design is crafted from premium materials and holds true to Ballistic’s Six-Sided Drop Protection". While the Jewel Mirage is attractive, the Urbanite Select is the true star. For only $10 more, you get trendy and premium materials such as wood or buffalo leather -- how fancy! Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you may prefer the Mirage. If you are interested in purchasing one of these cases, you can do so here in March. Will you buy one? Tell me in the comments. 2016-02-22 17:43:00+00:00 By Brian Fagioli Published 15 hours ago

55 Android banking and payment apps at risk from Acecard Trojan A new Android banking Trojan is now bypassing Google Play security measures -- the Acecard Trojan is capable of attacking users of nearly 50 different online financial applications and services. During the last quarter of 2015 researchers at Kaspersky Lab detected an unusual increase in the number of mobile banking attacks in Australia. The suspicious activity was discovered to be the result of a single banking Trojan called Acecard. The company describes Acecard as one of the most dangerous Trojans it's ever seen. It uses almost every malware functionality currently available -- from stealing a bank's text and voice messages to overlaying official app windows with false messages that simulate the official login page in an attempt to steal personal information and account details. The most recent versions of the Acecard family can attack the client applications of some 30 banks and payment systems. Considering that these Trojans are capable of overlaying any application on command, the overall number of attacked financial applications may be much higher. Acecard is also able to overlay phishing windows on other applications including IM services WhatsApp, Viber, Instagram and Skype, social networks including Facebook and Twitter, the client, Google Play and Music, and the PayPal mobile app. "This cybercriminal group uses virtually every available method to propagate the banking Trojan Acecard. It can be distributed under the guise of another program, via official app stores, or via other Trojans. The combination of Acecard's capabilities and methods of propagation make this mobile banker one of the most dangerous threats to users today," says Roman Unuchek Senior Malware Analyst at Kaspersky Lab USA. Kaspersky Lab experts believe that Acecard was created by the same group of cybercriminals that was responsible for the first TOR Trojan for Android and the first mobile encryptor/ransomware. The reasoning for this is based on similar code lines and the use of the same command and control servers. To prevent infection by Acecard, Kaspersky recommends not downloading applications you don't trust, not clicking suspicious links, installing a reputable security application and keeping it up to date. You can find more details on the Securelist blog . Image credit : wk1003mike / Shutterstock 2016-02-22 16:37:22+00:00 By Ian Barker Published 16 hours ago

56 Huawei and Nexusguard partner to offer DDoS protection DDoS attacks are one of the most worrying threats that enterprises face. Chinese hardware company Huawei and security specialist Nexusguard are launching a new joint solution that offers enterprises and internet service providers state-of-the-art DDoS protection using software-defined networking (SDN). The companies will combine Nexusguard's cloud- enabled Origin Protection and Huawei's DDoS Protection System Appliances , giving customers low latency and multi-layered protection that can accurately and quickly defend their systems with hybrid implementations. In the past, differing customer sizes and requirements meant different ISPs had to set up appliances and build their own DDoS mitigation solutions from the ground up. For service providers overwhelmed by DDoS attack traffic, Nexusguard’s Hybrid Cloud approach will mitigate smaller attacks locally with on-premise appliances, which will be followed by failover to the cloud once inbound traffic exceeds the local network capacity to handle the attack. "Businesses look for advantages in technology that can support real-time traffic monitoring and protection with low latency, which is where we believe SDN will be the ultimate model for technology and solution providers in the future," says Liu Lizhu, general manager of the Firewall and Gateway Domain at Huawei. "With Nexusguard's purpose-built cloud DDoS mitigation expertise and our on-premise appliance protection, we can ensure customers enjoy the lowest latency and the quickest recovery from cyberattacks with a hybrid approach". Benefits of the combined solution include low false-positives, keeping end user experiences intact, and mitigation capabilities for DDoS attacks of any size, using excess cloud capacity. It offers immediate protection, triggered by real-time attack monitoring, along with security across multiple layers safeguarding against all types of DDoS attack. Both companies will be showcasing the joint solution at next week's RSA 2016 conference in San Francisco. Image Credit : sibgat / Shutterstock 2016-02-22 16:14:41 By Ian Barker Published 17 hours ago

57 When Law Enforcement Software Goes Too Far In the war on crime, law enforcement officers need every possible tool that they can use (safely) to deter illegal activity and keep the public safe. Some of those tools are as old as police forces themselves, while others are so high tech as to be the stuff of futuristic movies. But the unfortunately reality is that having the tech and using it responsibly aren’t the same thing. Police forces around the country are incorporating a new item in the crime prevention arsenal, and it’s already raising a few privacy and civil rights advocates’ eyebrows. Called Beware, it lets officers look at a suspect’s complete criminal history before arriving on the scene. Until this software came along, officers responded to a call and gathered information, during which time they can make a call back to the station and discover that their “perp” has some outstanding warrants. That’s all very logical. But Beware allows officers to find out instantly about charges going back years, essentially, the charges that have already been prosecuted and either dropped or served. Why would an officer responding to an emergency call need to know that you had an arrest in 1997 for armed robbery? Ostensibly, it’s to allow that officer to assume that you have a violent streak and to treat you as such. But Beware has another feature, and even police officers aren’t able to answer the crucial questions about it. This software automatically assigns a “threat level” to a particular address, but only the programmers know exactly what the criteria would be that causes one address to be a “yellow” and another address to be “red.” Despite claims that law enforcement agencies don’t know how that determination is made, it doesn’t take too much intelligence to figure out that previous crimes, neighborhood demographics, and even race may play a factor in telling a cop that he should be extra cautious about approaching a particular property, no matter why he was called. Beware isn’t done profiling you just yet… another feature of this software allows it to cull social media posts to determine if you’ve posted anything anti-law enforcement online (ie, “Man, so tired of these pigs riding through my neighborhood, always asking what we’re doing”). If your address has too many red flags about your feelings towards the police, you may find yourself bumping up a notch to a higher threat level, something that police will know about you before you ever open the door. While no one argues that law enforcement agencies are tasked with a thankless, dangerous job, it’s hard to envision how this kind of presupposition will foster better community relations and save lives. 2016-02-22 16:00:09+00:00 news.filehippo.com

58 First impressions on the Vector Luna smartwatch, which claims 30 days of battery life Today I got one of Vector’s smartwatches to try out, and what follows are a bunch of unboxing images, and my first impressions after using the watch for about half a day. You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Vector. It’s a small start-up that has big dreams of taking the smartwatch world by storm with its two current models: the Luna and the Meridian. So what differentiates their watches from the countless other no-name brands that have flooded the markets? Their focus on design and battery life in lieu of fancy screens and functionality. That and the fact that Vector isn’t actually “no name”. Sure they’re a new company, but their team is headed by ex-Timex CEO, Joe Santana and former Nike designer Steve Jarvis. But enough about the company. Ever since I heard of Vector late last year, two features seemed very attractive to me: a stylish design focused on the “watch” part of the smartwatch, and the promised 30 days of battery life. Compared to the less than 24 hours that most smartwatches get right now, 30 days seems like an incredible achievement – or a facetious lie from an upstart company. I’m glad to say neither of those aspects seemed to have been marketing fluff, as opening up the Vector Luna box today I was pleasantly greeted by the round, steely design I was hoping for. The Luna watch is quite simple, some would deem it classical, hiding its technical chops pretty well. Except for its size. This watch is very noticeable, both in terms of its face’s diameter and thickness. If you’re looking for subtle, this isn’t for you. That being said, its weight and overall feel on the wrist are quite pleasant and pretty much in line with what you’d expect from a classic, somewhat masculine watch. The Luna, and its rectangular brother the Meridian, come with different strap options, including silicone and leather, but I do prefer the regular stainless steel one. The Vector smartwatch has a monochrome screen, that’s quite smaller than the actual watch itself. The screen seems a bit low resolution and doesn’t have the best viewing angles when it comes to its backlight. Oftentimes there’s a very noticeable blueish tint to the background; that’s not actually a deal breaker, but a deep black would have looked so much classier – not to mention closer to their actual press images. One of the big features of the Vector smartwatch is its cross-platform compatibility: it works with iOS, Android, and to the surprise of many, Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile. I mainly used the watch with my for now, pairing it and testing out apps and notifications. All of that seems to work well. In terms of Windows 10 Mobile compatibility (and Windows Phone up from 8.1) I only tried pairing the device with the phone app – and that worked nicely. But I’ll take a much closer look at how notifications and apps work in the days ahead. In terms of actual usage, you should be aware that the Vector watch has its own lightweight OS, so devs have to code their apps specifically for Vector. But apps aren’t the main focus with this watch, as it’s more focused on providing you with quick notifications and info that actual in-depth functionality. I’ve received a bunch of notifications on the watch – signaled with a short and subtle vibration and a circle around the watch face on the screen. These include e-mails, calls, texts and other chat apps, all of which can be customized in the Vector app on the phone. The notifications work well, but there’s virtually no interaction with them: you can only dismiss them. The only action I could actually take is to decline a call. There’s also the ability to download “apps” for the watch: the two that I’ve tried out so far are Music, that allows you to somewhat control music playback on the phone, and BBC News, that gives you the top three current headlines. Neither is very impressive, though they’re not meant to be. Everything about the watch is designed to be subtle and hide as much of the technology as possible. The Vector Luna arrived with around 30% battery life this morning. While I’ll run extensive tests in the following days and weeks I’m glad to say the company’s claims seem to hold true, as I didn’t notice any battery drain at all, despite having the screen on all the time. The watch can be charged via a USB cable with a magnetic connector, that fits nicely and quickly on the back of the device without any hassle. The watch went from 30% to 99% battery in about one hour of PC charging. Then it stayed there for almost another hour, before finally notifying me it had charged to 100%. That’s not bad at all considering you’re supposedly only going to need to do this once a month. Oh and there’s one more trick that the Vector Luna has up its sleeve. While there’s no such thing as a waterproof watch, the Luna is certified as water resistant up to 5 ATM, meaning you should be able to go swimming with it. While I personally wouldn’t recommend that, it’s obviously safe to wear during a shower or in the rain. I’ll test this out more in the following days as well. So far so good. While I’m not a huge fan of the screen, arguably a very important aspect of the watch, I do fancy many of its features and its overall design. I’ll be using the device for another couple of weeks before I have a full review for you dear readers, but if there’s anything specific you want me to cover don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or let me know on Twitter. 2016-02-22 15:52:01+00:00 Vlad Dudau

59 HTC One X9 coming to Europe and Asia this month After launching the One A9 smartphone in global markets, HTC had launched the One X9 in China two months ago. It wasn't clear whether the device would be launched elsewhere at the time, since the device was spotted mostly on Chinese websites prior to launch. Now, the Taiwanese smartphone maker has announced at Mobile World Congress 2016 , that the premium, mid-range smartphone will be made available in more regions toward the end of February. These new markets will include countries from Europe, Middle East, Africa and North Asia. The HTC One X9 borrows some of its design from the company's flagship smartphone while bringing a new front design that accomodates the BoomSound speakers which were dropped from the One A9. Under the hood, the smartphone seems to be a capable mid-ranger with a spec-sheet that reads as below: HTC has not revealed the pricing of the smartphone as it may vary by market, but customers can expect it to be priced in the $400 to $500 bracket, similar to the One A9. Image via HTC 2016-02-22 14:50:01+00:00 Shreyas Gandhe

60 Save up to 59% off the First Generation Lytro 16GB or 8GB Camera via Deals Today on offer via our Gear + Gadgets section of Neowin Deals, we have a First Generation Lytro 16GB Camera at a 59% discount and the 8GB version at 49% off. The first consumer camera to capture the entire light field. Most cameras capture the position of light rays, producing your average static 2D image. The Lytro dares to be different. Its cutting-edge technology records the direction of these rays, generating images you can later refocus, change perspective within, or view in 3D. You can essentially revisit the scene of the photo—meaning you’ll never miss snapping the perfect shot again. Below is a (cringe worthy) promo video explaining a bit more in detail on how the entire light field can be manipulated after shooting video. This First Generation Lytro 16GB Camera normally retails at $199, but you can pick it up for just $79.99 for a limited time. The 8GB option usually retails at $149, but right now it's available for just $74.99. In addition, if you refer this deal via social media (below the 'Add to cart' button) which results in a purchase, you'll get $10 credit added to your Neowin Deals store account. Get the 16GB or 8GB First Gen Lytro Camera , or find out more about it. 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 . How can I disable these posts? Click here . Disclosure : This is a StackCommerce deal in partnership with Neowin; an account at StackCommerce is required to participate in any giveaways or deals. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. 2016-02-22 14:08:01+00:00 Steven Parker

61 SanDisk unveils Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive When USB flash drives hit the mainstream, many consumers -- including myself -- were shocked by the small dimensions. I remember staring in amazement, thinking of how many floppy disks would fit on one. In 2016, however, flash drives are no longer impressive. Many young tech users have never seen a floppy, and the concept of a flash drive could be seen as a dinosaur, because, you know -- the cloud. Today, SanDisk announces a new such drive, the Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive. Fairly fast, rather pretty, and using the latest USB connection type, it injects some excitement into an -- arguably -- dying medium. Unfortunately, the quoted "USB 3.1" is a bit misleading. "The new SanDisk Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive is available in up to 128GB and delivers USB 3.1 performance of up to 150MB/s, making it SanDisk's fastest and highest capacity USB Type- C offering. The USB drive features a slim, retractable design to protect the reversible connector and is compatible with the SanDisk Memory Zone app for Android. The app, which is available for free through the Google Play Store, auto-launches upon insertion of the drive into a compatible device, allowing immediate access to the user's content and easy file management", says SanDisk. Dinesh Bahal, vice president, product marketing, SanDisk, explains, "we expect to see many new USB Type-C supported devices released in 2016. As more consumers purchase ultra- mobile PCs, smartphones and tablets that feature this new, more advanced USB standard, it is critical to offer a complete ecosystem of compatible products. New offerings, like our SanDisk Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive, will give consumers the capabilities they’ve come to expect from traditional Type A ports, but with the added benefit of better performance". The SanDisk Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive should work brilliantly on Type-C enabled computers, like Apple's MacBook, Google's newest , and various Windows machines. Making it even more versatile, it is also compatible on Type-C Android smartphones and tablets. In theory, it should work on Windows 10 Mobile too, although SanDisk does not specifically list compatibility. Unfortunately, this drive is not USB 3.1 gen 2, but instead, gen 1. What does this mean? It is essentially USB 3.0 masquerading as 3.1. No, it is not false-advertising, just unfortunate branding approved by the USB Implementers Forum that can lead to consumer confusion. In other words, there is a good chance that your existing USB 3.0 drive is as fast, or maybe faster, than SanDisk's offering. The real benefit here is not speed, but really just the connection type -- if you need it. If you want to buy this slick-looking Type-C flash drive, it is available from retailers, like Amazon, starting today. Pricing is pretty reasonable and varies by capacity as seen below. 2016-02-22 13:28:04+00:00 By Brian Fagioli Published 20 hours ago

62 HP Elite x3 Brings Windows 10 Mobile To Businesses Microsoft may be in a smartphone slump , but HP Inc. is taking its chances on Windows 10 Mobile. Its high-end Elite x3 smartphone, unveiled Feb. 21 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, runs the new mobile OS . The hardware specs are impressive. HP built the 5.9-inch device with a 2560 x 1440 Gorilla Glass display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, a 4150 mAh battery, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage, which can be expanded to 2TB via a microSD card. HP wants the Elite x3 , specifically designed for the enterprise, to be your only business device. It's intended to be the core of a "new mobile ecosystem" and serve as your phablet, laptop, and desktop. [More on mobile: Smartphone prices are up, but so is customer happiness .] "What if your mobile device was the only device you needed? " questioned Michael Park, HP's vice president and general manager for mobility, at a press demo preceding MWC. The company's answer is a phone built to work across several business environments. Its Elite x3 can power a desktop, protect data with enterprise-level security, and deliver desktop apps through the cloud. The Elite x3 relies on Continuum, a core feature of Windows 10 , to power this multi-device scenario. Continuum enables users to plug their Windows 10 smartphones into larger screens to transform their phone into a full desktop with mouse and keyboard. HP has also launched a few accessories to bring the Elite x3 to its full potential. One is the Desk Dock, which enables owners to connect a phone to an external monitor. Another, the Mobile Extender, is a portable display. The Desk Dock is packed with ports for connectivity: DisplayPort for external display support, two USB-A ports, USB-C connection, and wired Ethernet. Users can click the phone into the stand, where they can continue using it. The Mobile Extender resembles a small black laptop with 12.5-inch display and keyboard. It's basically a shell of a device that transforms into a laptop with the power of the x3, which can sit in its user's bag or pocket while the Extender is in use. HP is also ensuring the Elite x3's security is sufficiently robust for its enterprise audience. In addition to iris and fingerprint scanners, the phone is built with Secure Boot at the chipset layer, bitlocker 128-bit encryption, VPN-SSL, Intune MDM, and Reset protection. The company also acknowledged the smartphone is built so that IT departments only have to manage one device, which could be a more secure approach compared with the BYOD policies many businesses currently employ. Through the Universal Windows platform, developers can write one app to scale across devices, saving IT managers the headache of creating several versions of the same app. HP is also promoting its app catalog, HP Workspace, to enable access to virtualized apps not normally available on mobile devices. HP has not officially announced availability for the Elite x3, Desk Dock, or Mobile Extender, but has said the phone will be available this summer. Pricing is unknown, but given the premium hardware, it'll likely be on the pricey side. It makes sense for HP to target the enterprise audience with its premium smartphone, especially with Windows Phone so unpopular among consumers. Could the Elite x3 be a business hit? With 76% of businesses actively piloting Windows 10, as Microsoft claims, there could be a possibility. Are you an IT Hero? Do you know someone who is? Submit your entry now for InformationWeek's IT Hero Award. Full details and a submission form can be found here. 2016-02-22 13:05:00 Kelly Sheridan

63 Registry Finder adds 'search keys by modified date' Open source Registry editor Registry Finder has added the ability to find Registry keys modified within a date range. This has many computer forensic applications, such as seeing the keys modified when a program was installed, or getting clues about what another user did on your PC last Wednesday. The feature is an addition to the regular Find dialog. Right-click a target like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, click Find, and there are now "From" and "To" date pickers for selecting your date range. Windows and individual applications are updating the Registry all the time, of course, so it’s likely that searches will contain a lot of not-very-interesting data (we scanned HKEY_CURRENT_USER for changes in the last 24 hours and got 3,500 results). Fortunately you’re able to sort your results by key, helping you skim over irrelevant clusters of Explorer or system-related junk and zoom in on anything more unusual and interesting. There’s also an option to sort the keys by the date and time modified, and that’s maybe the most interesting of all. Even if you don’t know what you’re looking for, scrolling down the list shows you when Registry changes cluster together, highlights changes that happen all on their own, and generally give you a better understanding of what’s happening in the background of your PC. The only issue we noticed is "modified date" information is still only displayed in search results, and not the main Registry view. This is going to make for a very clumsy workflow -- you have to search the key you’re already viewing to get the information you need -- but hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. Registry Finder is an open source application for Windows XP and later. 2016-02-22 12:51:10+00:00 By Mike Williams Published 16 hours ago

64 Popular Linux distro hit by hacked version on official site over the weekend When you download an operating system, you certainly don't expect to be installing an altered version with a backdoor in place, but sadly this is what happened to some folks who downloaded a popular version of Linux over the weekend. To be precise, we are talking about Linux Mint – specifically the 17.3 Cinnamon edition. As the makers of Mint announced in a blog post, what actually happened was a malicious party made a modified version of said OS (containing a backdoor) and hacked the official website to point to this compromised download. The maliciously modified version was available for a time on Saturday (February 20) before the issue was discovered, so if you downloaded and installed Mint from the official site on that day, then you've got a problem (and if this was a machine with business data on, a potentially even bigger problem). If you grabbed another version aside from Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition, then you're fine, and equally if you downloaded from elsewhere other than the official website (say via torrents) then you're also okay. The list of valid signatures is provided in Clem's blog post , and further advice is given on what action to take if you did install this backdoor-laden OS (take the PC offline, reinstall the OS or format the partition, and change any passwords you may have used on the machine). Apparently the compromised ISO was loaded with Tsunami botnet malware. At the time the attack was discovered, Lefebvre said that it was traced to Bulgaria, but the motivation wasn't known. However, ZDNet later spoke to a lone hacker from Europe by the handle of 'Peace' who claimed to be responsible, and said they had successfully compromised a few hundred machines running Mint. The hacker also claimed to have stolen a complete copy of the Mint website's forum on two occasions, containing personal information of users including birthdates, email addresses and passwords (although the latter were encrypted). However, the passwords are in the process of being cracked by all accounts (simple passwords will be particularly susceptible to being brute-forced), so if you're a forum member, you should take action on that front too and change your password (and other instances of that password if you've used it elsewhere – of course, it goes without saying that's very bad security practice). The Mint team was quick to respond to this whole incident, and transparent in dealing with it, although the fallout from the compromise is likely to be considerable in the short-term. Article continues below 2016-02-22 12:47:00 By Darren Allan Operating systems

65 New tool uses machine learning to personalize emails Most marketing email gets personalized using a static template which limits the amount of information that can be tweaked for each recipient. Marketing automation company Boomtrain is launching a new platform, Boomtrain Editor, that adds advanced machine learning personalization regardless of email provider. It predicts the optimal email content for each recipient, and can then be applied by simply dragging and dropping it into a customizable template. Rather than displaying the same message for all subscribers, content can be personalized with recommendations for each individual user, regardless of the number of recipients. It can turn existing HTML newsletters into a dynamic, 1:1 personalized template, without needing software specialists to help. "You can go out and run predictive models on IBM's Watson or Google's TensorFlow, but if you don't have a team of engineers on staff, you won't be able to use it for practical marketing applications," says Nick Edwards, CEO of Boomtrain. "Boomtrain has bridged that gap to make advanced machine learning personalization accessible for marketers everywhere to leverage this new wave of data and technology". In order to create a seamless process for executing email campaigns, Boomtrain has also announced a partnership with Iterable , a user engagement platform that powers marketing across email, mobile and web, to serve dynamic, personalized content to individual consumers through the Iterable email platform. Through this partnership, Boomtrain will create content within the email, while Iterable will be responsible for sending the actual message. More information on Boomtrain Editor is available on the company's website. Image Credit : Sarah Holmlund / Shutterstock 2016-02-22 12:16:45 By Ian Barker Published 21 hours ago

66 Lenovo unveils TAB3 10 Business tablet As the BYOD trend continues to grow throughout SMBs and enterprises alike, more and more mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are being introduced into the workplace. With this in mind, Lenovo has unveiled the TAB3 10 Business at MWC 2016, an Android powered tablet designed to combine the power and versatility of Android 6.0 with the service capabilities that matter most to business users. The TAB3 10 Business is optimized for professional use, offering full support for Android for Work and featuring a range of security and encryption options -- such as persistent endpoint protection and geo-technology to enable businesses to track devices -- to ensure work-related data remains safe and secure. The tablet comes pre-loaded with Android for Work apps, Google Play for Work and supports industry solutions in areas such as classroom, point-of-sale and eHealth management. Wear and tear isn’t an issue, as the TAB3 10 Business boasts IP52 certification for dust- and splash- proofing and shielding through scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 panels to deal with the toughest working environments. Multi-tasking and multi-window support is provided by the 1.3GHz Quad-core processor and the 12-hour battery life means employees can stay mobile throughout the day without having to stop and recharge. As business-specific use cases range from digital displays to conference calls, a 10-inch full-HD IPS display with Gorilla Glass 3 and dual speakers boosted by Dolby Atmos cinematic movie audio are also packed in, with an 8MP auto-focus rear camera and 5MP fixed-focus front camera produce quality pictures with high-resolution clarity. The TAB3 10 Business will be available from June 2016, retailing at $199 for the Wi-Fi only option, $249 for 2GB and LTE and $299 for 3GB and LTE. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. 2016-02-22 11:57:47+00:00 By Sam Pudwell Published 17 hours ago

67 Why Apple's shameless fight with the FBI is all about ego, not just cause After spending the last few days soaking up as much as possible on the Apple-FBI San Bernardino iPhone spat, the evidence -- in my eyes -- has become crystal clear. Apple's planted itself on the wrong side of history here for numerous reasons, and is using nothing less than a finely scripted legalese tango in defending its ulterior motives. As a part time, somewhat auxiliary member of the tech media at large, I'm a bit embarrassed at how poorly this story has been covered by my very own colleagues. Many of those who should undeniably have a more nuanced, intricate understanding of the technical tenets being argued here have spent the last week pollinating the internet with talking point, knee-jerk reaction. Inadvertently, this groupthink is steering Apple's misguided arguments forward to a populace that otherwise relies on the tech media's prowess in unearthing the truth in such matters. This is one such case where technical altruism is blinding the real story at play here, which are Apple's design flaws -- in other words, inadvertent insecurity bugs -- found in the older iPhone 5c. For those that haven't kept up on this story, you can get a great primer on where the Apple vs FBI situation stems from and its surrounding core facets. ZDNet's Zack Whittaker has a great FAQ post that digs into the major topics at hand in an easy to understand manner. No need to retread already covered ground in this post. Apple's Framed Narrative in Twisted Prism of Encryption The tech media is writing story upon story that makes mention of supposed backdoors the FBI is requesting, which entail things like "master keys" which could potentially unlock any encrypted iOS device. While there are far too many media stories I could link to which prove such misinformation dissemination, I'll point to posts like this one on Venturebeat and even coverage on the otherwise usually judicious podcast, This Week in Enterprise Tech ( episode 177 is where the Apple/FBI case was dissected at length). While this self-absolving narrative is making its rounds, let's not forget where this all began. It was Apple itself, in its now famous open letter which was published on Apple's website and signed off by no less than Tim Cook himself. And for that, shame on him. Many in the media have mistaken this to be a case about phone encryption, due to Apple's framing of the discussion in such a light. In reality, the FBI is merely asking Apple to help create a special iOS firmware for a single iPhone 5c which could disable forced-wiping after 10 entries, and altering the timeout delay between entries. Apple's attempt to sway the narrative leads me to believe it is more concerned about corporate image than public safety. (Image Source: Mercury News ) I know very well that as the leader of a massive publicly traded company, Cook has a duty first and foremost to his most critical stakeholders, those being Apple shareholders. But the finer point which Apple forgets in its shameless fight with the FBI is that the very sacred tenets of American democracy and capitalism have allowed his firm to grow to such unprecedented levels. There is very well a balancing act which needs to be distinguished in a free society that stands at the folds between security and privacy. The FBI is not asking for any kind of encryption "master key" here, let's be very clear. Such a request would be an overreach of the inherent division that is required to ensure the greater security of data for the masses in question here. And such a request would be one that I would, as an IT professional, yet more importantly, a member of this society, be very succinctly be opposed to. But this is not what has been asked of Apple, and not what's at stake for the company. This move is driven by a PR objective aimed at keeping Apple's ego and image in something it preaches so dearly: security. FBI's Request Indirectly Forces Apple to Admit iPhone 5c Insecurity If you're curious as to how I could come to such a conclusion, you can feel free to glean through the same well written, and lengthy, expose on this situation which convinced me on the subject with clear technical validation and reasoning -- not purely emotional knee-jerk reaction. The post is on the blog for a company called Trail of Bits which has noted deep expertise in security research. Much of my very stance on the subject is also reflected in Mark Wilson's post from a few days ago right here on BetaNews. Even Trevor Pott of The Register penned a rather wordy, but pointedly accurate piece that confirms what the Trail of Bits blog post puts forth as a theory. "What appears to be involved is a design flaw. Something about the iPhone 5C in question is broken," says Pott in his Register article. That's right, a design flaw which happens to be the complete lacking of the "secure enclave" which is detailed at length in the Trail of Bits blog piece. If this were a newer A7 or newer powered iPhone, the FBI's chances of getting in without asking for the dreaded pandora's box "master key" (which doesn't exist) would be next to zero. But Apple never included this security facet on its earlier phones, and herein lies the very nuanced tenet of what the FBI truly wants to be able to leverage. The FBI doesn't want and has never asked Apple for any kind of master key. It's asking for mere assistance in re-engineering its way through a known security flaw in Apple's iPhone 5c device which doesn't tie PIN entry and authentication to the internal data through the use of this secure enclave. While Apple won't admit as much, this is very much so a security flaw that Apple obviously will never be able to fix for iPhone 5c owners, and naturally, has every intention to re- architect the argument on this situation to deflect any potential for this criticism to reach critical mass. And even more acutely, the FBI and Justice Department aren't asking Apple to make this available to "all" future iPhone 5c devices recovered in the course of policing. The DOJ says Apple has the free will to " keep or destroy " this special firmware after its purpose is rendered for the FBI's requests. So Apple's consumer-focused defense that it is being asked to " hack its own users " is just another attempt to misconstrue the real intentions of law enforcement here. One important fact which some of the media has glossed over is that the iPhone in question was not even a personal phone of the shooter. The device was actually a work-issued device that was handed out by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and in turn, is considered employer property with all accompanying rights that employers have over the data stored on those devices. Apple's A7-powered and newer iOS devices all employ an internal lockbox known as the "Secure Encalve" which broker access to encryption keys used to access user data. The iPhone 5c lacks this very item, which makes the FBI's chances at getting into the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone very possible -- and technically proven feasible by security experts. But Apple's ego, partially built on an image of security, naturally forces its arm in trying to trump the FBI's request. (Image Source: Troy Hunt ) I'm not here to use Apple as a pincushion, as the industry at large needs to double down in its attempts to put its actions where its words are about security. But Apple deserves heat here, not only because it's putting shareholders first above national security, but because it has previously been guilty of trumpeting "security through obscurity" as I've covered at length in previous posts. Any reasonable technology company is going to have bugs and defects in its devices and code. That's the nature of the beast, and understood by IT pros like myself. But Apple has built an empire in part by its clever marketing teams that have flaunted layers of security which supposedly beat and exceed those of any other company's competing products. Sometimes, it is in the right and marketing matches reality. But many times, like with the now-dead claims that OS X doesn't get malware which I fought against for years, Apple put greenbacks before fiduciary responsibility to be honest about its software and device capabilities. And while the cessation of the famous "I'm a MAC" advertising campaigns signaled a more subdued competitive standing on the OS X front, Apple's big moneymaker isn't in desktop computers anymore, it's in iPhones that it sells by the millions. How does this round back to its reluctance to work with the FBI? Very simply, doing so would inadvertently admit that the iPhone 5c indeed has the security flaw which the FBI and the industry has exposed. And the problem for Apple is that it has created an ego bubble for itself which fans have bought into that has security as a notable keystone. If that keystone falls here, Apple's back to square one with winning back its fans that place i- Devices on a pedestal most other manufacturers only wished they had. Put in other words, it's Apple's ego at stake here. And it takes that very, very seriously if you haven't noticed. Apple Has an Undeniable Duty to the Society it Built its Fortunes On We've clearly established some very agreeable, black and white, facts surrounding this situation based on everything I've linked to above: As such, I'm convinced beyond any doubt that the abilities to get into this phone exist, and can be done so in a way to protect the universe of iPhone users at large from massive data grabs by legal overreach. Apple's denial in helping the FBI, as described earlier, is not grounded in technical validity, but rather being driven by a corporate ego that has grown too large for its own good. Apple's feelgood and impenetrable stances on its device security are at risk of being exposed to the masses. For a company that has built its fortune around peddling a larger-than-life notion about its own security prowess, this would spell downright disaster in the marketplace, especially in the newfound re-emergence it has found in the previously reluctant Enterprise market towards its products. VOTE NOW: Poll: Should Apple help the FBI unlock the San Bernardino iPhone? But let's go beyond profitability reports and corporate egos, as the larger extrapolation here is Apple's duty that it owes to the citizens of this very nation. A country that is now in need of a compassionate about face by Apple so we can connect the dots on a terrorist situation that will not only help explain the events leading up to the San Bernardino massacre, but likely expose critical nuggets of information about other future plots or combatants. Apple's attempt to paint this discussion in a sea of technicalities and promotion of the privacy of its users at large ends up falling on its face when the facts are dissected in sunlight. If that very sunlight means Apple's design flaws must be vaulted into public discussion, so be it. That's the duty it owes its users in being assured that its designs are not merely existing in a lab -- but being tested, sifted, and penetrated to make future generations of hardware better on the whole. While our democracy has been historically opposed to gross intrusion of privacy, as seen in opposition to ad-hoc phone record dredging, a common sense approach towards nuanced security needs is something we cannot become blind to. Companies and advocates like Apple will try to smokescreen their intentions with public decrees like Tim Cook's in a blanket position on privacy, but even its future has just as much at stake if the terrorists can use an over- extended privacy veil as its own. The day the Justice Department calls for blanketed encryption"master keys" from Apple is the day I will stand with Apple. But that day is not today, as Apple has not and is not being asked as much. Do the right thing, Tim Cook. Your company enjoys prosperity through the same democratic society that is pleading with you to put the future of our nation ahead of personal or corporate motives. If future deaths could have been prevented acutely via that iPhone 5c you refuse to help unlock, what kind of responsibility will fall on Apple's shoulders? Only history will be the judge of that. Image Credit: klublu / Shutterstock Derrick Wlodarz is an IT Specialist who owns Park Ridge, IL (USA) based technology consulting & service company FireLogic , with over eight+ years of IT experience in the private and public sectors. He holds numerous technical credentials from Microsoft, Google, and CompTIA and specializes in consulting customers on growing hot technologies such as Office 365, Google Apps, cloud-hosted VoIP, among others. Derrick is an active member of CompTIA's Subject Matter Expert Technical Advisory Council that shapes the future of CompTIA exams across the world. You can reach him at derrick at wlodarz dot net. 2016-02-22 10:57:40+00:00 By Derrick Wlodarz Published 18 hours ago

68 Crank Software brings a new level of sophistication to embedded UI development with Storyboard Suite 4.2 at Embedded World 2016 Crank Software , an innovator in embedded user interface (UI) solutions, announced today the latest release of its turnkey UI development software, Storyboard Suite. With Storyboard Suite 4.2 , graphical UI development teams can quickly create and edit stunning graphics and high- performance animations for embedded applications, and integrate and refine dynamic 3D content with ease—all within one tool that supports a collaborative workflow. From graphic designers to embedded system engineers, Storyboard Suite provides the entire development team with a flexible platform that allows them to share workload and design tasks, while maintaining a tight focus on a cohesive and beautifully integrated end product. With a design environment that’s easy to learn and use, teams can be productive from the start, saving time and costs, and delivering better UIs in less time. “Rich animations and 3D graphics have become increasingly important in embedded GUI development,” said Brian Edmond, President at Crank Software. “With Storyboard Suite 4.2 we are continuing to support design innovation by enabling teams to integrate sophisticated artwork and 3D graphics into Storyboard Designer that they’ve created in tools that they work with on a daily basis. This integration, and the capability to quickly view and refine animations directly in Storyboard Designer, leads to an efficient design workflow.” Storyboard Suite 4.2 delivers new functionality to further enhance 3D integration, team collaboration, and animations; while continuing to focus on making it as easy as possible for development teams to create stunning graphical UIs. Top New Features in Storyboard 4.2 We will be demoing Storyboard Suite 4.2 at Embedded World 2016, Hall 4/4-547, February 23- 25, 2016 . 2016-02-22 10:48:09+00:00 SD Times Newswire View all posts by SD Times Newswire

69 Tips on how to start a successful tech business Starting any business can be fraught with difficulties, but a tech business can be even trickier. We look at what things you should do to make your business a success. Starting a business is the dream for anyone with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, but turning dreams into reality is never easy. This year alone, more than 70,000 start-ups have opened for business according to Startup Britain. Each year, more than half a million people start a business. But what if your dream is starting a tech business that could one day rival the likes of Apple or Google. What do you need to turn an idea into a Unicorn (a private company worth more than $1 billion)? Should the business you start be something you love or something that will make lots of money? If you do it for money you will never make much of it, according to Stuart Miller, CEO and co-founder of ByBox. "You don’t need to be in love with your actual product", he says. "Being honest, even though they are at the heart of everything we do at ByBox, I don’t actually love lockers! But I do love proving people wrong and the journey involved in building a world-class business". Tom Davenport, founder and co-owner of TalentPool, says that ideally, it should be both. He says very often loving a business (or, more specifically, a product) is the best way to make lots of money. "However, we’ve learned over the years to be increasingly commercial. Some of the decisions we made in the early days we would now see as naïve; as in, not thinking properly about the bottom line. So a good and responsible business leader should never forget the numbers. After all, a sustainable business isn’t one that makes fluffy products, it’s one that doesn’t go bust". When you get an idea for a new tech business, how soon should you move? Henry Latham, founder at BackTracker says that many people e assume that founders have a ‘eureka’ moment, come up with an idea and start a business the next day. "It’s good to jump in at the deep end and get going, otherwise there are infinite excuses not to, but you can take steps towards the moment when you quit your job and focus on your business full-time. As long as you have a clear timeline and targets, then that’s progress", he says. Once the idea has been settled upon funding is another thing to consider. Michael Gould, CTO and founder of Anaplan says that when starting any business, you need to spend the necessary time looking at your idea objectively to determine whether you really have a compelling argument as to why your product deserves investment. "When I started my business, I spent close to two years hidden away in my Yorkshire barn developing a prototype before I felt that it was at a point where I could pitch the product. This level of planning is crucial to building a solid foundation for your business -- particularly if you are trying to solve complex business problems with your product", he says. Bivek Sharma, head of KPMG Small Business Accounting, says that for tech entrepreneurs, funding has to be realistic, "both in what you ask for and what you promise". “Vagueness or unrealistic numbers can quickly kill a deal. Lenders and funders need to know exactly how much money you need and when they’re going to start seeing some of it back. Ask for too little and the need for further loans or investment rounds can damage credibility. Too much and you can out-price future funders", he says. Once you have turned your idea into a business and got funding, how do you manage resources and built up a team? Davenpot says that in his experience, it’s best to limit the number of people you have in the company at the early stages: "It is essential to have a very capable and flexible core team which together covers every area of the business (even if you outsource some delivery). And of course it is critical to have at least one member of that team as, either in title or in effect, your CTO", he says. Latham says that when it comes to finding the right people for your tech start-up, two key attributes of a successful team member are resilience and potential. "You’ll spend up to 2 years working 14-hour days, for no immediate reward or visible progress and you’ll generally have much easier employment options available to you. If you don’t have the grit to stick it out for this period and decide to leave, then this can have a hugely damaging affect on the team, particularly at an early stage", he says. Latham also says that in addition to getting the right people in, time is an important resource: "Your allocation of your time will determine your success or failure. Without a very clear goal for your day, week, month, etc, you can spend every waking hour working without seeing any progress", he says. Latham adds that his management team holds a Skype meeting every Monday, while the product development team meets twice a week. "These progress updates (through Slack) ensure everyone understands their position and how their work affects others", he says. "We also use Trello to show what we are doing and what’s in our stack/to-do list, so everyone’s work remains entirely visibility and transparent". While having the right team behind is one thing, getting advice is also crucial to success as a tech start-up. "I think having a mentor is one of the best things you can do for a business", says Thomas Coppen, managing director of Keel Over Marketing. "I have had one since I began. There are also a few charities that provide free mentoring as well. You should always take advice. That said, I tend to grow my business faster than advised by my mentor, so you need to have your own idea in there as well". There will be challenges when any start-up, but as long as you have the right technology in place alongside the right people and you have researched your market and more importantly your customers, your tech start-up can succeed. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: alphaspirit / Shutterstock 2016-02-22 10:21:39+00:00 By Rene Millman Published 23 hours ago

70 Verizon to buy XO Communications' fiber-optic business Verizon Communications , the No.1 U. S. wireless service provider, said it would buy Carl Icahn -owned XO Communications' fiber-optic network business for about $1.8 billion. Verizon said the deal will include XO's fiber- based Internet protocol and Ethernet networks that will help serve its enterprise and wholesale customers. Carl Icahn, the chairman and sole shareholder of XO Holdings, which owns XO Communications, said the deal does not represent a significant annualized return on investment but was the best achievable outcome. Icahn, who started buying senior debt of XO in 2001, said he helped bring the company out of bankruptcy in 2003 and has since had to inject additional capital several times to keep it operating. Verizon expects more than $1.5 billion in cost savings after the deal, the company said on Monday. Most Americans own a mobile phone and a saturated U. S. wireless market has Verizon and its rivals turning to new businesses. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2017. Verizon also said it would simultaneously lease available XO wireless spectrum, with an option to buy it by the end of 2018. Citigroup Global Markets acted as financial adviser to Verizon, while Evercore served as XO's financial adviser. Debevoise & Plimpton acted as legal adviser to Verizon, and Thompson Hine was XO's legal adviser. 2016-02-22 10:19:36-05:00 CNBC

71 Cyanogen launches the MOD platform, bringing Microsoft apps even closer to Android users Microsoft and Cyanogen have been quite chummy as of late , with the Redmond giant partnering to bring their apps and services on Cyanogen OS phones. But now Cyanogen is taking things to the next level by introducing MOD. MOD is basically taking Android tweaking and pumping it full of steroids, as the platform allows almost anyone, from device builders to end users to customize parts of the OS that weren’t accessible before. This includes possibilities like changing the default Android dialer, embedding apps deeper into the OS, and so on. Cyanogen stresses that this is designed to allow its partners to develop brand new types of applications and experiences that will lead users into the “post-app era”. But interestingly enough, one partner that the company keeps coming back to is Microsoft. The Windows-maker seem to be a premium launch partner for MOD, having already created a bunch of applications and scenarios where the company’s services get embedded into Cyanogen OS. This includes a Skype dialer that brings VoIP functionality directly in the phone’s dialer; it also includes Cortana integration which allows users to call on the digital assistant to take selfies and accomplish other tasks, all via voice commands. There’s also a new mod around OneNote, that allows users to take notes, access their calendar and e-mail and their browser while conferencing on the phone. There are also Truecaller and social lockscreen mods available from Cyannogen’s other partners. Cyanogen also launched the MOD Ready program, that allows carriers and OEMs to leverage their existing investment in hardware and software and quickly launch phones that take advantage of the MOD platform in Cyanogen OS. But while Cyanogen and its partners keep hailing this launch as a revolutionary beginning to a new age, where the user can achieve and do more, quicker and easier than ever, we can’t help but wonder what the drawbacks are, especially in terms of security. But we’ll no doubt learn more about the system and how it can be used next month, when it starts rolling out for devices using Cyanogen OS 13.0 or newer. Source: Cyanogen Blog 2016-02-22 10:10:01+00:00 Vlad Dudau

72 Mobile App Dev: 3 Trends That Will Shake Up Your Strategy The way mobile apps are built and maintained is undergoing a major shift this year. In my work as an industry analyst, I'm seeing technologies and architectures coming to market simultaneously that will support modular apps and flexible, speedy, collaborative development processes. Whether you're building mobile apps for your enterprise users or for your company's external customers, it is an iterative process. Waterfall development practices that lead to monolithic apps are increasingly unable to support the demand on developers to create and update apps to meet the requirements of modern mobile users. Platforms are supporting increased flexibility though granular, componentized, and agile architectures and practices. It's my recommendation that CIOs and others involved in DevOps think about how to divide systems into smaller pieces so they can be independently and quickly updated. This will help your organization keep up with the constantly accelerating pace of change. Adopting a modular approach to building mobile experiences will create a number of opportunities for efficiency. Adjusting development organizations to easily move development talent across projects will help better utilize scarce developer talent. Collaboration among developers, designers, and marketers will also lead to a more streamlined operation. [Which languages are worth considering for your mobile development? Read 6 Top Programming Languages for Mobile Development .] So, where do you begin? Here are three emerging technology trends that will get your mobile app development teams headed in the right direction. The use of microservices in the backend enables mobile app development teams to operate efficiently and create flexible apps. Microservices are not really a specific technology so much as an architecture that supports faster iteration. They are a pattern for architecting small backend services that can be developed independently of each other, and then connected together via APIs. Each microservice can be built to complete a certain function and combine with other microservices to create a unique, full-featured service. For example, a flight reservation app might contain a number of microservices such as: Because microservices are glued together with APIs, there are no dependencies for developers to track. Consequently, dynamic development organizations are possible, as different developers can work independently on various microservices. This also makes apps easier to maintain and scale. In the front end, the idea of a standalone mobile app is also beginning to splinter as card-based UIs gain traction. Popularized by Pinterest, cards present data and images in rectangular shapes on the home screen and can be layered and moved. Most dating sites have copied Tinder's card-based user interfaces, in which each potential match is represented in a unique card. The flexibility of this layout enables brands to experiment with different ways to present the information that is most relevant to the user and device. Much like microservices, each card is focused on a specific thought or action. However, instead of connecting components with APIs the way microservices do, deep links can be used to connect cards to each other or connect to specific pages in a completely different app. These developments will change the mobile experience for the end-user, as walls between apps become porous and eventually disappear. In this scenario, the days of apps with well thought out user interfaces and menus give way to a collection of UI widgets or cards. The concept of component-based architecture is being leveraged in new Native JavaScript frameworks as well. Mobile operating system vendors have opened up access to the JavaScript engines in their platforms. With this access, using these frameworks (like NativeScript from Telerik or React Native from Facebook), developers can call native UI features and APIs with JavaScript. These bits of native code are componentized or wrapped with declarative language, so they can operate without dependencies and be easily incorporated into apps. Developers can also build custom native components in native languages that can be accessed through the JavaScript frameworks. This approach is a step beyond WebViews, since apps built this way are developed in JavaScript but run natively. This means that apps are easier to build than pure native apps, but perform better than hybrid architectures and have a native and consistent look and feel. The emergence of JavaScript frameworks may negate the debate between native and Web. Developers may no longer have to choose between performance and ease of development. As a result, developers and users win with flexible apps that offer improved performance. Flexible technologies will enable increased experimentation. It's important that your teams test and measure every aspect of user experience and tweak UIs in order to drive app engagement and retention. This will be how brands compete in the mobile ecosystem going forward. The bottom line? Your mobile app is never done. So build your dev infrastructure and strategy around this assumption. Are you an IT Hero? Do you know someone who is? Submit your entry now for InformationWeek's IT Hero Award. Full details and a submission form can be found here. 2016-02-22 10:06:00 Peter Crocker

73 Sony unveils Xperia X line up of Android Smartphones, as well as the Xperia Ear This morning Sony has launched the Xperia X series of Android smartphones, the first couple of which, the Sony Xperia X and Xperia XA, places them firmly in the mid-range. Not a lot is known about the internals, but Sony has emphasized that these phones feature “next-generation technologies in camera, battery, and design”. What we do know is that Sony has opted for a curved-glass display that’s set within a rounded continuous frame. It’s the same design story across both the Xperia X and Xperia XA. The Xperia X also features several camera upgrades, the most interesting of which is called Predictive Hybrid Autofocus. That means you can select a subject, and the phone will predict its motion. The end result should be a photograph of a moving object in focus, minus the blur. Sony also claims both devices feature a two-day battery life" thanks to smart power management features". Under the hood, the Xperia X ships with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 650 hexa-core processor – that places it in the upper mid-range, and is actually the Snapdragon 618 under a new name. There are currently no details on pricing or other specifications, but we'll update this post as they become public. For those wanting a bit more under the hood, Sony also announced the Xperia X Performance, packing a Qualcomm 820 SoC and a 2700 mAh battery to support Sony's now standard two- day battery life promise, coupling smart battery management tech with Qnovo’s Adaptive Charging, which the company says will double the lifespan of the embedded unit. It features a 23 MP rear shooter with a 13 MP camera up front, 3 GB of RAM, up to 32 GB of storage, and a microSD slot for expansion. There's also a fingerprint scanner mounted on the side, continuous color on both the back and the front, and high-res audio support with a dedicated DAC. The Xperia X, Xperia X Performance and Xperia XA will be available starting in June in White, Graphite Black, Lime Gold and Rose Gold, with each color having the Style Covers to match. Sony also announced the Xperia Ear, an earpiece that informs you of your schedule, news and weather. It responds to voice commands, so you can tell it to make calls, make an Internet search or navigate to a location. If you're worried about it chafing after wearing it for a full day, fret not -- the Ear uses soft silicone and is designed for all-day wear. The Xperia Ear will be available this summer. 2016-02-22 09:46:01 Steven Parker

74 Outsourcing Data Science: What You Need To Know A great number of companies are investing in data science, but the results they're getting are mixed. Building internal capabilities can be time- consuming and expensive, especially since the limited pool of data scientists is in high demand. Outsourcing can speed an organization's path to developing a data science capability, but there are better and worse ways to approach the problem. "The decision to outsource is always about what the core competency of your business is, and where you need the speed," said Tony Fross, VP and North American practice leader for digital advisory services at Capgemini Consulting. "If you don't have the resources or the ability to focus on it, sometimes outsourcing is a faster way to stand up a capability. " A recent survey by Forbes Insights and Ernst & Young (EY) revealed that most of the 564 executive respondents from large global enterprises still do not have an effective business strategy for competing in a digital, analytics-enabled world. "Roughly 70% said that data science and advanced analytics are in the early stages of development in their organization," said John Hite, director, analytic architect, and go to market leader for the Global Analytics Center of Excellence at EY. "They said they had critical talent shortfalls, inconsistent skills and expertise across the organization. " Unfortunately, data science projects and initiatives can fail simply because organizational leaders don't think hard enough about what the business is trying to accomplish. They also need to consider what resources, if any, are already in place, and how the project or initiative will affect people, processes, technology, and decision-making. Businesses are building their data science capabilities with the goal of driving positive business outcomes. However, success must be defined more specifically, and the results of the effort must be measurable. "A lot of times, the client feels like the faster they launch a project, the faster they'll achieve the outcome without defining first what needs to be achieved," said Ali Zaidi, research manager at IDC . Goal-setting, particularly at a departmental level, business unit level, or for a one-off project may actually work against a company's best interests, especially when the strategic goals of the organization have not been contemplated. "The first conversation [shouldn't] just focus on the fire that needs to be put out, but the key challenges faced at the top level of the organization," said Eric Druker, a principal in the strategic innovation group at Booz Allen Hamilton. "You also need to understand how analysis is currently done, in stove pipes, or whether data is being shared across the organization. You also need a coherent strategy for linking subject matter experts to data scientists. " Even if the business problem is well-defined, the data science team, whether wholly or partially outsourced, needs to work backward from the goal to understand how the planned change will impact end-users, business processes, and decision-making processes. For example, an EY client built a customer churn model that was capable of identifying which customers would defect in two weeks. Unfortunately, the marketing and sales teams needed 4- to 6-week lead times to take appropriate action, so the model had to be re-tuned. "Starting with the end-user and how the [business] process is going to change can sometimes be overlooked," said EY's Hite. "Even if you get that right, do the end-users have the skills required, and are they incented to take the action you want? " One company built a predictive model capable of identifying the customers who were likely to pay late. However, the customer service representatives tasked with sending payment reminders to those customers were compensated on customer satisfaction levels, not whether customers were paying their bills, Hite said. The growing demand for data science and data scientists is creating a market ripe for consultant organizations that now include the big consulting firms, systems integrators, traditional tech vendors, boutique firms, startups, and firms focused on specific vertical industries. One option is extending the relationship with a current service provider, assuming that provider actually has the level of expertise the organization requires. [The future of your advanced analytics program may depend on the success (or failure) of your first project. Make sure it's successful. Read How to Succeed With Advanced Analytics.] "[If] you have a trusted partner relationship, you have everything contract-wise you need. Speed is paramount," said Capgemini's Fross. "You also need to consider who will give you the best resources immediately. " Different parts of an organization may be outsourcing different data science projects or initiatives to different parties to achieve different goals. Sometimes the lack of orchestration among the various operating units can have an adverse effect on the enterprise. "Data science is a cultural change in the way we make decisions. Firms that come in to solve an ad hoc problem miss all these great opportunities to understand the context for decision-making and how decision-makers use data," said Booz Allen Hamilton's Druker. "[If you're working on an ad hoc basis,] it creates an impression that progress is being made. But because it's firefighting, it may inhibit the movement on a data science capability down the road. " Some organizations choose to work with outsourcing partners who specialize in a particular industry or who have consultants with specialized business domain knowledge. Others are looking for expertise that is best found outside one's own industry. "People in your own industry will be laggards in the same way you are," said Capgemini's Fross. "If you want to understand customer context, you want to consider someone from a retailer, because they know context better than anyone. If you're a pharma company and you're trying to get your act together around data and MDM (master data management), you probably want to look at something from financial services. " Regardless of which types of firms are on the short list, companies should put more effort into due diligence than they often do. "As I’m talking to the vendors, I'm asking them about recurring business," said Jennifer Bellisent, principal analyst at Forrester Research , in an interview. "How many of these projects are one- offs? And Page 2: The silver bullet? Does your company offer the most rewarding place to work in IT? Do you know of an organization that stands out from the pack when it comes to how IT workers are treated? Make your voice heard. Submit your entry now for InformationWeek's People's Choice Award. Full details and a submission form can be found here. 2016-02-22 08:06:00 Lisa Morgan 1 of 2

75 US DOD Commits To Aggressive Surge To Windows 10 With more than 200,000,000 devices having made the upgrade in 6 months, it’s fair to say Windows 10 has been a big success story for Microsoft. The problem for MS however is that only around 22,000,000 of those new Win10 installs are in the education or big business environments. This isn’t a new issue though. Investing in a new OS across an entire spectrum of issues can be a costly and time consuming business for business, and the wheels of change can roll slowly the larger an organisation gets. MS however wants all their enterprise customers to shift to Windows 10 as soon as possible, least of all because it will make life easier for them if they all start to sing from the same hymn sheet. But now Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, Yusuf Mehdi, has written a blog post that might just convince the wait-and-see campers that upgrading might be the way forward, because the US Department of Defense has decided to make the upgrade to Windows 10. The DOD has agreed plans to shift 4 million devices to Windows 10 in the next 12 months, and that’s a fairly aggressive, and optimistic timeline for anyone. The DOD’s intention to begin the upgrade across all its sectors will begin in November this year, and delivers a strong vote of confidence in the platform. It helps of course that Windows 10 has been certified as meeting almost every specific government criteria and standard going. Both the The National Information Assurance Program and Defense Information Systems Agency have agreed that Windows 10 can be made available across a range of government agencies, and are also versatile enough to be readily worked into future deployment plans. Speaking to the Verge , chief analyst at Moor Inisghts , Patrick Moorhead stated that security is a massive challenge for all businesses, and that the DoD’s decision will go a long way to ensuring that Microsoft’s reputation as a secure and reliable platform provider will only grow stronger and offers a secure alternative to Windows XP and . “I think it’s the best security proof point Microsoft could have.” 2016-02-22 08:00:21+00:00 news.filehippo.com

76 76 Samsung bundles complimentary Gear VR with S7 and S7 edge pre-orders After months of leaks, Samsung finally unveiled their next handsets in the Galaxy line, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. While we won't have to wait long to get them into our hands, it looks like Samsung will be offering a pretty sweet deal for those that decide to pre-order. According to the Oculus blog, Samsung will be bundling a complimentary Gear VR with Galaxy S7 and S7 edge pre-orders. While it was rumored that Samsung would offer a Gear VR bundle , the details of the bundle were a bit hazy. Not only will pre-order's receive a free VR headset, but it will also come bundled with six VR games (estimated value of $50). If that wasn't enough, you'll probably want to check with your local carrier or retailer, because some are offering their own special deals on top of the Gear VR bundle. For those in the United States, T-Mobile will be offering a free year of Netflix , while Best Buy will be offering a free 64GB microSD card. Pre-orders for the S7 and S7 edge will start on February 23rd and can be made on the Samsung website or your preferred carrier or retailer. Source: Oculus 2016-02-22 07:46:02+00:00 Timi Cantisano

77 Is 2016 finally the year of upgradable phones? LG's new G5 smartphone comes with an innovative feature: the ability to plug in and remove hardware modules that add extra functionality to the phone. It represents a first and small step toward something that's been long proposed but never realized: modular smartphones in which users add and remove components to suit their needs. At launch, the G5 will have a couple of modules. One adds hardware camera buttons for zoom, shutter and video recording and the second module is a high-quality audio processor for playing music. To change modules, press a button on the lower side of the phone and pull out the bottom part of the handset. It slides out with the battery, which can be detached and snapped back into another module before it's reinserted. The system being used by LG is a start, but it's still a far leap from Google's ". " That prototype phone is based around an exoskeleton with a screen into which owners can snap a processor, memory, battery, camera module and whatever else they want. The idea is simple: If you're not satisfied with your camera, upgrade it without replacing the entire phone; or break the screen and just buy a new shell, reusing all the other components. Desktop PCs have been upgradable like this for years and the idea has been around for smartphones since at least 2009 , so what's the holdup? "In the past, modular has never worked," said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel. " Yet we are moving to a world where you will definitely have different components through connected accessories that will give you a modular experience to some extent. " It's appealing for consumers because it's perceived to be a better and cheaper way to upgrade a phone and better for the environment. But for engineers, it's a challenge. All those pieces have to be compatible with each other; they have to snap in and remain firmly attached, they have to deal with the inevitable dust and dirt that will work its way around the modules and the entire phone still has to be thin despite all the extra plastic casing. "As tech innovation slows down and consumers see the phone as more of a commodity, being able to replace certain parts or customize then might be an interesting way to go," said Milanesi. That's what Google is working toward with Ara, but trials of the phone have been delayed. They were meant to begin in Puerto Rico last year, but Google scrapped them as part of a "recalculation. " At the time, it said they would begin in 2016, so more modular phones might be making an appearance this year. For LG, the modules might make all the difference in a very competitive market. "No other current smartphone maker has anything similar," said Ian Fogg, head of mobile analysis at IHS Technology. "But to maximize this opportunity, LG is smart to embrace third party support for its modular hardware with LG Playground. LG should mimic Apple's hardware licensing program -- Apple's 'Made for iPhone' approach -- to generate additional revenues, and also benefit from those third parties own marketing spend. " 2016-02-22 07:18:00-08:00 Martyn Williams

78 Chinese devs abuse free Apple app-testing certs to install pirated apps A Chinese iOS application recently found on Apple's official store contained hidden features that allow users to install pirated apps on non- jailbroken devices. Its creators took advantage of a relatively new feature that lets iOS developers obtain free code-signing certificates for limited app deployment and testing. There is a separate method for enterprises to distribute in-house developed apps to iOS devices without publishing them on the app store, but it relies on special code- signing certificates obtained through the Apple Developer Enterprise Program. Enterprise certificates have been used to install malware on non-jailbroken iOS devices in the past and it is one of the techniques used the newly found Chinese app, which is called ZergHelper or XY Helper. However, it's not the most interesting one. According to researchers from security firm Palo Alto Networks, ZergHelper also abuses personal development certificates, a new type of code-signing certificate introduced by Apple with the release of Xcode 7.0 in September. Xcode is the main tool -- or integrated development environment (IDE) -- used to develop iOS and Mac OS X apps. Starting with Xcode 7, developers can build apps, sign them and have them run on their own devices without publishing them in the app store. This makes it a lot easier to test apps without enrolling in Apple's Developer Program, which requires a $99 per year subscription. To generate personal development certificates, app makers have to use Xcode with their phone connected to their computer. The exact process in which Xcode obtains the certificates from Apple is not publicly documented, but the ZergHelper creators seem to have figured it out. "We think someone has reverse-engineered Xcode in detail to analyze this part of code so that they can implement exactly the same behaviors with Xcode -- in effect, successfully cheating Apple’s server," the Palo Alto Networks researchers said in a blog post . Some people have expressed concerns after the feature was released last year that attackers might abuse it to create and distribute malware to non-jailbroken devices. ZergHelper is evidence that this is indeed possible, highlighting its potential for abuse "in a wide-ranging and automated way," the researchers said. In fact, someone was recently selling code on a popular Chinese security forum that could automatically register Apple IDs and then generate personal development certificates for them. That post has since been deleted, the researchers said. ZergHelper is also providing free Apple IDs to users and it's not clear where those IDs are coming from and whether the app steals them from other devices. The app was available in the official app store from the end of October until Saturday, when Apple removed it after being alerted by Palo Alto Networks. The company's researchers found no explicitly malicious behavior in ZergHelper so far, its main goal being to act as an alternative app store that allows users to install cracked games and other pirated apps without jailbreaking their iOS devices. Its creators appear to have tricked Apple's reviewers by using simple tricks. The app was submitted to the app store under the name "Happy Daily English" (in Chinese) and was presented as a helper app for learning English. Once installed on a phone, the app behaved as advertised if the user's IP (Internet Protocol) address was from outside mainland China. However, if the address was from China, a different interface would appear that would guide users through installing a provisioning profile. This is similar to the process that a device goes through when it's enrolled into a mobile device management system. Once done, users could install apps from the alternative app store. Some of them were signed with stolen enterprise certificates, but others were signed with the new personal development certificates that Xcode generates for free. "We don’t know where the App Store reviewers are located," the Palo Alto Networks researchers said. "If they are not located in mainland China, this method could trick them into seeing a legitimate app. Even if they’re in China, the author could just shut down that webpage during the review period so that reviewer could not see the actual functionality through an analysis of its behavior. " The app also used another increasingly popular technique that allows developers to dynamically change their apps' code without submitting a new version to the official app store for review. This was done by integrating a framework called wax that bridges Lua scripting to native iOS Objective-C methods. While ZergHelper is not malware per se, the techniques it uses could inspire future malicious attacks. Stolen enterprise certficates have been abused in the past, but ZergHelper takes it one step further by automatically generating free personal development certificates. "This is of concern because the abuse of these certificates may be the first step toward future attacks," the Palo Alto Networks researchers said. 2016-02-22 07:16:00-08:00 Lucian Constantin

79 8 Reasons Cloud Email Is A Smart Move Now Earlier this month, Gartner reported that cloud email adoption is picking up significant steam in the enterprise. Additionally, the research firm said that those who haven't yet looked into migrating their internal email to a cloud provider "should question assumptions that public cloud email is not appropriate in their region, size, or industry. " In other words, the benefits of a cloud- operated email system likely outweigh the drawbacks. Gartner reports that 13% of publicly listed, global companies use cloud-based email -- almost exclusively from Microsoft or Google. So clearly, the market has plenty of room to grow. But many IT decision makers are not even considering the idea of cloud email because of preconceived notions and misinformation about reliability, ease of management, security, and industry regulations. As with any new technologies, someone has to be the test case. In the United States, it's common for early adopters to be found in educational institutions. A few universities sought to adopt cloud email early on, sometimes with incentives from the provider. And while some schools ran into issues with migration, uptime, and accessibility, the majority of those problems were quickly resolved and the lessons learned have made the transition smooth these days. Slowly but surely, a handful of enterprise organizations noticed the benefits gained by universities -- as well as by small businesses that were early adopters. It only took several successful cloud cases in the enterprise for adoption to really start to take off. Here, we offer eight views on the current state of cloud-managed email services. You'll find information about various benefits, debunking of inaccurate beliefs, and details on the conveniences of cloud-hosted email. Our goal is to point out why cloud email is worth considering -- as well as put to rest any misinformation floating around regarding reliability and security concerns. The bottom line: Many organizations are recognizing that email is becoming another commodity application that's more at home in the hands of a trusted partner versus a private data center. What's your opinion on cloud email? Has your organization already migrated? If so, how did it go? And if you still don't think that cloud email is right for you, please let us know why and share your concerns with the InformationWeek community in the comments section below. Rising stars wanted. Are you an IT professional under age 30 who's making a major contribution to the field? Do you know someone who fits that description? Submit your entry now for InformationWeek's Pearl Award. Full details and a submission form can be found here. 2016-02-22 07:06:00 Andrew Froehlich 1 of 9 1 of 9

80 Hacker Explains How He Put 'Backdoor' in Hundreds of Linux Mint Downloads A lone hacker who duped hundreds of users into downloading a version of Linux with a backdoor installed has revealed how it was done. Lefebvre said in a blog post that only downloads from Saturday were compromised, and subsequently pulled the site offline to prevent further downloads. The hacker responsible, who goes by the name "Peace," told me in an encrypted chat on Sunday that a "few hundred" Linux Mint installs were under their control -- a significant portion of the thousand-plus downloads during the day. But that's only half of the story. Peace also claimed to have stolen an entire copy of the site's forum twice -- one from January 28, and most recently February 18, two days before the hack was confirmed. Read more at ZDNet 2016-02-22 06:35:00 ZDNet

81 Cities, not cornfields, draw data centers Google built a data center in an Oregon town with a population of about 15,000. Yahoo established chicken- coop style data center in New York state farm country. And Apple runs an iCloud data center in rural North Carolina. But building big data centers in rural areas may be more the exception than the rule. Most data centers are located in, or at least close to, major Metro areas, acording to a new study. Google Data Center - The Dalles, Oregon This study looked at the amount of megawatts multi-tenant data centers used just last year. Northern Virginia was the leader with 63MW, followed by Dallas with 42MW; Seattle/Portland, 39 MW; San Francisco/Silicon Valley, 38 MW; and Chicago, with 38MW. "Data centers reside where people are," said Bo Bond, managing director and central region lead for JLL, the firm that did the study. It is a professional services and investment management firm specializing in real estate. JLL only looks at multi-tenant data centers. This segment of the data center industry grew by just over 6% last year, earning revenues of $115 billion, according to the firm. Although real estate growth is often measured in square feet, JLL believes megawatt usage is a better indicator of how data center space is being utilized, and electric use is a clear indication of demand. Data centers by the big cloud providers -- Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others -- aren't counted in this estimate, which focused on multi-tenant facilities. Rural areas are attractive because of the cost and availability of land for sprawling complexes. But higher land costs in a metro area, relative to the cost of the data center itself, are a negligible expense, Bond said. And more urban areas generally have better telecommunications and power infrastructure in place.. A good example may be Facebook , which is building a $500 million data center in Fort Worth, Texas, with an address of 4500 Like Way. An analysis of building permits by BuildZoom shows that Facebook's project has cost about $230 million so far. BuildZoom is creating a database of every building permit filed in the U. S. A contractor can drum up good reviews on Yelp, "but they can't fake a long history of building permits," said Issi Romem, BuildZoom's chief economist. BuildZoom works with both contractors and buyers of services and collects commissions from contracting jobs. "So we have exactly the same interest as the consumer in seeing a project well done right to the end; we're not just selling leads," Romem said. Facebook's planned data center in Fort Worth, Texas. 2016-02-22 04:45:00 Patrick Thibodeau

82 Samsung announces next-gen flagship smartphones Samsung announced its next-generation flagship smartphones on Sunday as expected -- the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge running Android 6 (Marshmallow). Both phones look strikingly similar to last year's models (the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge), but include features like a return to water resistance that was last seen in the Galaxy S5. The S7 has a 5.1-in. display while the S7 Edge features a 5.5- in curved display. Samsung also included an "always on" display feature, similar to the LG G5, another smartphone that was also announced Sunday on the eve of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Samsung said both phones have proximity sensors that will know when a phone is in a pocket -- to be able to turn itself off -- or in a darkened room, to turn down the brightness. With 4GB memory and powerful processors, Samsung estimated that both new phones operate 30 percent faster than previous models. Qualcomm will provide Snapdragon 820 processors for the models sold in the U. S., while phones sold in the rest of the world will use Samsung processors. There are a slew of other improvements, like a bump in battery power to 3000mAh in the S7 and 3600mAh in the S7 Edge. The batteries can be charged halfway in just 30 minutes, and wireless charging is enabled. Samsung Pay is supported, via NFC as well as Samsung's Magnetic Secure Transmission technology, which Samsung estimated is supported by 90 percent of retail terminals. The vendor also added Wells Fargo and TDBank to the partners supporting Samsung Pay. Analysts were concerned that the improvements in the new Galaxy phones would not be enough to compete with the coming next-generation Apple iPhone. There is growing worry that next- generation smartphones in general do not come with enough enhancements -- at least enough to get existing smartphone users to switch to newer models. "Looking at the big picture, I don't see enough improvement in the Galaxy S7 or Edge to move against the iPhone," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "But this does make Samsung more competitive against other Android phones. " Moorhead said he was especially impressed with the Snapdragon processor and the return of the microSD slot for storage expansion that was dropped in last year's Galaxy devices. But Moorhead said that, other than styling with the Edge, "it's not clear to me what the advantage is, and it is harder to hold," he said. South Korea-based Samsung said both phones will ship March 11, but didn't announce pricing. Smartphone vendors are facing a market that is still growing, but at a slower pace; there should be less than 10 percent growth in 2016 , according to IDC, with more slowdowns predicted in the next five years. Samsung continues to be the largest smartphone maker in the world, while Android -- from a number of vendors -- controls 81 percent of the overall market, according to IDC. Samsung had 23 percent of the smartphone market in 2015, according to IDC, while Apple had 16 percent, followed by Huawei (7 percent) Lenovo and Xiaomi (both at 5 percent). 2016-02-22 04:38:00 Matt Hamblen

83 Ericsson working with AWS to make carriers more agile Ericsson and Amazon Web Services are partnering to help service providers use the AWS cloud to quickly roll out and expand services in areas like the Internet of things. The partnership, announced Monday at Mobile World Congress, is part of Ericsson's efforts to help carriers evolve from traditional data-center infrastructure to Web-scale technologies. Like enterprises, fixed and mobile operators want to become more agile so they can meet growing and changing demands from users. AWS and Ericsson are starting out by working with Australian carrier Telstra at the Gurrowa Innovation Lab in Melbourne. At the same time, Ericsson announced a partnership with Quanta to build data-center systems for carriers based on Intel's Rack Scale Architecture. The architecture separates components like computing, storage and memory into horizontal layers of infrastructure that can be expanded more flexibly than dedicated servers. Ericsson introduced a Rack Scale system last year that has been adopted by mobile operators including South Korea's SK Telecom and Taiwan's Far EasTone. Ericsson has also joined the Open Compute Project, which defines open data-center hardware architectures. Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg announced the deals at a press briefing to kick off the company's massive presence at MWC. Along with its cloud efforts, the huge mobile infrastructure vendor is focused on IoT and the emerging 5G standard. 5G networks will need to be able to connect to 100 times as many devices and handle 100 times as much data volume as current networks, Vestberg said. They will also have to operate with less than 5 milliseconds of delay, for uses like self-driving cars, and be efficient enough that IoT devices can communicate for years on a single battery. Potential 5G technology Ericsson is demonstrating this year has exceeded 25Gbps (bits per second) of throughput, he said. That's a sexy number for video-hungry consumers, but unlike earlier generations of mobile gear, 5G will have to support industry and cities as much as it does the average user. Like Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri, Vestberg expects to see 5G in commercial use, at least in pre- standard form, well before the official 3GPP specification is finished in 2020. With that head start, 5G will serve 150 million subscribers by 2021, he predicted. Also on Monday, Vestberg and executives from Cisco Systems gave an update on the partnership they announced last November. They are already working on more than 200 customer engagements and have achieved multiple wins, they said. The two companies are introducing their first joint products at MWC. They are working together in areas including mobile backhaul, IP (Internet Protocol) core, and managed services. 2016-02-22 04:28:00 Stephen Lawson

84 Adobe rolls out new enterprise app creation service Adobe has merged two of its app development services into one in an attempt to help businesses easily build professional-looking apps, without requiring a whole lot of coding know- how. The Digital Publishing Solution and Adobe Experience Manager Apps components of the company's Marketing Cloud services are now under one Adobe Experience Manager Mobile umbrella. Using the new-ish service, teams inside a business can work together to build a snazzy- looking application without requiring a whole lot of code. Experience Manager Mobile is designed to allow a designer to create a rich canvas with which to display content that includes assets from Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop and Illustrator. After that, a marketer can update the app's content without needing code and the two of them can have the flexibility to call in a developer to create custom code for the resulting app. With the launch of this particular service, developers can also connect those apps to critical business systems like CRM, ERP, and product information management software. What's more, the final product can be published to the Android and iOS app stores, so businesses can distribute the resulting app to the public. It can also be distributed privately as an application binary, for companies that just want to keep it inside the firewall, or share with a select network of partners. Administrators will be able to oversee the applications from a unified dashboard, meaning that IT departments can leave development of these applications to employees, but still be able to keep an eye on and manage them if a problem arises. Companies that are already using Adobe Content Manager Sites and Assets as a content management system can also use those existing tools to help build out applications using Experience Manager Mobile. Apps built with Experience Manager Mobile also integrate with the rest of Adobe's Marketing Cloud, which means that businesses can actually track the usage statistics of their internal applications, just like they would an external app build with other tools. In some ways, it's similar to what other companies like Microsoft and SkyGiraffe are doing with their respective enterprise app creation platforms. But those products are really aimed at empowering everyday employees to easily create lightweight applications that might not look the best, but let them easily push data from line of business applications out to coworkers' mobile devices. Experience Manager Mobile is designed to create richer, more full-featured apps, but at the cost of requiring more people with specialized skills get involved with creating the application itself. It's a trade-off that has benefited companies like Under Armour, which created a virtual catalog application for its sales force using Experience Manager Mobile. 2016-02-22 04:25:00-08:00 Blair Hanley Frank

85 Mark Zuckerberg outlines the future of Facebook For a teenage Mark Zuckerberg, high school mathematics class meant dreams of traveling to distant worlds through virtual reality. Those ideas stayed with him as he grew Facebook into the mammoth it's become today, and they're now guiding him as he ponders the future of the social media platform. It will be immersive, it will be bring people closer together, and it will happen sooner than you might think, he said on Sunday in Barcelona. "I’ve been waiting for the day to come when we can deliver this experience," he said. "Today, this is now possible. That day is here. " Zuckerberg was speaking at a Samsung event held to launch two new smartphones and where the South Korean company also unveiled a new 360-degree still and video camera called the Gear 360. The two companies started working together last year, and in November Samsung launched the $99 Gear VR headset. Users clip in a compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone to be able to take virtual adventures. Attendees watch virtual reality content in Gear VR headsets at a Samsung event in Barcelona on Feb. 21, 2016. The Gear VR is based on technology from Oculus, a virtual reality company Facebook acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. At the time, some questioned Facebook's purchase of Oculus, but now the reason for it is clear. "VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want," said Zuckerberg. "Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just right there in person. " Virtual reality relies on 360-degree videos that capture a scene from all angles. It requires a camera with two or more lenses and software that stitches the video or still images together. That's what Samsung's Gear 360 does. Earlier in the day, LG Electronics announced a similar 360-degree camera. For viewers, similar software is required to make sense of the video and play it either on a conventional screen, where viewers can move the video to look around, or on a virtual reality headset, where they move their heads to look around. Facebook added support for such video last year and Zuckerberg said there are already 20,000 360-degree videos on on Facebook. "We’ve only just started to explore what’s possible with video and VR," he said. "It's still really early. " To help push the technology forward, Facebook recently formed a number of engineering teams to create new social VR applications, he said. The rise of VR is very much one of modern technology. Scientists have been experimenting with VR for years, but it's only been in the last couple of years that computing and telecommunications has gotten to the stage where it's possible to do in good quality on reasonable hardware and networks. But more work is needed. "One day soon, all of us will have the power to broadcast live," he said. "To do that, we’re going to have to solve a lot of really complex engineering problems. " Zuckerberg credited Samsung for helping come up with some of the hardware components required. He said engineers at Oculus and Facebook are also working on reducing network- related challenges. One recent innovation involves streaming just the part of the video being viewed rather than the entire 360-degree view. That's helped engineers realize a 4x increase in the quality of video while reducing bandwidth consumption by three-quarters, he said. Zuckerberg said Facebook and Oculus are committed to VR "for the long term" and new VR games are among the new experiences coming this year. 2016-02-22 04:18:00 Martyn Williams

86 Inside HP's plan to turn smartphones into wire-free laptops HP's decision to return to the smartphone market with the Elite X3 wasn't an easy one, especially given the company's history of failure in the market for handsets. HP's ill-fated, 2010 acquisition of Palm, which it ended up jettisoning by 2014, has weighed heavily on the company. After HP's high hopes for Palm's WebOS for smartphones were dashed, there was mixed opinion and many internal discussions over the viability of a return to the market. In the end, HP concluded that smartphone buyers could not be ignored. Smartphones are playing a larger role in computing since they can almost match laptops in horsepower and the sorts of software they can run. The company is taking a cautious approach though, establishing a three-year timeline for success. HP is targeting the Elite X3 -- which has a 5.96-inch screen and runs Windows 10 Mobile -- at enterprises, but is open to launching a consumer handset, said Michael Park, general manager and global head of mobility at HP. HP is trying to differentiate the Elite X3, announced in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, from the competition by positioning it as a smartphone that can double as a laptop. Users can hook up a screen, mouse and keyboard and turn the super-fast Elite X3 into a laptop, according to Park. Previous efforts to introduce handsets with similar capabilities have failed, the most notable example being 's Atrix, which was launched in 2011. But Park said changes in technology have allowed HP to develop a smartphone that can act as a laptop when needed. The Windows 10 OS was instrumental in allowing HP to "flex form factors," Park said. Windows 10 lets developers to create so-called universal applications that can run across multiple platforms and allow smartphones to access desktop applications from the cloud, Park said. The Elite X3 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, which is one of the fastest mobile chips available. The chip -- which is also targeted at tablets and PCs -- is three times faster than similar Qualcomm processors from three years ago. HP has a three-phase plan for the smartphone market. The first is to release the Elite X3, which will come out later this year. The second is to work with third-party developers and resellers to tweak legacy Windows applications so that they run in the cloud and can be accessed from smartphones. Elite X3 users will be able to fire up cloud-based desktop applications via the HP Workspace, a virtualized desktop program. Microsoft's Project Centennial is designed to help developers bring existing code to Windows 10 and run applications in Azure, with the development process in some cases taking just a few days, Park said. Microsoft will maintain a catalog of available applications, and HP will certify resellers to assist customers in the conversion of applications to the cloud. But many large desktop applications won't move to cloud, and conventional PCs will be needed for those programs, Park acknowledged. A Web-based delivery model for larger applications requires bandwidth, which remains a problem, Park said. Park would not talk about the third phase, but hinted at something that could involve moving to hands-free computing, perhaps with technology revolving around wearables and the Internet of Things. He gave the example of a firefighter, wearing a suit full of sensors feeding environmental and other relevant data to assist in rescue operations. That particular scenario may take a long time to become reality, but Park said computing is headed in that direction. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether HP comes out with a consumer smartphone, though Park didn't dismiss the idea. HP has been cutting many low-margin tablets and PCs from its line-up in order to improve profitability. The Elite X3 has 4GB of LPDDR4, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a microSD slot for up to 2TB of storage. Corning's Gorilla Glass 4 technology lends ruggedness to the screen. It has an eight-megapixel camera, and "dual biometrics" that include iris detection and a fingerprint reader. It has dual SIMs and a large battery that could provide a full day and perhaps more of run time. HP didn't provide exact battery life. The company is also selling add-ons like a desk dock that has USB-C, USB-A and Ethernet ports. The dock can be used to charge the phone or connect handsets to wired networks, DisplayPort monitors or external peripherals like storage drives. Another interesting accessory is a "Mobile Extender" that provides a full-fledged laptop experience when linked up wirelessly to the smartphone. The Mobile Extender has the looks of a laptop with a keyboard and 12.5-inch display, and can also link up with the Elite X3 through a USB Type-C cable. The Mobile Extender has no storage or memory of its own and all the computing power is drawn from the Elite X3. HP did not provide a specific release date or pricing for the Elite X3. 2016-02-22 04:10:00-08:00 Agam Shah

87 Beware of Hacked ISOs If You Downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th! Clement Lefebvre writes: I’m sorry I have to come with bad news. We were exposed to an intrusion today. It was brief and it shouldn’t impact many people, but if it impacts you, it’s very important you read the information below. What happened? Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it. Does this affect you? As far as we know, the only compromised edition was Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition. Read more at Linux Mint Blog 2016-02-22 02:10:00 Administrator

88 Northern local councils miss SME targets Over half of large councils in the north of England spent none of their IT budget with SME suppliers despite a government for them to spend a third of budget with small suppliers. Freedom of Information requests made by Streamwire, which offers IT advisory services, researched the spending of 28 councils in the north of England. It found that 15 of the councils spent nothing with SME IT services suppliers and over 85% have no plans to increase spending on IT services from SMEs. This is despite government targets for councils to increase spending with SMEs. Anne Stokes, CEO of Streamwire, said this will hold back economic development in the region. “The key objective of the Northern Powerhouse was to establish the region as a beacon for doing things differently, strengthening the area as an economic hub and showcasing how other regions could adopt similar innovation and best practice in their communities.” She added that councils can play a powerful role by using their budgets to procure more from SMEs, which are more than likely to be regional businesses. “Unless local councils take up this mantle, the government's goal of building an economic stronghold in the north is surely going to be very difficult to achieve sustainably.” The research did find some success. Durham and Wakefield Metropolitan councils spend 48% and 42% of their IT budgets on small businesses, respectively. The Northern Powerhouse councils are here defined as those in: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, the Sheffield Combined Authority, the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership and the North East Combined Authority. While many councils weigh up their outsourcing options to meet tight cost-cutting targets, some are going the other way and looking at in-house alternatives to IT outsourcing. There are a number of recent examples in the south of England. Bournemouth Council could soon bring outsourced IT services including back in-house , to gain better control over costs and increase its financial flexibility. Cornwall Council and BT’s £160m outsourcing deal recently came to an end, with the council transferring 270 staff back in-house. This followed the High Court decision in December 2015 to allow the council to end the contract. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Karl Flinders

89 UK CIOs over-confident about cyber security, study shows More than a quarter of UK CIOs say they are not concerned about security breaches or the time needed to discover them, according to research. But 85% admit they are not proactively hunting for threats, and are dealing with them only when breaches are discovered. This is despite the fact that 82% of the UK CIOs polled said they are under increasing pressure from the business to prevent, detect and respond to security incidents faster, especially in the financial sector. The survey, commissioned by security firm Carbon Black , also uncovered a disconnect between CIOs’ expectations of threat discovery and response, and reality. According to security researchers at the Ponemon Institute , it takes on average 256 days to detect a breach and a further 100-120 days to remediate the threat after an attack, at an average cost of $3.8m. Yet the UK CIOs surveyed believe it would take an average of just 60 days to uncover a breach. Over a quarter (26%) claimed they would be able to uncover a breach in less than 14 days, 15% in less than 30 days, 18% in less than 90, while 14% believe it would take up to 180 days. The study revealed that over half (52%) of respondents believe that if they were to suffer a breach today, they would be 100% confident in knowing what systems and data had been affected and how within 24 hours, compared with 59% of CIOs at large companies. “These results are shocking and unbelievable because none of those polled believe they can be breached without them knowing about it and this should make everyone angry because these CIOs are not living in reality,” said Ben Johnson , chief security strategist for Carbon Black. “When you look at these results, something really doesn’t add up. On the one hand, companies are operating from a reactive security posture and tending to symptoms, rather than causes. Yet they still believe they can detect threats much faster than the industry average, even though they are not actively seeking them out,” he said. In reality, said Johnson, hackers today are determined, sophisticated, and well-funded. “Sitting and waiting for them to make a mistake and expose themselves is not an effective strategy, especially as many security teams are flying blind because they are unable to prioritise threats because of the huge volumes of alerts they receive. “Companies need to automate processes where possible to free up security teams' time to hunt threats and disrupt hackers during an attack, rather than just picking up the pieces in the aftermath,” he said. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Warwick Ashford

90 IBM Extends Support for Swift Programming Language The IBM Swift runtime preview and Swift Package Catalog will help bring Swift to the cloud to simplify app development. LAS VEGAS—IBM today announced the next phase of its roadmap to bring the Swift programming language to the cloud with a preview of a Swift runtime and a Swift Package Catalog to help enable developers to create apps for the enterprise. IBM boasts of being the first cloud provider to enable the development of applications in native Swift —unlocking its full potential in radically simplifying the development of end-to-end apps on the IBM Cloud. IBM made its Swift announcement at its IBM InterConnect 2016 conference here. IBM announced it was getting behind Swift in a major way at the end of last year when Apple open-sourced the technology. At that time, Phil Buckellew, vice president of enterprise mobile for the IBM Software Group, called the move a game changer. At the time, IBM also launched its Swift Sandbox , which is a Website where developers can upload their code and see Swift running in action on the server. Today's announcement is a key next step in IBM and Apple's shared journey to help enterprises advance their mobile strategy with innovative app design, analytics, process transformation and integration required for a mobile-first experience. As one of the largest users of Swift for mobile app development, IBM has a deep understanding of the advantages of Swift and the knowledge to assist enterprises in maximizing the true potential that server-side Swift will provide. Introduced in 2014, Swift is one of the fastest growing and most widely used programming languages. In just over two months since Apple open-sourced the Swift language and IBM released its Swift Sandbox for early exploration of server-side programming in Swift, more than 100,000 developers from around the world have used the IBM Swift Sandbox and more than half a million code runs have been executed in the Sandbox to date. IBM is committed to maturing the use of Swift as a server-side language for enterprise development. Traditionally, different technologies are used to develop the application on the client and the business logic on the server. By bringing Swift beyond the client to the server, IBM is breaking down barriers between front-end and back-end development, which can provide enterprises with a single language to build rich experiences and back-end business logic. Enterprises can benefit from increased speed and efficiency while simultaneously taking advantage of growing availability of Swift skills. Using Swift on the server also introduces a simpler, more secure tool chain for end-to-end application development. "Modern digital apps require a modern programming language. Swift is easy-to-learn, reliable, fast and interactive, the key traits that CIOs look for when building the next generation of enterprise mobile apps," said Michael Gilfix, vice president of IBM MobileFirst Offering Management, in a statement. "Swift on the Cloud is an opportunity for enterprises to radically simplify the development of end-to-end applications and therefore reach new levels of productivity. " IBM Swift engineers are also working with the growing Swift.org developer community and are most notably focused on contributing to concurrency on multicore hardware, which is critical for enterprise-scale workloads. IBM is excited to announce the release of a number of resources that will further enable the community to explore, build and share Swift assets. IBM said developers can start exploring the benefits of Swift on the IBM Cloud in three ways: experimenting in the Swift Sandbox; starting to build applications on Bluemix and quickly deploying them with Kitura, a new open-source Web server released by IBM, on both OS X and Linux; and sharing Swift resources and using code across projects by creating packages and submitting them to the Swift Package Catalog on Bluemix to encourage sharing of new Swift resources with the global developer community. "The IBM Swift Sandbox is an interactive Website that lets you write Swift code and execute it in a server environment—on top of Linux," said John Petitto, an IBM software engineer and one of IBM's Swift developers located at IBM's Mobile Innovation Lab in Austin, Texas. "Each sandbox runs on IBM Cloud in a Docker container. In addition, both the latest versions of Swift and its standard library are available for you to use. " 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Darryl K. Taft

91 Social media technology, rather than anonymity, is the problem That's the startling conclusion of a new book by Dr Vincent Miller, a sociologist at the University of Kent and an expert on the information society and developing media. In contending that the cause of issues such as online anti-social behaviour is the design/software of social media itself, Dr Miller suggests that social media architecture needs to be managed and planned in the same way as physical architecture. In the book, entitled The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy and Speech in Mediated Social Life, Dr Miller examines the relationship between the freedom provided by the contemporary online world and the control, surveillance and censorship that operate in this environment. The book questions the origins and sincerity of moral panics about use -- and abuse -- in the contemporary online environment and offers an analysis of ethics, privacy and free speech in this setting. Investigating the ethical challenges that confront our increasingly digital culture, Dr Miller suggests a number of revisions to our ethical, legal and technological regimes to meet these challenges. These including changing what he describes as 'dehumanizing' social media software, expanding the notion of our 'selves' or 'bodies' to include our digital traces, and the re- introduction of 'time' into social media through the creation of 'expiry dates' on social media communications. Dr Miller is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Cultural Studies within the University's School of Social Research, Sociology and Social Policy. The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy and Speech in Mediated Social Life, is published by Sage. More information can be found at: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-crisis-of-presence-in- contemporary-culture/book244328 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

92 European consortium develops new approaches for dealing with Big Data The new BigStorage project, funded by the European Union, will thus develop new approaches to deal with Big Data concepts over the next three years, from theoretical basic research to the development of complex infrastructures and software packages. As an Innovative Training Network (ITN) of the European Union, it also plays an important role in the training of researchers and developers in the international context. The various tasks are being addressed by a European consortium of research teams and industrial partners. The work being undertaken at the Data Center at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) will focus on the impact of new storage technologies as well as the convergence of high-performance computing and Big Data. "Cloud computing and Big Data are currently based on application-tailored simplifications in the design of highly scalable analysis systems," explained Professor André Brinkmann, Head of the JGU Data Center and responsible for the BigStorage project at Mainz University. "The new and complex requirements that have since arisen in the fields of climate research, medicine, and environmental sciences, however, mean that long-term experience in high-performance computing must again be integrated in the design of data analysis environments and be combined with these new approaches. " The EU is providing EUR 3.8 million to finance the BigStorage project as part of the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Program for Research and Innovation. In addition to JGU, also involved in the project are the Technical University of Madrid and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, the French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (Inria), the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece, Seagate Systems in the UK, the German Climate Computing Center, CA Technologies Development in Spain, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

93 Improved robotic testing systems Mossige defended his PhD thesis at the University of Stavanger on 26 August. The thesis focuses on the testing of robotic systems. Good mathematical models for the testing of robot installations are crucial because it is very expensive to correct errors that occur in the field. The objective of the doctorate was to develop methods that provide faster and better testing of robotic systems in the industry. Better software for testing will help robot manufacturers deliver better products to their customers. The PhD thesis demonstrates that the models could reduce development costs and improve the quality of the robotic system, while at the same time providing increased "uptime" for the robots. Design flaws revealed The research in Morten Mossige's PhD was two-fold. The aim of the first part was to develop automatic testing methods for robotic systems. Automatic testing can identify design flaws during the development and modification of control solutions for robots, which might otherwise take a very long time or even be impossible to detect through manual testing. Fully automatic The aim of the second part was to develop models for generating scheduling for a series of tests, which calculate the sequence in which tests should be performed and the computer on which the test should be carried out. It also takes into account the fact that some tests cannot be performed simultaneously, even if they are conducted on different machines. Both models are based on what is known as "Constraint Programming," they are designed to operate fully automatically on a test server (Continuous Integration), and they take into consideration the length of time that will be needed to identify a good solution. Mossige's supervisors were Jan Christian Kerlefsen, LBU Manager at ABB Robotics in Bryne; Dr Arnaud Godtlieb from Simula Research Laboratory and Professor Hein Meling from the University of Stavanger. While working on his PhD, Mossige spent three days a month at the Simula Research Laboratory at Fornebu, a world-leading research centre within the field of software testing. Morten Mossige's Industrial PhD is the first of its kind at ABB in Norway. The Industrial PhD programme is initiated and supported by the Research Council of Norway, with the aim of helping Norway to create more knowledge-based industry. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

94 How is a developing brain assembled? NIH 3-D software tracks worm embryo's brain development As far as biologists have come in understanding the brain, much remains to be revealed. One significant challenge is determining the formation of complex neuronal structures made up of billions of cells in the human brain. As with many biological challenges, researchers are first examining this question in simpler organisms, such as worms. Although scientists have identified a number of important proteins that determine how neurons navigate during brain formation, it's largely unknown how all of these proteins interact in a living organism. Model animals, despite their differences from humans, have already revealed much about human physiology because they are much simpler and easier to understand. In this case, researchers chose Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), because it has only 302 neurons, 222 of which form while the worm is still an embryo. While some of these neurons go to the worm nerve ring (brain) they also spread along the ventral nerve cord, which is broadly analogous to the spinal cord in humans. The worm even has its own versions of many of the same proteins used to direct brain formation in more complex organisms such as flies, mice, or humans. "Understanding why and how neurons form and the path they take to reach their final destination could one day give us valuable information about how proteins and other molecular factors interact during neuronal development," said Hari Shroff, Ph. D., head of the NIBIB research team. "We don't yet understand neurodevelopment even in the context of the humble worm, but we're using it as a simple model of how these factors work together to drive the development of the worm brain and neuronal structure. We're hoping that by doing so, some of the lessons will translate all the way up to humans. " However, following neurons as they travel through the worm during its embryonic development is not as simple as it might seem. The first challenge was to create new microscopes that could record the embryogenesis of these worms without damaging them through too much light exposure while still getting the resolution needed to clearly see individual cells. Shroff and his team at NIBIB, in collaboration with Daniel Colon-Ramos at Yale University and Zhirong Bao at Sloan-Kettering, tackled this problem by developing new microscopes that improved the speed and resolution at which they could image worm embryonic development. (Read more at: http://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/new-microscopes-nih-reveal-live-developing- cells-unprecedented-3-d-clarity ) The second problem was that during development the worm begins to "twitch," moving around inside the egg. The folding and twisting makes it hard to track cells and parse out movement. For example, if a neuron moves in the span of a couple of minutes, is it because the embryo twisted or because the neuron actually changed position within the embryo? Understanding the mechanisms that move neurons to their final destination is an important factor in understanding how brains form--and is difficult to determine without knowing where and how a neuron is moving. Finally, it can be challenging to determine where a neuron is in 3D space while looking at a two-dimensional image--especially of a worm that's folded up. Imagine you're trying to keep track of everyone in a crowded auditorium, except that you can only see one person at a time, and the auditorium itself is invisible. This is what it's like trying to track how neurons in the worm relate to each other," said Ryan Christensen, Ph. D., the postdoctoral fellow who led the project. "You either need the ability to see everyone at once, or make the auditorium visible so you can place each person in the proper spot and figure out everyone's movements that way. Our untwisting software allows us to make the auditorium visible and allows us to place individual people (neurons) in their proper context. " The worm embryo is normally transparent, but the researchers made several cells in the embryo glow with fluorescent proteins to act as markers. When a microscopic image of these cells is fed into the program, the computer identifies each cell and uses the information to create a model of the worm, which it then computationally "untwists" to generate a straightened image. The program also enables a user to check the accuracy of the computer model and edit it when any mistakes are discovered. "In addition, users can also mark cells or structures within the worm embryo they want the program to track, allowing the users to follow the position of a cell as it moves and grows in the developing embryo. This feature could help scientists understand how certain cells develop into neurons, as opposed to other types of cells, and what factors influence the development of the brain and neuronal structure. Shroff and his colleagues say that such technology will be pivotal in their project to create a 4D neurodevelopmental "worm atlas," (see also http://www.wormguides.org ) that attempts to catalog the formation of the worm nervous system. This catalog will be the first comprehensive view of how an entire nervous system develops, and Dr. Shroff and his colleagues believe that it will be helpful in understanding the fundamental mechanisms by which all nervous systems, including ours, assemble. They also expect that some of the concepts developed, such as the approach taken to combine neuronal data from multiple embryos, can be applied to additional model organisms besides the worm. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

95 Warning labels should be introduced to prevent digital addiction, research suggests The researchers believe labels and messages are required to help people adjust their usage of digital devices and raise awareness of potential side effects and addictive behaviours. A study by software experts and psychologists from BU found that more than 80 per cent of participants believed digital warning labels were a good idea, and would encourage users to adapt their use of digital devices and social networking sites. Dr Raian Ali, a Senior Lecturer in Computing at BU, said: "Research has shown that excessive and obsessive usage and preoccupation about technology are associated with undesirable behaviours such as reduced creativity, depression and disconnection from reality. "The immersive use of technology and presence in the cyber space can easily lead a person to become unconscious of the time spent, the side-effects of being overly online, and the potential risks of taking actions in a hasty style due to a sort of irresistible impulse. "Thus, warning messages and labels are a social responsibility, ethical and professional practice for technology developers, at least to raise awareness so that people can make an informed decision on whether and how to use technology. " Signs of digital addition can include withdrawal symptoms, tolerance to a continuous increase of usage, relapse when trying to reduce or adjust the usage style, and mood modification when online. Labels could be used as powerful precautionary mechanisms to avoid entering highly-addictive usage -- raising awareness of time spent online and possible alternative activities. They could also be a mechanism to help recover from digital addiction or regulate usage -- enabling people to set up an online limit and reminding them whether and how they are adhering to it. "In contrast to traditional labels found on tobacco and alcohol, digital labels can be designed to be intelligent and interactive," Dr Ali said. "While tobacco and alcohol cannot tell their 'users' to stop, software fortunately can. "But the development of intelligent software able to understand users and personalize the labels so that they fit their context, preferences and values to ensure their effectiveness are all challenges we still have to address. " The BU research, conducted in partnership with Streetscene Addiction Recover Ltd, found that people were more likely to take notice of motivational messages, rather than those focusing on potential negative impacts of spending too much time on a device. Possible solutions could include altering the digital interface -- such as the screen changing from green to red or a buzzing to indicate excessive usage -- or personalised messages and graphics related to a person's interests and usage. Dr Ali added: "We would like to see a policy change in the production of digital media so that it helps people to make informed decisions about their usage with regard to digital addiction. "We would also like to see more public awareness of the potential side effects of the obsessive usage of technology, or at least encourage people to make a self-assessment exercise around it. " 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

96 New tech automatically 'tunes' powered prosthetics while walking "When a patient gets a powered prosthetic, it needs to be customized to account for each individual patient's physical condition, because people are different in size and strength. And that tuning is done by a prosthetist," says Helen Huang, lead author of a paper on the work and an associate professor in the biomedical engineering program at NC State and UNC- Chapel Hill. "In addition, people are dynamic -- a patient's physical condition may change as he or she becomes accustomed to a prosthetic leg, for example, or they may gain weight. These changes mean the prosthetic needs to be re- tuned, and working with a prosthetist takes time and money. " To address this problem, the researchers developed an algorithm that can be incorporated into the software of any powered prosthesis to automatically tune the amount of power a prosthetic limb needs in order for a patient to walk comfortably. The algorithm would not only make it easier for patients to walk while reducing prosthetist-related costs, but would also allow a prosthesis to adjust to changing conditions. "For example, the algorithm could provide more power to a prosthesis when a patient carries a heavy suitcase through an airport," Huang says. The system works by taking into account the angle of the prosthetic knee while walking. Powered prosthetic legs are programmed so that the angle of the prosthetic joints -- the knee or ankle -- while walking mimics the normal movement of the joints when an able-bodied person is walking. During the conventional prosthetic tuning process, a prosthetist adjusts the powered prosthesis's system so that it exerts the power necessary to recreate those normal joint motions while walking. But changes in a person's weight, or gait, can affect the prosthesis's ability to achieve that "natural" joint angle. The automatic-tuning algorithm takes a similar approach, tracking the angle of the prosthetic joint while walking. But it is able to adjust the amount of power the prosthesis receives in real time, in order to maintain the proper angle. "In testing, we found that the computer -- using the algorithm -- performed better than prosthetists at achieving the proper joint angle," Huang says. "So we know our approach works. But we're still working to make it better. "Prosthetists rely on years of experience to not only adjust the joint angle, but to adjust a prosthesis to help patients maintain a comfortable posture while walking," Huang adds. "We're not yet able to replicate the prosthetist's success in achieving those comfortable 'trunk motions,' but it's something we're working on. " Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gjAczfCWJI&feature=youtu.be 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

97 Speed-reading your microbiome To this end, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine's Rob Knight, PhD, and his team built a microbiome analysis platform called QIIME (pronounced "chime" and short for "Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology"). This software will now be more readily accessible to hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world through BaseSpace, a cloud-based app store offered by Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops life science tools for the analysis of genetic variation. "Previously, we relied on personal contacts and scientific publications to spread the word about QIIME, and then users needed to download several different software packages to their own computers. Users also needed some technical programming skills to use QIIME," said Knight, professor of pediatrics and computer science and engineering. "By working with Illumina, not only will many more researchers now be able to access QIIME from the cloud, the BaseSpace interface will make it much easier for non-technical researchers to analyze their data. This advancement will significantly ease the bottleneck in a variety of human and environmental microbiome studies. " Two high-profile microbiome studies that rely on QIIME are the Human Microbiome Project, a National Institutes of Health-led initiative akin to the Human Genome Project, and the American Gut Project, a crowdsourced, crowdfunded project in which Knight's team is sequencing as many human microbiome samples as possible, from anyone who wants to participate. "QIIME has proven to be a widely successful open-source project -- the original paper our group published on it in 2010 has been cited by more than three thousand other papers since," said Yoshiki Vázquez-Baeza, an incoming UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering graduate student in Knight's lab. "This collaboration, among many other things, will help us expand our user base and increase the availability of our methods. " Like Knight and more than 25 other members of his lab, Vázquez-Baeza relocated from Colorado to UC San Diego this year, in part because of the collaborative spirit and innovative resources found in San Diego's life sciences research and biotechnology community. "BaseSpace is a cloud solution for data repository and analysis options that help streamline the processing of the seemingly ubiquitous genomic and metagenomic sequence data that researchers generate every day," said Jay Patel, associate product manager of BaseSpace applications at Illumina. "QIIME is a highly utilized tool in metagenomics research and we are excited to make it part of the Illumina ecosystem. " Researchers are already eager to use QIIME in their own studies, including many at UC San Diego. "We look forward to using QIIME on BaseSpace for our upcoming deep dive into the differences in the human gut microbiome in healthy people compared to people with inflammatory bowel disease," said Larry Smarr, PhD, professor and founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UC San Diego. Here's how Knight, Smarr and their teams plan to apply QIIME to determine if certain microbes are associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). They will process fecal samples from a group of IBD patients and a control group of healthy people and send the microbial genetic material they collect to the UC San Diego School of Medicine's Institute for Genomic Medicine for sequencing. When complete, the researchers will receive an email from the facility director indicating that their data are available on BaseSpace. Once they log into BaseSpace and click on the QIIME app, the researchers will see their raw data and ask the program to generate a 3- D scatterplot of the differences and similarities between their IBD and healthy control samples. If there is a significant difference in the microbial populations present in the two groups, then the researchers will go back to the lab to further investigate those differences and what cause-or- effect roles they might play in IBD. Eventually, Knight, Smarr and team hope they will be able to use this information to develop new tests that predict a person's risk of developing IBD and new methods for treating the disease. According to leading genomic and metagenomic assembly expert Pavel Pevzner, PhD, the Ronald R. Taylor Professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the addition of QIIME to BaseSpace adds to a growing collaboration between UC San Diego and Illumina on computational tools. "Our own software -- SPAdes Genome Assembler -- has been available in the Illumina BaseSpace app store for some time, and has helped thousands of users assemble their genome data in a range of medical and scientific applications," said Pevzner, who also directs the NIH Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry. "Adding QIIME to the expanding toolbox of world-leading bioinformatics software for genomic and metagenomic analysis paves the way for future innovations and collaborations with Illumina in this space. " 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

98 Powerful tool predicts wave behavior at all depths of sea The waves we see at a surface, at full sea or at the coast, consist of numerous other waves at a range of depths. From the deepest ocean waves with a long wave move at high speed, while the waves we see at the surface are short waves moving slower and differ from the deep sea waves in shape and altitude. Joint action It is complicated to capture all these changes in mathematical models, therefore often some kind of approximation is chosen. This holds, for example, for dispersion: the relationship between wave length and wave speed. Kurnia does not use an approximation but the exact relationship. He doesn't choose a numerical approach, that uses strongly simplified equations for a series of times. Instead, he wrote an accurate description of the combined action of the wave at different depths, using the kinetic energy. Fast calculation Thanks to this, the model is applicable for any water depth. Furthermore, Kurnia is capable of introducing abrupt changes: a quay, a sloping coastline, a ship. Despite the added complexity, the models can be calculated very fast -- minutes instead of days -- by using the so-called Fast Fourier Transform, decomposing any mathematical description in several sinus waves. Kurnia's model calculations have already been compared with the many experiment in 'wave tanks' of the Technical University of Delft, MARIN in The Netherlands and the Indonesion Hydrodynamic Laboratory. The models are also very useful to make precalculations of the desired wave in the thank, thus reducing the expensive experimenting hours. Via LabMath Indonesia, Kurnia's software is available named HAWASSI: Hamiltonian Wave-Ship-Structure Interaction. Ruddy Kurnia (Bandung, 1987) did his PhD research in de Applied Analysis group (faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science EEMCS). His supervisor is Professor Brenny van Groesen. The research had financial support of the Dutch Technology Foundation STW. Kurnia continues working on the models, partly as a postdoc researcher in Twente, partly in his home country Indonesia 2016-02-22 00:00:00 www.sciencedaily.com

99 Python Study Guide: Installing Python - Developer.com Want to learn Python? Who wouldn't want to learn a programming language whose name was inspired by Monty Python's Flying Circus! There are plenty of other reasons Python is loved by developers worldwide, of course. It is simple, straightforward, and easy to learn and excellent as a first language. But, it's also powerful, providing a full quiver of features for experienced developers. No matter what your platform, it's there with numerous implementations on Windows, Mac, Linux, and more. Python was created by a Dutch programmer named Guido van Rossum in the early 90s. It has since become one of the most popular languages in the world. It's in the top ten of the most requested languages in job postings. And in 2011, it became the third most commonly used language on GitHub. It is actively used by Google, Yahoo, NASA, Industrial Light and Magic, YouTube.com, and many, many others. Python is open source and is freely used in projects of all kinds, including commercial projects. Although Guido van Rossum is still actively involved, the language's ongoing development is community driven, from ideas to prioritization to implementation. There are tons of programming languages out there. What makes Python different? Van Rossum sums up his philosophy for development of Python in a document called the Zen of Python. It includes core design principals stated in simple (and sometimes comical) aphorisms. Among them… As you can see, his focus was clearly on developing a practical, straightforward language that kept its syntax simple. This is better for learning, better for development, and better for long-term maintenance. Python has a clear philosophy on powerful new extensions to the language: It avoids them. Instead of making the core language ever bigger and more complex, Python opts instead to make it very easy to create extensions to the language in the form of libraries. That gives the developer the option of selecting the library that best suits their needs, rather than bending a language feature to do something it was not quite designed for. Python does come with a powerful standard library that makes it easy to do a great many common tasks. Another important beast in the corral: The Python Interactive Interpreter. With it, you to enter code and immediately execute it and see the results, rather than going through the standard edit/compile/run/test cycle. This makes it easy for those new to the language to try out syntax before using it in their code. It's also good for more experienced developers to work through tricky problems more quickly. If you're fairly new to programming, go ahead and skip this section. However, if you are an experienced programmer and want a technical run-down of the language, here it is: Python is a modern, object-oriented programming language that fully supports numerous paradigms, including functional programming, aspect-oriented programming, and design by contract. It handles its own memory management and garbage collection. It provides dynamic variable/method name binding. Python was created as an interpreted language; however, there are Just-In-Time (JIT) implementations, including PyPy and Iron Python (on the. NET platform). There are also native-compiled implementations like py2exe. Interpreted Python may be used in combination with C++ for portions of code that need speed. Python is commonly used as a scripting language for Web applications. It's also used as an embedded language within other products to provide customization and extension. Examples include 3ds Max, Maya, GIMP, Inkscape, and ArcGIS. Many languages today offer incredible power. But at a cost—incredible complexity! Python chose the road less traveled—simplicity. Coding with a straightforward syntax makes for quicker learning, quicker development, and quicker/more flexible maintenance. Remember, complexity is the path to the Dark Side. Search your feelings. See the truth, you will… 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Bill Hatfield

100 Encrypted traffic security analysis a top priority for 2016, says Dell Security Acquiring the capability to analyse encrypted traffic should be a top priority for businesses in 2016, according to Dell Security. The company’s latest annual threat report reveals that a continued surge in SSL / TLS encryption is giving cyber criminals more opportunities to conceal malware from firewalls. The report is based on data collected in 2015 from the Dell SonicWALL Global Response Intelligence Defense (Grid) network and feeds from more than one million firewalls and tens of millions of connected endpoints, Dell SonicWALL network traffic and other industry sources Decryption and inspection strategies are a clear necessity, said the report, with nearly 65% of all internet traffic encrypted – leading to under-the-radar hacks affecting hundreds of millions of users in 2015. Using SSL or TLS encryption, the report said skilled attackers can cipher command and control communications and malicious code to evade intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and antimalware inspection systems. This tactic was used in a crafty malvertising campaign in August 2015 to expose as many as 900 million Yahoo users to malware by redirecting them to a site that was infected by the Angler exploit kit. “Many organisations are blind to encrypted traffic, and if they are unable to analyse 65% of traffic, that means the risk is effectively 65% greater,” said Florian Malecki, international product marketing director, network security at Dell Security. “We are seeing an increase in attacks hidden in encrypted traffic, so it is vital that companies have the capability to look into that traffic at the company gateway,” he told Computer Weekly. 2016-02-22 00:00:00 Warwick Ashford

Total 100 articles. Created at 2016-02-23 12:01