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DC5m United States software in english 40 articles, created at 2016-10-21 00:01

1 Peter Thiel plans speech on Trump support Peter Thiel's support of Donald Trump has been the subject of speculation and

(1.02/2) condemnation since rumors of his speech at the Republican National Convention.. 2016-10-20 14:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com

2 Rockstar publishes 'Red Dead Redemption 2' trailer as petition for a PC version nears 30K signatures Rockstar Games on Tuesday confirmed the existence of Red Dead Redemption 2 (1.02/2) following a couple of days of not-so-subtle teasing on social media. The publisher promised a trailer would be ready on Thursday and sure enough, Rockstar delivered. 2016-10-20 13:00 1KB www.techspot.com

3 Everything we suddenly know about Nintendo’s crazy new console, the Switch (1.02/2) We first learned that Nintendo was working on a new console (codenamed "NX") over a year and a half ago. Since then, though, they've said pretty much nothing... 2016-10-20 12:20 1KB feedproxy.google.com

4 Linux users urged to protect against 'Dirty COW' security flaw

(1.02/2) All Linux users should take this seriously, says security expert,Security,Open Source ,Cloud computing,security,Linux 2016-10-20 11:49 3KB www.v3.co.uk

5 Microsoft earnings: 76 cents a share, vs. expected EPS of 68 cents Analysts expect Microsoft to report earnings of about 68 cents a share on $21.71 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate. 2016-10-20 16:09 2KB www.cnbc.com

6 5 supercar secrets starring the 2017 McLaren 570GT Supercars are called super for a reason: these are not everyday sedans. They're more powerful, more strikingly designed, and more expensive than the cars we.. 2016-10-20 16:06 1KB feedproxy.google.com

7 Google’s Bret Taylor gives tour of Quip’s architecture A jaunt into the software heart of productivity suite founded by Google Maps co-creator 2016-10-20 16:00 10KB sdtimes.com

8 Apple lays out plans for Swift 4.0 The upcoming version of the language, due next year, emphasizes source and standard library stability 2016-10-20 15:54 3KB www.infoworld.com 9 Google releases Android 7.1 developer preview for Nexus 5X, 6P, and Pixel C devices Google has begun rolling out the Android 7.1 Developer Preview to anyone enrolled in the Android Beta program with a Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P or Pixel C convertible tablet. The company says it will be extending the preview to other… 2016-10-20 15:30 2KB www.techspot.com

10 Google’s most popular open-source software projects Google releases its open-source report card showcasing its most popular projects 2016-10-20 15:10 2KB sdtimes.com

11 What Tim Cook thinks the digital you will do Apple is betting on the "digital you" coming to augmented reality. But has Tim told us the whole story? 2016-10-20 15:00 9KB feedproxy.google.com

12 Microsoft Cloud strength highlights first quarter results

REDMOND, Wash. — October 20, 2016 — Microsoft Corp... 2016-10-20 15:00 12KB news.microsoft.com

13 The winner of ZTE’s crowdsourcing project is a phone with eye-tracking Color me disappointed. I mean, congratulations to the winners and all, but a big part of me was sincerely hoping that ZTE’s CSX project would open the door.. 2016-10-20 15:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com

14 Five reasons people hate your mobile app A mobile app is important to business success, right? True, but a bad app can be a key part of business failure. Here are five features of mobile apps that turn users off. 2016-10-20 14:51 3KB www.techrepublic.com

15 Progress releases DigitalFactory: The only digital transformation solution designed with the marketer, IT and developer in mind Cloud platform helps businesses drive digital agility and deliver engaging customer experiences at a global scale 2016-10-20 14:50 3KB sdtimes.com

16 You can now get daily election updates on Messenger, with NYT Politics’ new chatbot If you can't get enough presidential election news - that is, you're some kind of glutton for punishment - there's now a new way to get automated updates with.. 2016-10-20 14:50 4KB feedproxy.google.com 17 Kodak unveils second photography-led smartphone, the Ektra Kodak, perhaps the most popular brand in photography at one point in time, lost virtually all of its clout with the advent of digital cameras. The industry is in the midst of yet another massive shift as standalone digital cameras… 2016-10-20 14:45 2KB www.techspot.com

18 Talent crunch makes BMW, McLaren and others look to Udacity for engineers Today, Udacity announced partnerships with an additional ten companies to help graduates of its new self-driving car nanodegree program find jobs. The.. 2016-10-20 14:42 2KB feedproxy.google.com

19 What you need to know about DevOps The term DevOps is being thrown around a lot in the IT industry at the moment, but what exactly does it mean and, more importantly, how can it help an enterprise? The term DevOps is being thrown around a lot in the IT industry at the moment... 2016-10-20 14:18 4KB feeds.betanews.com

20 RASP rings in a new Java application security paradigm Runtime-based technologies use contextual awareness to boost Java application security 2016-10-20 14:18 12KB www.javaworld.com

21 Online VC FundersClub launches Network Search to better connect its 18,000 members Network effects in venture capital are no joke. Sure, people want to close rounds with brand name funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz because they.. 2016-10-20 13:52 3KB feedproxy.google.com

22 Salesforce looks to the future with Einstein artificial intelligence Salesforce has a history of staying close to the cutting edge of technology, so it shouldn't be surprising that it announced an artificial intelligence.. 2016-10-20 12:58 3KB feedproxy.google.com

23 Prelude Fertility aims to give women and couples a choice on the timing of a family With a women’s fertility declining just as they enter the full flush of their careers alongside their male counterparts (usually from the mid 20s to 30s).. 2016-10-20 12:56 4KB feedproxy.google.com

24 Samsung's 8GB RAM module will let you run virtual machines on mobile devices Pretty soon it will be common for high-end smartphones to have as much -- if not more -- RAM than your PC, as Samsung just unveiled a new 8GB LPDDR4 module for mobile devices featuring large, UHD displays. Pretty soon it will... 2016-10-20 12:51 2KB feeds.betanews.com 25 This is the CRISPR-inspired bio-terror drama we deserve, but not the one we need CRISPR is like graphene. It’s one of those exciting new technologies science nerds will invariably invoke as a sort of game changer for every industry.. 2016-10-20 12:50 2KB feedproxy.google.com

26 What you need to know about quantum computing Most people will be familiar with Moore’s Law which states that the number of transistors it’s possible to get on a microprocessor doubles every 18 months. If this holds true it means that some time in the 2020s we’ll be measuring these circuits on an atomic scale. Most... 2016-10-20 12:49 7KB feeds.betanews.com

27 Android 7.1 Developer Preview available, Swift 4.0 road map, and Chaos Monkey 2.0 released—SD Times news digest: Oct. 20, 2016 Android developers can get started with the new release of the developer preview of Android 7.1 Nougat. Developers have access to the SDK and tools right on their devices, and can enroll their devices in the Android Beta Program today. With this preview, developers can... 2016-10-20 12:43 4KB sdtimes.com

28 Securly raises $4 million to put guard rails on the internet for K-12 students Thanks to the Childrens’ Internet Protection Act, schools in the U. S. that provide internet access to their students must also generally use web filtering.. 2016-10-20 12:36 3KB feedproxy.google.com

29 New automation tool helps businesses deploy Docker containers Automated software delivery specialist Puppet is launching a new Docker Image Build tool, which automates the container build process to help organizations as they define, build, and deploy containers into production environments. Automated software delivery specialist Puppet is launching a new Docker Image Build tool,... 2016-10-20 12:16 2KB feeds.betanews.com

30 Dutch bank ING returns to the UK with a mobile app ING is offering a mobile app that allows consumers to manage accounts with different banks in one place 2016-10-20 12:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com

31 Osmo’s new Pizza Co. game uses augmented reality to teach kids about running a business With its latest title, educational game-maker Osmo is tackling a subject that's close to CEO Pramod Sharma's heart — entrepreneurship. Co-founded by Sharma.. 2016-10-20 12:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 32 Automatic launches a new lower cost connected car adapter Automatic went for a more expensive, but more full-featured offering with the 3G- enabled Automatic Pro earlier this year, but the new Automatic Lite delivers.. 2016-10-20 12:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com

33 Bryan Johnson invests $100 million in Kernel to unlock the power of the human brain Earlier this year, former Braintree founder Bryan Johnson publicly announced his plans to forge Kernel, a company with the sole purpose of building hardware.. 2016-10-20 12:00 4KB feedproxy.google.com

34 Jess Lee of Polyvore joins Sequoia Capital as its 11th investing partner Sequoia Capital has brought aboard Jess Lee as its eleventh investing partner in the U. S., becoming the firm's first senior female U. S. investor in its.. 2016-10-20 11:58 4KB feedproxy.google.com

35 Puppet tightens links to Docker, Jenkins, VMware The latest edition of the Puppet Enterprise datacenter orchestration platform focuses on containers, continuous integration pipelines, and virtual machines 2016-10-20 11:45 3KB www.infoworld.com

36 EnterpriseDB joins Dell EMC Technology Connect Program EnterpriseDB today announced that it is now an Advantage-level partner in the Dell EMC Technology Connect Partner Program 2016-10-20 11:39 4KB sdtimes.com

37 Outcry as Facebook removes Swedish breast cancer video Facebook has removed a video on breast cancer awareness posted in Sweden because it deemed the images "offensive", the Swedish Cancer Society said Thursday. 2016-10-20 11:38 1KB phys.org

38 Award-winning software quality leader Undo raises $3.3 million in Series A financing Undo, the leading commercial supplier of next-generation software quality tools for Linux and Android developers, today announced it has closed a $3.3 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a preferred investor for the... 2016-10-20 11:37 3KB sdtimes.com

39 Google reportedly signs deal with CBS for Unplugged, YouTube's upcoming streaming TV service CBS has become the first major network to sign up for YouTube’s upcoming over-the- top Internet television service according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. 2016-10-20 11:30 2KB www.techspot.com 40 AWS, VMware Pact Eases Hybrid Cloud Adoption AWS and VMware have struck a deal that improves workload transfers between their environments, which leaves customers in charge of their final configurations. 2016-10-20 11:05 6KB www.informationweek.com Articles

DC5m United States software in english 40 articles, created at 2016-10-21 00:01

1 /40 Peter Thiel plans speech on Trump support (1.02/2) Peter Thiel’s support of Donald Trump has been the subject of speculation and condemnation since rumors of his speech at the Republican National Convention first began to fly, and has only increased since Thiel agreed to donate $1.25 million to the Trump campaign.

Thiel plans to address the controversy, a spokesperson said, in an Oct. 31 speech in Washington, D. C. It will be the first time Thiel has publicly discussed his support of the GOP presidential candidate since the RNC, when he praised Trump as an economic leader. Thiel likened Trump to Silicon Valley leaders , calling him a “builder” and saying he would stamp out “incompetence” in government.

Although Thiel and Trump appear aligned on a number of issues, the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor also vaguely distanced himself from some of Trump’s views, saying, “I don’t pretend to agree with every plan in our party’s platform.”

It’s possible that Thiel will use his speech as an opportunity to clarify which exact plans he agrees with, and which he opposes — or to double down on his support for Trump in a final push before Election Day.

Thiel’s beliefs have been a subject of debate, with activists calling for Facebook and Y Combinator to distance their organizations from him. Ellen Pao of Project Include said her organization, which promotes diversity in the tech industry, would sever ties with Y Combinator if it did not remove Thiel as a part-time partner. Y Combinator president Sam Altman said he opposes Trump but that Thiel’s views represent an important diversity of opinion. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also reportedly sticking by his early investor and long-time board member.

Leaked memo shows Mark Zuckerberg defending Peter Thiel's right to support Trump techspot.com

2016-10-20 14:16 Kate Conger feedproxy.google.com

2 /40 Rockstar publishes 'Red Dead Redemption 2' trailer as petition for a PC version nears 30K signatures (1.02/2) Rockstar Games on Tuesday confirmed the existence of Red Dead Redemption 2 following a couple of days of not-so- subtle teasing on social media. The publisher promised a trailer would be ready on Thursday and sure enough, Rockstar delivered.

Predictably, the minute-long trailer isn’t all that revealing, showing several landscape shots before slowly easing into a brief action sequence at the end. Based on what we do see, however, things look quite good.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is scheduled to arrive in the fall of 2017 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Notably absent is a PC version and that’s got a lot of folks ticked off – so much so that there’s now an online petition at Change.org that’s garnered more than 27,000 signatures asking Rockstar to reconsider bringing it to the PC.

Here's your first look at Red Dead Redemption 2 feedproxy.google.com

2016-10-20 13:00 Shawn Knight www.techspot.com

3 /40 Everything we suddenly know about Nintendo’s crazy new console, the Switch (1.02/2) We first learned that Nintendo was working on a new console (codenamed “NX”) over a year and a half ago. Since then, though, they’ve said pretty much nothing.

Nintendo broke their silence this morning with a 3 minute preview trailer packed with details. In 3 minutes, we went from knowing nothing to knowing a whole friggin’ lot.

Here’s everything we now know about the upcoming gaming platform, now officially known as the “Nintendo Switch”. Ready to dive in? Tap that right arrow over there (or the right arrow on your keyboard) — or, if you’re on mobile, just scroll! Nintendo Switch is both a home and portable video game console feeds.betanews.com

2016-10-20 12:20 Greg Kumparak feedproxy.google.com

4 /40 Linux users urged to protect against 'Dirty COW' security flaw (1.02/2) Organisations and individuals have been urged to patch Linux servers immediately or risk falling victim to exploits for a Linux kernel security flaw dubbed ‘Dirty COW'.

This follows a warning from open source software vendor Red Hat that the flaw is being exploited in the wild.

Phil Oester, the Linux security researcher who uncovered the flaw, explained to V3 that the exploit is easy to execute and will almost certainly become more widely used.

"The exploit in the wild is trivial to execute, never fails and has probably been around for years - the version I obtained was compiled with gcc 4.8," he said.

"As Linus [Torvalds] notes in his commit, this is an ancient bug and impacts kernels going back many years. All Linux users need to take this bug very seriously, and patch their systems ASAP. "

Oester said that he uncovered the exploit for the bug, which has been around since 2007, while examining a server that appeared to have been attacked.

"One of the sites I manage was compromised, and an exploit of this issue was uploaded and executed. A few years ago I started packet capturing all inbound HTTP traffic and was able to extract the exploit and test it out in a sandbox," he told V3.

"These rolling packet captures have proved invaluable numerous times. I would recommend this extra security measure to all admins. "

The Dirty COW moniker was applied as a descriptive of the security flaw. "A race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel's memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write [COW] breakage of private read-only memory mappings," Red Hat warned in an advisory published today.

"An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system. "

Furthermore, the complexity of the attacks that have been seen in the wild may make it difficult for antivirus and other security software to identify.

"Although the attack can happen in different layers, antivirus signatures that detect Dirty COW could be developed," warned an advisory .

"Due to the attack complexity, differentiating between legitimate use and attack cannot be done easily, but the attack may be detected by comparing the size of the binary against the size of the original binary.

"This implies that antivirus can be programmed to detect the attack but not to block it unless binaries are blocked altogether. "

The flaw has been written up in the CVE database.

‘Dirty COW’ Linux kernel security vulnerability being exploited in the wild, warns Red Hat computing.co.uk

2016-10-20 11:49 www.v3.co.uk

5 /40 Microsoft earnings: 76 cents a share, vs. expected EPS of 68 cents Microsoft shares gained 4 percent in extended trading after it reported quarterly results that beat analysts' expectations on Thursday.

The company posted first- quarter earnings per share of 76 cents on revenue of $22.33 billion. Wall Street also expected Microsoft to report earnings of about 68 cents a share on $21.71 billion in revenue, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. Azure, Microsoft's major cloud offering, saw revenue grow 102 percent during the fourth quarter. For the fiscal first quarter, analysts expected the entire intelligent cloud segment to bring in about $6.27 billion in adjusted revenue, according to a FactSet consensus estimate.

The company recently announced a partnership with Adobe in which the creator of Photoshop and Illustrator software packages named Microsoft Azure its "preferred cloud platform," while Microsoft said Adobe Cloud Marketing is its "preferred Marketing service. "

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the agreement "will bring together the cloud horsepower and end-to-end capabilities brands need to design and deliver great digital experiences. "

In late September, the company said it was on track to complete its $40 billion stock buyback by the end of the year. If Microsoft does repurchase the full amount and doesn't reissue any of those shares, it would be among the largest buybacks done in the past decade.

2016-10-20 16:09 Christine Wang www.cnbc.com

6 /40 5 supercar secrets starring the 2017 McLaren 570GT Supercars are called super for a reason: these are not everyday sedans. They’re more powerful, more strikingly designed, and more expensive than the cars we usually drive to work. But there are some things you probably don’t know about supercars. I’ll use the 2017 McLaren 570GT to illustrate.

The takeaway here is that supercars, even “the most practical model ever launched by McLaren Automotive,” are exceptional. They are built for people who view driving as a pleasure, not a task to be endured. These are for owners who are willing to pay $215,000 in the case of the 570GT to hear the engine wind through the twisties all the way to the cabin in the mountains. These drivers are not bringing huge coolers or entire wardrobes along. So while supercars are not very good for mundane chores like getting groceries, picking up one kid after school in the 570GT would be certifiably awesome — as long as their backpack isn’t too big.

2016-10-20 16:06 Kristen Hall feedproxy.google.com

7 /40 Google’s Bret Taylor gives tour of Quip’s architecture Bret Taylor cut his teeth in the workplace at Google. While completing his bachelors and masters degrees at Stanford, he got a job as an intern at the then-fledgling search company, back when the whole company fit into one Mountain View building. And it was there that he co- created Google Maps. As a follow-up, he founded FriendFeed, which was quickly acquired by Facebook and resulted in him becoming CTO. That in turn led to the overall layout of Facebook shifting into what we know today. Now, Taylor’s building Quip, a company that seeks to supplant Microsoft Office and Google Docs as the hottest productivity tool for the cloud generation. (Taylor is also a member of the board of directors for Twitter.)

(Related: Android 7.1 Developer Preview is n0w available )

Taylor recently appeared at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference to herald deep integrations into their systems. Thus, a field in a Quip spreadsheet can now be directly linked to information in the Salesforce CRM, making it always up to date. We sat down with Taylor to discuss the work he’s doing at Quip, the transition to Python 3.x, and just how his team managed to build an online/offline collaborative suite of productivity tools.

We spoke in September and you were just beginning the move to Python 3.x at Quip. How did that go? It’s important to make sure we have modern tools, so we moved our JavaScript stuff to React and our Python applications to Python 3. I am proud we did it. It’s been great. There are a lot of language features in [Python 3] that are quite meaningful around co-routines.

What would you change if you had to do it over and you could change anything, even within Python? I think optional typing. With a large engineering team, static analysis becomes really important. Is my change going to negatively impact the build? It’s hard to answer that with a dynamic language. You end up relying a lot on unit tests and integration tests and linters—these tools you strap on.

There have been proposals to add optional types [to Python], and I feel optimistic about that because it’s opt-in. Teams that choose to use them can hopefully benefit from an ecosystem built around static analysis for this feature. It’s hard for the community to consolidate on one [idea] and have a set of tools around it. I am optimistic there will be some version of Python 3 that will create that ecosystem of static analysis tools.

Most of these static analysis tools are focused on C++ and languages that already have static types. In the web industry, dynamic languages are dominant because they’re faster to develop in, they’re more fun to program in, and they’re accessible. The ecosystems around Node.js and Python, as a consequence, collectively as an industry we’ve given up some of the benefits of languages with static typing.

Languages like Go and Rust challenge some of those notions, but I do believe there are ways of introducing some of the benefits of those language tools in a way that doesn’t dilute the core of what makes languages like Python great.

The benefit of those language features go up with your team size. The larger your team, the more you appreciate those static checks. You end up, as you grow, having to graft these development tools onto languages that weren’t designed to support them. I am optimistic about Go and Rust; that can bridge that gap.

How do you measure engineer productivity? I believe engineering productivity’s main measure is autonomy. How much can a single developer, or a small two- or three-person team make changes without needing permissions or conversations with other teams? There’s no black-and- white answer, but what we optimize for here at Quip is, “Can an individual engineer have the tools at their disposal to make the changes they need?”

That means documentation, to deployment, to automated testing. If you didn’t know the change you made broke anything, that slows you down. We work backward from that as a litmus test of an individual’s autonomy.

What does Quip’s data layer look like? We have something [like a] pretty typical setup there. We use pretty standard data stores, but store opaque objects inside those stores and don’t use things like joins. It makes it easier to shard. You don’t need to worry about having data collocated to do fancy joins, and it makes it easier to synchronize across clients and servers. These serialized items are copied around.

We have—not exactly [the system used at FriendFeed]—but a system that looks like that shape. We use MySQL, Redis and Memcached, with MySQL being the underlying persistent data store. We use Redis for things that aren’t persistent.

I do think there’s a lot of innovation in data storage. We don’t necessarily want the data storage to be where we innovate. We want it reliable and fast, and it’s easy to horizontally scale. How much weight do you put on the features of our data store? We put very little.

It means it’d be easy to move to a different data store, not that we’re planning to. That was a conscious choice. I do like putting a lot of that logic at the app layer. It makes it easy to do things like have data exist in multiple data centers. We have a model where mobile and desktop apps synchronize with the server and work offline. We have a uniform view of data on the client and server if you have a simple data model.

Other companies have different goals. Notably, our documents are broken up into smaller atomic units. What’s unique about Quip is that if you have four people editing the same spreadsheet, they’re only each touching a small segment of the document. We represented that atomically.

It leads to a lot of efficiency. We have a unique model that looks less like a document, even though it manifests itself as a document. It’s something we consider one of our best architectural decisions, but it was no knock on MongoDB or CouchDB. It was more that we didn’t want to innovate at that layer. Our stack is very simple on the server. It’s very easy for new engineers to understand and use.

Is this something you’d done before, or something you’ve only done at Quip? It was based on a discussion that we wanted a document editor that supported real-time co-authoring, but also supported offline editing. Those are seemingly contradictory. How do you synchronize online and offline? One of our goals from very early on was to structurally reduce the occurrence of conflicts. We asked, “How do we break our product into as small an atomic unit as possible?” It’s a really unique value proposition, built it’s fairly deeply down in the technology. As a mobile-first company, how do you deal with Android development? It’s really complicated. This word has been used to describe Android for a long time: fragmentation. One of the biggest points of fragmentation are the China versions of Android versus the rest of the world. They don’t have Google services in China. It turns out many parts of the Android stack depend on Google services, like push notifications. Not in China. If you want to have it supported in the Chinese app stores, you have to do a different thing for push notifications in China than the rest of the world.

Google has gotten more opinionated with design options in the new versions. Unlike iOS, which has a reliable upgrade cycle, many old Android phones are on the old versions of Android because OEMs decide what flavor those are. On top of that, there’s more device diversity. The fragmentation is really intense. We have a rack of 50 Android phones for testing.

It’s challenging. On the upside, though, it’s really popular and it’s worth the investment. You end up doing analysis on, “Should we support this version or that version?” based on the popularity. There’s stack ranking of development work based on popularity of the devices, and that’s a lot of work. It’s interesting how strong Apple’s developer ecosystem is.

What do your pipelines look like? I think we’re pretty standard. We have apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android phones and tablets, macOS, Windows and the web, so that’s eight device classes. Many have shared binaries, but they’re separate interfaces. As a consequence, one of the harder things about deployments is how you do releases across all these platforms on the web. On iOS, we release internally to employees every day, but once a month to the app stores. I do think managing your release schedule and then synchronizing across platforms is a fairly big logistical challenge because of the reviews and policies of app stores. It’s something every startup deals with.

The thing we’ve done with our mobile apps is that they are done on a schedule rather than on demand. That makes the test and deploy process more sane. That’s something a lot of companies did before the Internet. Everyone’s relearned this.

For developers, it must be appealing to have direct access via APIs to the minutiae of end-user productivity tools. How did you build this, and what can be done with these collaborative tools via API? There are a few levels of integration we think about with APIs. The first is at the data level. All these other systems you use, from Salesforce to your engineering team, have data. If you want that data hooked into your productivity tool, you need an API that can keep all the systems up to date.

You could have it so that every time your data center goes down, it adds an entry to a spreadsheet and a check box to ensure an engineer looked over it. In another use case, you could imagine that as your sales reps are putting in opportunities to Salesforce, I can update a spreadsheet in Quip with forecasts.

It does feel like step one. It’s behind the scenes. It’s all about the real-time data synchronization. I’d like people to extend it in a more visual way, like what Quip does. Something I admired in Salesforce is that their product has always been an extensible platform. They’ve enabled this throughout the product experience.

We can actually do this deep integration so that data is automatically synchronized. I hope that’s step one. I really do think it’s, as you say, the last mile for an end user who just wants to crunch some numbers, or brainstorm, or have a weekly meeting that reflects the actual data. It creates this virtuous cycle: It means people have the incentive to keep the data up to date, and it means you don’t ever have to ask, “Did you update the numbers?”

2016-10-20 16:00 Alex Handy sdtimes.com

8 /40 Apple lays out plans for Swift 4.0 Fresh from releasing version 3.0 of its Swift language, Apple is elaborating further on plans for Swift 4.0 , which is expected late next year.

The upgrade will range from resilience to memory ownership model to strings, with particular focus on source stability for code and ABI stability for the standard library, according to documentation in GitHub.

To that end, Apple is dividing the Swift 4 release into two stages. The first stage, involving source and ABI stability, will consider features that do not fundamentally change the ABI of existing features in the language or imply an ABI-breaking change to the standard library.

High-priority features supporting stage 1 goals include accommodations to support code bases targeting different language versions, so Swift can deliver on source compatibility goals while progress continues. Also for stage 1, Apple is looking for resilience, specifically to enable APIs to evolve while maintaining a stable ABI. Resilience, for example, would eliminate the fragile base class problem that occurs in some object-oriented languages by describing types of API changes that can be made without breaking the ABI.

Apple also touched on generics improvements needed in the standard library. The library has a number of workarounds for language deficiencies, and "if the underlying language deficiencies remain, they become a permanent part of the stable ABI," the documentation states. " Conditional conformances , recursive protocol requirements , and where clauses for associated types are known to be in this category, but it's plausible that other features will be in scope if they would be used in the standard library. "

System programmers are seeking an opt-in Cyclone/Rust-inspired model for memory ownership models in high-performance applications. "This feature will fundamentally shape the ABI, from low-level language concerns such as 'inout' and low-level 'addressors' to its impact on the standard library," according to the GitHub documentation. "While a full memory ownership model is likely too large for Swift 4 stage 1, we need a comprehensive design to understand how it will change the ABI. "

Apple says it needs to improve code generation, including interaction with the language's runtime, to stabilize the ABI. "While not specifically user-facing, the decisions here affect performance and (in some rare cases) the future evolution of Swift. " The upgrade also seeks to make strings more powerful and easier to use while retaining correctness with Unicode. The second stage Swift 4.0's development, anticipated next spring, begins when implementation of stage 1 features is "cresting" and contains some other large and small features.

2016-10-20 15:54 Paul Krill www.infoworld.com

9 /40 Google releases Android 7.1 developer preview for Nexus 5X, 6P, and Pixel C devices Google has begun rolling out the Android 7.1 Developer Preview to anyone enrolled in the Android Beta program with a Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P or Pixel C convertible tablet. The company says it will be extending the preview to other devices ─ presumably the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 ─ in November, with the final public release to follow later that month.

The company already showed off some of 7.1’s features when it announced its Pixel phones earlier this month. Some of the Pixels’ best features will remain exclusive to those new phones. Everyone else can look forward to App Shortcuts, support for circular home screen icons, image keyboards, and more.

App shortcuts is Google’s answer to 3D Touch on Apple’s iOS devices, allowing you to long- press on an app icon from the luncher or app drawer, with a list of specific actions popping up so you can jump to a specific part of the app. Unlike 3D Touch on the iPhone, the long press trigger means there is no way to move an icon without first showing the shortcuts.

Actions can also be dragged out as individual home screen icons for quicker access. For now only first party apps from Google support the functionality, but with the 7.1 Preview out developers can begin building and testing shortcuts in their own apps.

Android 7.1 also features reworked Quick Settings that now shows a Settings shortcut and next to it a button that slides down the full panel. There’s also a support tab under settings, support for a double-twist gesture to switch in and out of selfie mode in Google Camera, the ability for keyboard apps to now feature stickers, animated GIFs and other images.

If you have one of the supported devices and are enrolled to the Android Beta program, you should be receiving a notification to update at any moment.

2016-10-20 15:30 Jose Vilches www.techspot.com

10 /40 Google’s most popular open-source software projects Google is no stranger to open-source software; the company has released more than 20 million lines of code to the open-source community to date. In an effort to demonstrate further commitment to the open-source community, Google is releasing an open-source report card highlighting its most popular projects and statistics.

“Open-source software enables Google to build things quickly and efficiently without reinventing the wheel, allowing us to focus on solving new problems,” wrote Josh Simmons from Google’s open-source programs office in a blog post . “We stand on the shoulders of giants and we know it. This is why we support open source and make it easy for Googlers to release the projects they’re working on internally as open source.” (Related: Disney forms its own open- source program )

According to the company, its most popular open-source projects include:

Android: Google’s software stack of the mobile operating system, middleware and apps

Chromium: A browser project that contains Google Chrome and Chromium OS software

Angular: A mobile and desktop JavaScript framework

TensorFlow: Google’s machine learning toolkit

Go: A compiled programming language

Kubernetes: A system for managing, automating, deploying operating and scaling an entire cluster of containerized apps

Polymer: A lightweight library that focuses on reusable web elements

Protobuf: A Language and platform-neutral mechanism for serializing structured data

Guava: A collection of Java core libraries

Yeoman: Tools for building modern web apps

Based on its GitHub data, the company currently has 3,499 repositories on GitHub. Of those 3,499, 773 were announced this year. The most recent projects include Seesaw, Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire, OpenThread, Magenta, Omnitone, Science Journal, and Cartographer.

In addition, the company revealed that the most popular languages (in order) from its users are JavaScript, Java, C/C++, Go, Python, TypeScript, Dart, PHP, Objective-C, and C#.

2016-10-20 15:10 Christina Cardoza sdtimes.com

11 /40 What Tim Cook thinks the digital you will do In Tim Cook’s recent exclusive interview with ABC, he gave us insight into what he thinks the “digital you” will do. He specifically mentions real-time meetings in real spaces — “this gives the capability for both of us to be very present and be talking to each other, and have other things — visually — for both of us to see,” said Cook — acknowledging the all-too-obvious first use of a digital you. But what else is there?

Having been lucky enough to have met my digital self (see below) thanks to a company called Cappasity , I have some thoughts. Like humans, the digital you (AKA holoportation) will go through an evolution. No, Scotty won’t be beaming me or you to Klingon to do battle like Captain Kirk — but pretty damn close.

The first step? It probably won’t be the “Skype on steroids” that Cook alluded to. That technology — your digital avatar moving in the real world, in real time — requires multiple camera angles, serious computing power and the right equipment to watch, at least in the short term. For consumers, the digital you will evolve a little differently.

First, we will see non-interactive, static 3D models — you’ll be trying on clothes without even getting out of bed. Companies like European online clothing giant Zalando were trying this — even three years ago. That can evolve into dynamic 3D models — the digital you will be able to move, and maybe talk.

Next, you’ll get animated and go virtual. Wearing a VR headset like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, your digital you can be present in virtual spaces to have a date, collaborate with colleagues or play a game. Check out Mark Zuckerberg playing ping pong , or, see what Mimesys is doing — they are working on enabling real-time holoportation in VR. While the quality of the person’s rendering is still rough, there is no question that it will be perfected over time.

This could get pretty fun, too — imagine the viral-hit animated renderings of apps like MSQRD or Snapchat (which is rumored to be making an AR wearable ) on a full-size scale. (If I built the first human-size digital you animation app, I’d be inclined to name it after the shape-shifting Polyjuice Potion from Harry Potter!)

But let’s go where Tim took us: not virtual reality, but augmented reality; if you will, reality-reality. Back to what he said: “[Augmented Reality] gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see.” So video chat — in the real world. He continues: “Maybe it’s something we’re talking about, maybe it’s someone else here, who’s not here present, but who can be made to appear to be present.”

It’s an interesting (and obvious) stipulation — there’s no question that accessible video chat like Skype or FaceTime has evolved the way we communicate with those far from us, whether it’s colleagues or friends and family.

But I think Tim’s holding back. What else could the digital you do? Whether or not Elon Musk is right and we are all living in a simulation , it’s time for me — the real me — to speculate. Let’s take a tip from House of Cards, and follow the money: Where’s the income stream?

It’s a great question. In the case of Skype on steroids, it’s a service. Beyond that? It seems that the end user is either the consumer, or, potentially, the product (in the manner that Facebook users are the product). For retailers like Amazon or Zalando — or anyone selling clothes, accessories or wearables — the application is immediate and obvious: increase sales with deeper market penetration and more connected customer conversation. But what next? The possibilities are interesting: celebrity visits in your home, virtual gaming environments (except the environment isn’t virtual, it’s your living room) or even education — ballet lessons, lectures and more. There’s even a real-world example: If you’re a HoloLens developer, you can play with the appropriately chosen George Takei, anywhere you please.

As you can see, Microsoft has already started playing in this space. In addition to the George Takei giggle, they also ran a little experiment with NASA — and have advanced the technology even more to create the video below, which is a bit more complicated than what they’ve done by teleporting Takei.

This brings us to the interesting dichotomy of the digital you: there are two. The one others (and you) can observe, and the one you experience — where your eyes are replaced by cameras, and your ears by microphones.

Which raises the question: How far can it go? Can haptic sensors let the digital you… feel? Are we talking the NSFW scene with Sandra Bullock and Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man? Given the porn industry’s history of tech innovation, the answer is, probably — but adding in haptics, smell or 3D audio can have other benefits, too.

Once those cameras and sensors can capture other environments accurately enough, you can be places you aren’t. For instance, in a nuclear waste area, or in training for a war zone… any time you want to experience or manipulate the meatspace without actually being turned into ground beef.

The other question: Can the digital you do one job, while you do another? Depends. Driving and texting clearly has bad repercussions. But even though we should probably limit multitasking to walking and chewing bubble gum, it is possible, to a degree. However, much of the multitasking limit may come from our RAM-deficient human grey matter, not technology.

A college professor probably can’t teach physics in one classroom and mathematics in another. But can a homeowner paint his deck while balancing his budget? Or weed the garden while delivering a lecture? Maybe. Where it does clearly work, though, is when one simply needs to appear in two (or more) places at once — great for a CEO who needs to present to shareholders or investors, or politicians meeting and greeting citizens.

Moral questions above notwithstanding, the existence of the digital you gives rise to a few other concerns: namely, can the digital you be hacked? The answer here is clearly yes. Anything we choose to throw up online is going to be vulnerable. How does the digital you get verified? Do you need a digital passport? Are we all going to need Base 58 binary-to-text encoding à la bitcoin? Part of this depends on how quickly the technology advances, what we are doing with it and how responsible we treat this unstoppable development.

The digital you probably will not be signing checks any time soon, but it is not hard to imagine hackers and scammers achieving impressive new levels of old-school social engineering hacks — if you were worried about Granny giving away the bank to a scam artist, it might be even harder to resist if said scammer looks like you and is sitting in her living room. The good news? While it might be very easy to mimic the appearance of someone, voice and intonation are probably a bit more difficult. The best defense against criminalizing the digital you might simply be the people you know.

The truth is that most of us will probably be most fascinated by meeting and seeing real (at least, appearing to be real) people — we want to see our friends, kids and family, and be transported to a place where they are, if only digitally.

Eventually, I think that immersive experience — sharing a setting, a location, essentially occupying a mutual space — means the digital you will eventually exist beyond virtual reality and move into augmented reality. This, I believe, is the ultimate use case — although not necessarily the most common, or useful — simply the most evolved form. Just think what companies like Magic Leap can do if speculation about their hardware is true! If that is how great minds like Cook see holoportation helping in the future , I agree with him.

As to when that will become a real reality, we can only make predictions. If the past three decades have taught us one thing, it is that the future is arriving faster than ever — and virtual people made out of pixels will be here before you know it.

But, much of this depends on hardware, and the price of said hardware. One thing we do know? The two big players, Microsoft and Apple, are in. Tim’s talking the talk and walking the walk — Apple is investing big in AR , and he clearly says in comparison to VR that “my own view is that augmented reality is the larger of the two, probably by far.” So even though you may know yourself pretty well, get ready — soon you’ll also meet your own digital you. Although I am guessing Tim will have the chance to meet his, first — if he hasn’t already.

2016-10-20 15:00 Andy Gstoll feedproxy.google.com

12 /40 Microsoft Cloud strength highlights first quarter results REDMOND, Wash. — October 20, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016:

“We are helping to lead a profound digital transformation for customers, infusing intelligence across all of our platforms and experiences,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “We continue to innovate, grow engagement, and build our total addressable market.”

The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) to non-GAAP financial results. Microsoft has provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. Additional information regarding our non-GAAP definition is provided below. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.

Microsoft returned $6.6 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017. During the quarter, the company announced an 8% increase in its quarterly dividend to $0.39 per share, a new share repurchase program authorizing up to $40 billion in share repurchases, and reaffirmed it is on track to complete its current $40 billion share repurchase program by December 31, 2016.

“Our first quarter results showed continued demand for our cloud-based services,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Microsoft. “We continue to invest, position ourselves for long-term growth, and execute well across our businesses.”

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes grew 6% (up 8% in constant currency) to $6.7 billion, with the following business highlights: Revenue in Intelligent Cloud grew 8% (up 10% in constant currency) to $6.4 billion, with the following business highlights:

Revenue in More Personal Computing declined 2% (down 1% in constant currency) to $9.3 billion, with the following business highlights:

Acquisitions and Divestitures

Microsoft expects to close the acquisition of LinkedIn Corporation and the sale of our entry-level feature phone business in the second quarter of fiscal year 2017, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

Business Outlook

Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.

Webcast Details

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, John Seethoff, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary, and Chris Suh, general manager of Investor Relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time (5:30 p.m. Eastern time) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on October 20, 2017.

“As Adjusted” Financial Results and non-GAAP Measures

During the first quarter of fiscal year 2017 and the first quarter of fiscal year 2016, GAAP revenue, operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share include the net impact from Windows 10 revenue deferrals. This item is defined below. In addition to these financial results reported in accordance with GAAP, Microsoft has provided certain non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. Presenting these non-GAAP measures gives additional insight into operational performance and helps clarify trends affecting the company’s business. For comparability of reporting, management considers this information in conjunction with GAAP amounts in evaluating business performance. With respect to our non-GAAP measures related to Windows 10 revenue, we believe these measures bridge investor information and minimize potential confusion during the brief period between the time Windows 10 revenue recognition moved from upfront to ratable, and the adoption of the new revenue standard, when Windows 10 will again be recognized predominantly upfront. The net change in Windows 10 revenue from period to period is indicative of the net change in revenue we expect from adoption of the new revenue standard. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Non-GAAP Definition

Net Impact from Windows 10 Revenue Deferrals. Microsoft recorded net revenue deferrals of $1.9 billion during the three months ended September 30, 2016 and net revenue deferrals of $1.3 billion during the three months ended September 30, 2015, related to Windows 10. With the launch of Windows 10 in July 2015, Windows 10 customers receive future versions and updates at no additional charge. Under current revenue recognition accounting guidance, when standalone software is sold with future upgrade rights, revenue must be deferred over the life of the computing device on which it is installed. This is different from prior versions of Windows, which were sold without upgrade rights, where all revenue from original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) customers was recognized at the time of billing, i.e., upfront.

When Microsoft adopts the new revenue standard, predominantly all Windows OEM revenue will be recognized at the time of billing, which is similar to the revenue recognition for prior versions of Windows. Additional information regarding the new revenue standard is provided below. Microsoft reflects the recognition of Windows 10 revenue at the time of billing in “As Adjusted (non-GAAP)” revenue to provide comparability during the short period where Windows 10 will be recognized over the estimated life of a device, i.e., ratable, rather than at the time of billing.

New Revenue Standard

In May 2014, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued a new standard related to revenue recognition. Under the new standard, revenue is recognized when a customer obtains control of promised goods or services and is recognized in an amount that reflects the consideration the entity expects to receive in exchange for those goods or services. In addition, the standard requires disclosure of the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of revenue and cash flows arising from contracts with customers. The FASB has recently issued several amendments to the standard, including clarification on accounting for licenses of intellectual property and identifying performance obligations.

The guidance permits two methods of adoption: retrospectively to each prior reporting period presented (full retrospective method), or retrospectively with the cumulative effect of initially applying the guidance recognized at the date of initial application (the cumulative catch-up transition method). We currently anticipate adopting the standard using the full retrospective method to restate each prior reporting period presented.

The new standard will be effective for us beginning July 1, 2018, and adoption as of the original effective date of July 1, 2017 is permitted. We currently anticipate early adoption of the new standard effective July 1, 2017. Our ability to early adopt using the full retrospective method is dependent on system readiness, including software procured from third-party providers, and the completion of our analysis of information necessary to restate prior period financial statements.

We anticipate this standard will have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements. While we are continuing to assess all potential impacts of the standard, we currently believe the most significant impact relates to our accounting for software license revenue. We expect revenue related to hardware, cloud offerings, and professional services to remain substantially unchanged. Specifically, under the new standard we expect to recognize Windows 10 revenue predominantly upfront rather than ratably over the life of the related device. We also expect to recognize license revenue upfront rather than over the subscription period from certain multi- year commercial software subscriptions that include both software licenses and software assurance. Due to the complexity of certain of our commercial license subscription contracts, the actual revenue recognition treatment required under the standard will be dependent on contract-specific terms, and may vary in some instances from upfront recognition.

We currently believe the net change in Windows 10 revenue from period to period is indicative of the net change in revenue we expect from the adoption of the new standard. Constant Currency

Microsoft presents constant currency information to provide a non-GAAP framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. To present this information, current and comparative prior period non-GAAP results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the average exchange rates from the comparative period rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the respective periods. The non-GAAP financial measures presented below should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.

Financial Performance Constant Currency Reconciliation

Segment Revenue Constant Currency Reconciliation

Selected Product and Service Revenue Constant Currency Reconciliation

Commercial Cloud Annualized Revenue Run Rate

Commercial cloud annualized revenue run rate is calculated by taking revenue in the final month of the quarter multiplied by twelve for Office 365 commercial, Azure, Dynamics Online, and other cloud properties.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:

For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor .

All information in this release is as of October 20, 2016. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information, as well as today’s 2:30 p.m. Pacific time conference call with investors and analysts, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor .

2016-10-20 15:00 By Microsoft news.microsoft.com

13 /40 The winner of ZTE’s crowdsourcing project is a phone with eye-tracking Color me disappointed. I mean, congratulations to the winners and all, but a big part of me was sincerely hoping that ZTE’s CSX project would open the door to the creation of a truly bizarre device completely outside of the mobile company’s wheelhouse.

There was that probably dangerous diving mask with AR functionality built in to make swimming pools more interesting and the robotic glove designed to teach people how to play the piano and such.

Ultimately, one of the more mundane devices won out. It’s not quite “Stock Android Flagship Phone,” but “Eye Tracking, Self-Adhesive Phone” isn’t exactly the stuff of industry disruption. But, then, the submission got 36- percent of the audience’s vote, so some people are clearly excited about the idea.

Essentially the phone will let users scroll and perform other tasks via eye tracking – something akin to what we’ve seen offered up on older Samsung devices. Also, its back is self-adhesive, so you can stick it to walls. There are still a few steps left in the crowdsourcing process, like choosing colors and naming the thing, with the final product expected to go to market some time next year.

2016-10-20 15:00 Brian Heater feedproxy.google.com

14 /40 Five reasons people hate your mobile app You've built the app and Google/Apple has approved it. It's up, it's available... and it's tanking.

App failure isn't anything new: there are countless businesses out there that have launched mobile platforms only to see them end up with a long list of single star reviews. I've written previously about how to make a branded mobile app succeed : Now here are five reasons you mobile app isn't doing well.

Smartphones are great at notifying us about important things in our lives—and equally great at annoying us. It's one thing if a smartphone buzzes due to a new email and another thing entirely if it's a nudge to do some shopping.

SEE: Mobile app development policy (Tech Pro Research)

Don't annoy users with constant notifications: at best those users will just open and close the app to get rid of it and at worst your app is headed for deletion and a bad review. Once a user disables notifications the app shouldn't ask if it can turn them back on either. (I'm looking at you, official Reddit app .)

Some apps just seem to have self esteem issues. They've been on your phone for months, you use them regularly, and they keep asking if you like them. Don't be that app.

Positive reviews are important but so is a smooth, interruption-free user experience. When I open up an app I'm usually trying to accomplish something, and while opening the app store to leave a review isn't a big hassle it's an interruption. Users don't like those.

Mobile websites can work great, and so can mobile apps. That doesn't mean the two should overlap in any way, though. Businesses as large as The Gap have copped out on app development and just boxed up their website. Users notice and ratings plummet.

SEE: MechDome promises to rewrite your Android app for iOS in seconds (TechRepublic)

A mobile app needs to offer something unique, whether it's a digital coupon system, a streamlined ordering system, or a completely different interface. Putting time into researching and developing a new UI will pay off.

It can be tempting to come up with novel ways of navigating through an app. Unique menus, fancy buttons, and responsive elements can be wonderful, provided they don't challenge users too much.

There are certain design elements that are universal to iOS and Android that are incorporated into most apps. Navigating back and forward, menu popout, and button placement are mostly universal. Try to find an app with good reviews that mixes those elements up: It might be harder than you think.

Optimizing your app is key, especially if it runs in the background. Apps that eat up battery are likely to be deleted quickly no matter how useful they are. Battery life has long been considered the most important feature of smartphones, and when apps compromise it they're not going to last long.

Also see

2016-10-20 14:51 Brandon Vigliarolo www.techrepublic.com

15 /40 Progress releases DigitalFactory: The only digital transformation solution designed with the marketer, IT and developer in mind Progress today announced the availability of Progress DigitalFactory , the only cloud-based digital transformation solution built for developers, IT administrators and marketers to collaborate on and deliver engaging customer experiences that meet the speed of business at a global scale.

According to Gartner, “The deepening and widening of digital business initiatives puts CIOs, chief data officers (CDOs) and digital leaders at the center of creating measurable new business value. These leaders are uniquely positioned to connect digital technology advances with emerging flexible business models to fuel growth. Digital technologies are expanding the value of traditional products and services by using data, content, algorithms, analytics and the connections between economic agents in a digital ecosystem.” 1

Creating and optimizing digital properties at scale with speed, efficiency, proper governance and security–all while delivering a consistent, personalized customer experience–is a major challenge for marketers, developers and IT. Each group has unique concerns that must be addressed and managed effectively to drive business transformation forward. With the release of the Progress DigitalFactory solution, global multi-brand companies now have a solution to meet all of these requirements in order to stay competitive. Additionally, these large-scale businesses can now meet customer expectations with a consistent, personalized experience across all digital touchpoints.

“Some of the most well-known brands in the world are often part of a larger, highly complex ecosystem of business units, with hundreds of sub-brands and thousands of digital properties, each requiring real-time, dynamic content and a customizable, personalized end-user experience,” said Kevin Hourigan, President, Bayshore Solutions. “Customers expect a seamless experience—they don’t care how hard it is for you to create it. Built upon trusted, proven Progress technology, the Progress DigitalFactory solution solves this scalability challenge with support for decentralized execution with centralized governance.”

The DigitalFactory solution helps organizations engage customers in a meaningful way, resulting in greater conversion rates, increased loyalty and higher revenue. Unlike traditional solutions, Progress provides:

“We spent the last year laying the foundation for Progress DigitalFactory, leveraging our skills and proven web content, mobility and data assets. We made an investment in the future of our customers, to better enable them to rapidly innovate by providing more advanced capabilities that drive business agility and governance,” said Michael Benedict, Chief Product Officer, Progress. “Progress DigitalFactory brings a cloud-based solution to market so technology and marketing teams can align, build and optimize customer experiences in a way traditional CMS and first-generation experience platforms simply can’t provide.”

Progress DigitalFactory is available today. For more information, go to https://www.progress.com/digitalfactory .

2016-10-20 14:50 SD Times sdtimes.com

16 /40 You can now get daily election updates on Messenger, with NYT Politics’ new chatbot If you can’t get enough presidential election news – that is, you’re some kind of glutton for punishment – there’s now a new way to get automated updates with the latest poll numbers, along with other election news via Facebook Messenger. The New York Times has launched a new elections news service via its NYT Politics Bot for Messenger that will text you every morning with the new numbers, as well as offer on-demand access to the latest news, key takeaways, and more.

The service aims to be a simpler way to get the latest about the U. S. Presidential election, without having to spend time browsing the web and reading articles, but it’s limited, of course, to NYT’s coverage.

To use the service, you’ll first have to add the NYT Politics Bot to Messenger. Afterwards, around 9 AM EST every day, the bot will send NYT’s Upshot election forecast to the mobile messaging client, if you opt in to receiving these alerts.

You can change these subscription preferences at any time by typing “unsubscribe,” the company says.

In addition to the daily updates, the bot also offers “Quick Reply” buttons that let you ask for specific information, like “forecast,” “polls,” or even “state forecasts,” if you want to see information related to your own state. Here, the bot lets you pick from suggested key states – like Florida or Ohio, for example – or you can type in another state directly.

While many news bots rely solely on users clicking on prompts or texting pre-configured commands, what’s interesting about NYT’s Politics bot is that it’s powered by an A. I. engine that also lets you talk to the service more conversationally. That is, you can say things like “Will Hillary Clinton win?” or “I live in Texas,” and it will return the Upshot forecast or the state’s forecast, respectively.

In addition, NYT reporter Nicholas Confessore will contribute his own musings to the news service, including thoughts on some of the pivotal moments and other takeaways, from now until Election Day. Users will be able to respond to these messages as well, but using only pre- written responses.

This commentary will arrive later in the day, following the data sent in the AM, says The NYT.

This is currently the only NYT bot built specifically for news and storytelling purposes, the company notes, but it’s not the first time the news organization has experimented with bot-based news delivery. The company previously used SMS storytelling to deliver news about the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, and it used to run an NYT Election bot on Slack , which is no longer live.

The biggest difference between this new effort and the older Slack bot is that it’s now combining both automated and human elements in delivery of the news. This is meant to address one of the issues with today’s chatbots – that the bots’ automation combined with their clunkiness can often make you very aware that you’re chatting with a machine. And not knowing the right commands to use can sometimes lead to frustrating experiences, as well.

That said, Facebook earlier claimed that news chatbots are some of the most popular ones live on Messenger today, and NYT’s internal numbers seem to support this, too. Though the company won’t say how many subscribers the new bot has, it has achieved their signup goal within only two days of being live. However, The NYT stresses that for now, the larger agenda with this news experiment is not necessarily achieving a sizable user base, but tracking the interaction and engagement levels from those who do decide to participate.

If all goes well, the bot may be put to further use even when the elections – mercifully – come to an end. The NYT hasn’t yet decided what the bot’s future functions may include, though, but says it will decide in the days after the elections.

2016-10-20 14:50 Sarah Perez feedproxy.google.com

17 /40 Kodak unveils second photography-led smartphone, the Ektra Kodak, perhaps the most popular brand in photography at one point in time, lost virtually all of its clout with the advent of digital cameras. The industry is in the midst of yet another massive shift as standalone digital cameras are giving way to smartphone cameras.

This time around, Kodak wants in on the action although it’s debatable as to whether the approach they’re taking is optimal.

Kodak on Thursday unveiled its second photography-led smartphone, the Ektra (named after its 1940s-era rangefinder camera ). The Ektra features a 5-inch, 1080p display with a MediaTek Helio X20 deca-core processor under the hood alongside 3GB of RAM and 32GB of local storage that’s expandable via microSD card. It’ll ship running Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.

The star of the show, of course, is the camera around back – a 21-megapixel unit with f/2.0 aperture, optical image stabilization, autofocus, Kodak’s non-reflective lens coating and Sony’s IMX230 sensor. Up front, you’ll find a 13-megapixel autofocus camera with phase detection and an f/2.2 aperture lens.

The phone includes photo editing software from Snapseed. Users will have access to advanced manual controls to adjust things like exposure, ISO, shutter speed, white balance and so on. There’s also a familiar scene selection option so you can select sports, HDR, macro, portrait, etc. The backside of the smartphone has been designed to look like a traditional film camera complete with camera bump, faux leather and metal-looking (but really plastic) sides. Kodak is no doubt hoping its design will strike a chord with brand-loyal fans but I’m not sure if this is the best approach. We’ve seen camera-first smartphones in the past – some with better features and true optical zoom – but none have ever caught on with consumers.

Kodak says the Ektra smartphone will go on sale later this year in Europe priced at £449 (around $550). There are no plans to bring the device to the US although that could change, Kodak says, if there’s enough market demand.

2016-10-20 14:45 Shawn Knight www.techspot.com

18 /40 Talent crunch makes BMW, McLaren and others look to Udacity for engineers Today, Udacity announced partnerships with an additional ten companies to help graduates of its new self-driving car nanodegree program find jobs. The program, launched on the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt last month , aims to bring together a large community of students interested in learning, and eventually contributing, to the front lines of autonomous car development. As one of Udacity’s nanodegree initiatives, it was designed in conjunction with large corporations with hiring in mind.

Previously Udacity had built partnerships with Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia, Otto, and Didi Chuxing. Today however, it is adding BMW,HCL, AutonomouStuff, Elektrobit, HERE, NextEv, Local Motors, McLaren Applied Technologies, Polysync and LeEco to its rosters.

The job of selling a firehose of engineers to companies in the automotive ecosystem already struggling to attract and retain top talent is an easy one. The expanding list of partners serves as corporate validation for the unorthodox re-training of engineers outside of the traditional university pipeline.

The partnerships are further evidence that companies at all levels of the automotive supply chain are doubling down on autonomy as the future of driving. Many of the companies on Udacity’s list have already made their self-driving car initiatives public. McLaren Applied Technologies in particular came into the spotlight when rumors emerged that Apple could have been interested in acquiring the company to build out its own driverless car initiatives.

For students, the new partners are a bit like a jumpstarted alumni network that they would otherwise receive at a more traditional institution. The idea is that up and coming engineers taking part in the Udacity program will be able to play off the company’s network to secure jobs and internship opportunities.

The company will be holding an event alongside a handful of these partners next week to answer questions and build community. The event coincides with the start of the first cohort on the same day. Nothing quite like starting a degree program with a panel on how to get out as soon as humanly possible.

2016-10-20 14:42 John Mannes feedproxy.google.com

19 /40 What you need to know about DevOps The term DevOps is being thrown around a lot in the IT industry at the moment, but what exactly does it mean and, more importantly, how can it help an enterprise?

As a combination of developer and operations, DevOps looks to bring these two different areas of digital business together to provide the perfect combination of innovation and user-focused processes during software development. Continuous deployment and continuous delivery are both important aspects of this and, when adopting DevOps, it is vitally important that businesses assess which one is right for them. It also looks towards the automation of delivering changes to infrastructure and software.

Although it's a relatively new concept, DevOps has its roost in the enterprise software management movement of the early 2000s. The term first appeared in 2009 and since then its adoption has been rapid.

DevOps has risen to prominence due to the increasing need for businesses to be fast and agile in an industry of rapid change, where young disruptors are making life difficult for the established pack. Here, we uncover everything businesses need to know about DevOps and how it can help them succeed in the modern IT industry.

The Current State of DevOps

DevOps is fast becoming a key component of digital business and, as a result, the relevant skills are in high demand. IT automation software provider Puppet Labs recently released a US report which showed that DevOps engineers command noticeably higher salaries than other practitioner job titles, with 55 percent earning $100,000 a year or more.

Gartner has predicted that DevOps will fast evolve from a niche to a mainstream activity and will be employed by 25 percent of Global 2000 organizations by 2016. Two major technology trends -- Internet of Things and cloud computing -- are helping to drive this evolution.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to experience exponential growth over the next few years, with the number of connected devices and the amount of data collected booming as a result. To cope with this, DevOps teams will have to be prepared to deal with the wide variety of devices on the market and ensure the compatibility of hardware with existing systems.

In terms of cloud, the growth of DevOps has been facilitated by the level of collaboration that cloud computing enables. The sharing of data means that teams can manage applications more effectively and, as both cloud and DevOps view function and operation together, the mutually reinforcing approaches have benefitted both parties.

However, a recent study carried out by Delphix and Gleanster Research showed that the database could be a major obstacle blocking DevOps success, with the biggest challenge reported by respondents being limited testing environments due to data issues.

Benefits to Business

In simple terms, the main benefit that DevOps can bring to businesses is strengthened communication, collaboration, integration and automation, with speed, quality, control and cost being four crucial elements. Focusing on speed specifically, DevOps speeds up deployment by encouraging automation whenever possible. Although, it must be noted that automation itself can become problematic if not implemented correctly.

In the wider world of technology, security is now more of a mainstream issue than ever before and DevOps again has a role to play. Thanks to the conveyor belt of data breaches that have come to light in recent months, it is now clear that a new attitude to security is needed and applying a DevOps approach is one way to promote a security aware culture within a company.

Finally, DevOps can minimize downtime by reducing the time it takes to fix application issues and it has transformed software architecture, enabling updates to be integrated seamlessly and rapidly and providing architects with a greater awareness of key operational issues.

Because its relatively new there's no real rule book for implementing DevOps, there is, however, an increasing body of advice available from people who have already implemented it successfully.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

Image Credit : Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock

2016-10-20 14:18 By Sam feeds.betanews.com

20 /40 RASP rings in a new Java application security paradigm Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) is a next- generation cyber security technology designed to redress some of the weak points of application security. Unlike firewalls or code analysis, runtime- based technologies contain application data and contextual awareness, enabling them to be both precise and preemptive.

In this article I introduce RASP. I'll briefly compare RASP to other cyber security techniques and explain the factors that enable a runtime-based security solution to fend off common forms of cyberattack, including command injection, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection. I'll also introduce the characteristics of different RASP implementations and briefly discuss existing RASP solutions for Java-based applications.

To get started, let's consider how RASP compares to two common approaches to application security: web application firewalls and application security testing.

A web application firewall (WAF) is intended to protect applications by analyzing web traffic and using signatures to identify malicious activity. With strong signatures and pattern-matching algorithms, a WAF can be an effective layer in an overall security solution. However, because they lack context-awareness, WAFs are notorious for generating false positives. In contrast, RASP-based technologies can leverage runtime application data and contextual awareness to prevent hackers from exploiting some types of vulnerabilities.

RASP technologies embed security intelligence directly within the application tier. Being able to differentiate between application and user data enables a RASP solution to identify maliciously injected code, or to detect unusual application activity, and to do so with an unprecedented degree of precision. The contrast is stark when compared to the high rates of false positives produced by WAFs, and indeed to incidents resulting in service disruption due to poorly configured firewall rules.

Rather than relying on signatures and pattern matching, RASP security rules are highly configurable. Rules can be used to raise alerts or to prevent attempts to access protected resources such as filesystems and networks. Depending on the capabilities of the specific implementation, these rules can be simple, generic, or dynamically adjustable at runtime; all without impacting the normal application lifecycle or expected application operations.

There's no disputing the benefits of identifying vulnerabilities in source code, but enterprises have learned the hard way that knowing the source does not resolve the issue. Once a vulnerability has been identified, the enterprise must decide whether the risk level and type justify the resources required to defuse it. Larger enterprises are frequently overwhelmed by the sheer number of vulnerabilities. Patching them all at the level of source code is exorbitantly time consuming and costly. Worse, the majority of enterprise code is sourced from third-party applications and APIs. The remaining 80 percent is not in the enterprise's direct control, as illustrated by Figure 1.

Figure 1. Typical Java technology stack breakdown of code ownership and control

To manage these issues, enterprises frequently assess risks and patch vulnerabilities using something like the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). For global enterprises managing multiple stakeholders, determining which vulnerabilities to patch can be error-prone and costly, resulting in systems that violate the NoIT principle.

As a solution to the limitations of SAST and DAST, RASP offers virtual patching, a rules-based technique that can be used to prohibit command injection, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection. In some RASP implementations, virtual patching extends to all Java code running in the container, including third-party APIs.

RASP's effectiveness at mitigating vulnerabilities makes it a strong fit for any comprehensive cyber security strategy. Because of Java's ubiquity in the enterprise and in third-party solutions, RASP is an especially powerful addition to Java-based systems. RASP greatly reduces the cost of addressing new vulnerabilities in open source and proprietary APIs. It also can work well with the 90-day Critical Patch Update (CPU) cadence of the JVM.

Three key features differentiate RASP in Java-based systems.

While it's possible to configure fine-grained resource access control in the OS or hypervisor, it's a cumbersome and error prone, especially for large enterprises. The cost of having an infrastructure team attempt to manage the security of thousands or even tens of thousands of applications using OS-level resource control gets increasingly expensive and time consuming with each new application.

An important aspect of virtual patching in RASP is the ability to host legacy code within a virtual container. The container then effectively secures the application as if it were running in an updated, compliant version of the runtime. This is important for enterprises with mission-critical legacy applications that cannot be upgraded due to technical constraints or lack of expertise.

A RASP implementation with virtual patching gives the enterprise an option for safely containing legacy applications. Legacy apps can be run without requiring recompilation, code changes, or having to rush a transformation project to avoid legal or commercial risk.

Another use for virtual patching is the ability to replicate the effect of binary patches. For example, you could use RASP to replicate CPUs issued by Oracle for Java on a quarterly basis, potentially obviating the need to apply CPU binary patches.

This is important for Java enterprises because applying binary patches to hundreds or thousands of JVMs can be a complicated process, demanding both engineering resources and scheduled downtime.

In some RASP implementations, virtual patching is a non-intrusive, centrally managed operation. It's possible to dynamically patch applications without disrupting normal operations or scheduled downtime. A preferred strategy is to enable RASP protection in "monitoring mode" for a period of time. Monitoring allows the development team to undertake a full impact analysis before applying the patch, thus eliminating disruption to normal operations.

There is considerable variation among RASP implementations. Many RASP vendors claim that their product doesn't demand code changes, and that configuration and performance impacts are minimal. What may seem to be a trivial code or configuration change can considerably impact the speed of adoption when scaled to hundreds or thousands of applications, however.

A common critique of RASP is the expected performance impact of runtime analysis and protection. Early implementations of RASP could cause as much as 10 percent increase in response times within the application tier, but performance is constantly improving. Many RASP vendors now claim 5 percent or less impact on application response times.

In general, bottlenecks such as database access or internet latency contribute more to performance loss and response times. Rewriting insecure code to carry out the kind of protection delivered by RASP can also cause a similar impact to performance.

With those performance caveats in mind, consider the following variations in RASP implementation.

Many services used to implement a devops pipeline and circuits are Java applications, as are those used to implement a full SDLC. By enabling RASP for SDLC and devops, we are essentially embedding security not only in the application runtime but also throughout the entire application life cycle. From the moment the code is committed, containerized, and wired to the devops circuit, unit testing, user testing, performance tuning, and penetration testing will all exercise application code. While these processes execute, RASP can be used to profile the application and detect runtime vulnerabilities. In effect, security vulnerabilities can be identified by static testing, mitigated by RASP, and verified by dynamic testing, thus obviating the need for code patching.

Figure 2. Embedding security in the SDLC process with SAST, DAST and RASP

Instrumentation allows a great deal of fine-grained control in targeting runtime RASP monitoring in the code base. Data flow analysis, performance analytics, and API call scope and frequency can all aid precision. Developers have full control over which lines of their code will be RASP enabled. Balancing protection and performance can be especially important for low latency applications.

The downside of instrumentation is that it demands that developers and not platform administrators configure RASP. This limits the scope of protection, not extending beyond targeted applications. The use case for instrumented RASP is constrained to applications that, for reasons mostly pertaining to low latency or high performance, must maintain sub-millisecond latency.

Virtualized RASP, on the other hand, provides fine-grained precision at the container rather than the code. For example, one can alter the JVM to allow/deny/replace code execution, using rules that virtualized RASP imposes on the container rather than the application logic. Virtualized RASP does not demand direct interaction with application code, so there is no recompilation step or any other form of post-processing that require an application or container restart. Altering the runtime behavior of the RASP configuration in the container does not impose any service disruption to legitimate functionality.

For large-scale deployments, being able to abstract protection from the code and application is critical for reducing the overall effort of configuring RASP; avoiding operational downtime; and reacting quickly to newly identified threats.

With respect to virtual patching, virtualized RASP has an inherent advantage because it demands less effort to affect and can be applied with disrupting normal operations. While instrumented RASP can technically be used as a substitute for a binary patch, this activity may have to be carried out in unique fashion for every application, and will still result in operational disruption. The activity would be more costly and risky than applying the binary patch in the first instance.

With respect to obviating the need for binary patches it is important to evaluate a RASP solution's coverage for enterprises running up to 4,000 applications, with perhaps as many as 100,000 JVMs. This is an essential question in light of Oracle's CPUs and quarterly patching cadence. Virtualized RASP vendors have innate superiority at this scale by virtue of exercising control over the container and not the code.

Both instrumented and virtualized RASP implementations offer strong preemptive security capabilities; however virtualized RASP can disable SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and command injection by the use of simple rules (often one line switches) applied to the container and which can be applied to all applications. Again, simplicity and scale are critical factors for enterprises with large Java footprints.

Currently the three top vendors for Java-based RASP solutions are Contrast Security, Prevoty, and Waratek. Contrast's implementation is instrumentation-based, Waratek's are fully virtualized with container-based RASP, and Prevoty offer a plugin and an SDK.

Waratek won the coveted RSA Innovation Sandbox Award in 2015, and Prevoty where finalists in 2016. All three vendors have accumulated a number of other security and innovation awards. These vendors have announced commercial engagements and partnerships that set the stage for enterprise-scale RASP deployments into production environments. Waratek is the only vendor that can boast of a large-scale production deployment with a Tier 1 global investment bank, the most significant deployment of RASP that exists for Java technology today. RASP is now a reality in the cyber security space and a proven technology on the Java platform. It's an effective and secure solution for large enterprises with legacy Java applications or code that requires frequent patching. Over the next year we can expect the rates of adoption to continue increasing, especially in heavily regulated sectors that are seeking innovation to meet the demands of global, regional, and state regulators. Finance, banking, health, and defense are all sectors where I anticipate RASP will flourish.

2016-10-20 14:18 Hussein Badakhchani www.javaworld.com

21 /40 Online VC FundersClub launches Network Search to better connect its 18,000 members Network effects in venture capital are no joke. Sure, people want to close rounds with brand name funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz because they validate startups. But perhaps more importantly, companies become more likely to succeed after closing high profile rounds because of their newfound access to the friends and connections of prominent investors.

Alex Mittal, CEO of FundersClub , has spent a lot of time thinking about how his growing online democratized community of 18,000 investors could leverage its size to offer even better access to industry movers and shakers than the traditional shops of Sand Hill Road. Today, FundersClub is announcing a new search tool the group is calling Network Search.

The tool is something like an exclusive LinkedIn, letting founders and investors connect through a dedicated platform that facilitates warm referrals. Close to 450 founders across 195 FundersClub portfolio companies can mingle with each other for advice and seek introductions to potential new investors vis-à-vis existing investors.

Other well known VC funds like First Round Capital have built proprietary software to enable portfolio companies to bounce ideas off each other, but Mittal, who has access to First Round’s infrastructure, believes there is room to improve on the model. Mittal saw himself, his co- founder Boris Silver, and his founding team as a bottleneck in facilitating interactions among FundersClub members. In typical Silicon Valley fashion, a few lines of code turned out to be all that was needed to get things rolling more efficiently.

Right off the bat there is an incentive for investors to support their companies, but Mittal took things even farther with something of a gamification framework for VC networking. FundersClub members can earn points and badges for contributing back to the community. This includes engaging with founders, answering questions, and facilitating introductions. Right now the points aren’t actually redeemable for anything, but that didn’t stop a generation of millennials from obsessing over Snapchat Scores. Besides, the rewards themselves can serve a purpose somewhat similar to existing web resources to evaluate interactions with investors. Quantifying engagement can absolutely influence the dynamics of who is seen as a market mover, influencer, and key player in an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

More tangibly, FundersClub already offered financial incentives for members to refer promising startups. If the team accepts a startup you brought to the table, you stand to gain 10 percent of the investor carry on the deal.

As of now, these services are exclusively available to individuals that meet the definition of accredited investor from the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but they do serve as yet another sign that the notion of software eating the world does not exclude investors themselves. While surprisingly late to the party, innovative investors like FundersClub , AngelList , and even SignalFire are fundamentally changing assumptions about how successful companies are sourced, financed, and grown.

2016-10-20 13:52 John Mannes feedproxy.google.com

22 /40 Salesforce looks to the future with Einstein artificial intelligence Salesforce has a history of staying close to the cutting edge of technology, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it announced an artificial intelligence initiative recently, it dubbed Einstein.

We caught up with some key members of the Einstein team at Dreamforce earlier this month and asked them to explain the new technology for us.

Einstein isn’t a product so much as a set of intelligence functionality that underlies the entire Salesforce platform, and while the types of functionality that it’s enabling now are somewhat limited, the idea is to provide a base on top of which the company can continue to add new capabilities into the future.

Today, Einstein can provide information like predictive lead scoring and opportunity insights, which alert a rep how a deal is trending — the kinds of information many CRM applications have been offering for some time — but as the technology develops, the company sees a much bigger role for it.

As John Ball, GM of Einstein at Salesforce explains, it’s really aimed at making life easier for users. “What we’re really trying to do is transform the way people work by focusing on what matters and giving them time back.”

Traditionally, sales reps have been expected to input data about their customers and the state of their deals into the system and this is where it’s broken down. In the end, entering that information takes sales people away from their livelihood and there was little upside for them to do this.

What Einstein aims to do is flip that model, so instead of spending a lot of time entering information, the system is going to do a lot of that work for them, and because it’s intelligent, it will provide meaningful suggestions about what to do next. “AI can surface the most important information to the top and say, ‘hey, this is what you need to do next’, so the sales person can do what they do best, which is connecting with the customer, and not spend so much time entering data,” Shubha Nabar, director of data science at Salesforce explained.

The question becomes why is AI taking center stage now for Salesforce and much of the software industry in general. Richard Socher, chief scientist at Salesforce (who came over when the company bought MetaMind last spring) says it’s a perfect convergence of technology and compute power coming together at the right time.

“AI has become really useful due to a number of small improvements on the algorithmic side, having the data, and having the infrastructure and compute to really do it,” Socher said.

It’s easy to think of AI as replacing humans, but sales people are a perfect example of how computers and software can augment what humans do well — in this case, interact with other humans to sell them stuff.

While we may be in the earliest days of artificial intelligence, we should start to see the technology mature over the next 5 or 10 years, and for Salesforce users, that could mean working smarter and faster and knowing the best move to make next.

2016-10-20 12:58 Ron Miller feedproxy.google.com

23 /40 Prelude Fertility aims to give women and couples a choice on the timing of a family With a women’s fertility declining just as they enter the full flush of their careers alongside their male counterparts (usually from the mid 20s to 30s) egg freezing has been on the rise. In 2014 only 6,200 women in the US opted to freeze their eggs to preserve their fertility. It took Apple’s and Facebook’s announcements of egg-freezing benefits — and perhaps a few celebrities making their choice to do so public — to fuel a surge of interest in the idea. Those companies did so because many of their best staff were taking career breaks to raise families. Until now no company has tried to wrap up the key four stages that really do ensure a woman’s fertility: eggs and sperm freezing (in the case of couples) in the peak fertility years (20s-30s); embryo creation; genetic screening for inherited diseases and abnormalities; and the final stage of embryo transfer into the woman’s body.

That company, Prelude, has now been born, and borne to a serial entrepreneur, Martín Varsavsky (pictured). He came up with the idea when he and his wife Nina experienced difficulty creating a family. “When my wife Nina was only 31, her AMH level was prematurely low and her cycles were irregular,” Varsavsky recently told Forbes magazine .

“Being a tech entrepreneur, I started researching her condition, and we decided to go straight for IVF as well as freeze sperm and eggs. We also added the most advanced genetic testing to the mix. The result was phenomenal, we now have two wonderful kids, Mia, 5, and David, 3, and a third one on the way. A fourth baby was born out of our own difficulties—Prelude!”

Now, Lee Equity Partners, Varsavsky, Reproductive Biology Associates (the largest in vitro fertilization clinic in the Southeast), and My Egg Bank North America (the largest frozen donor egg bank in the US) will create Prelude as a national fertility company. Lee Equity Partners has joined forces with Varsavsky to commit up to $200 million in equity to fund the acquisition and partnership with RBA and My Egg Bank. The four steps outlined above will come as a package, instead of being offered piecemeal from disparate companies.

Prelude will provide proactive fertility care to increase people’s chances of having healthy babies “when they’re ready”. This is the key point here. Prelude is, among other things, tapping into a desire of Millennials to get what they want, when they want it. It will do this initially not with a fear campaign (your body click is ticking!) but with a process of education, to get, as Varsavsky puts it, “Millennials to think ahead.”

The statistics appear to be in Prelude’s favor. Around 18% of women never get to have a baby, and another 20% have just one baby when they actually wanted more. If they can decide to egg- freeze earlier (then follow through with the other steps) they could increase the probability of having a healthy baby and decrease the chances of requiring often difficult infertility therapy later in life.

Prelude is effectively taking the idea of egg freezing, plus all the other baby-making processes, and wrapping it up into a Silicon-Valleyesque scaleable platform and simple message.

It will also cater to couples who may not be ready to have children, with sperm freezing for men. The whole thing will be pitched as affordable, with low upfront fees, but to keep the eggs safe and frozen, will cost $199 a month.

Of course, it will likely appeal to professional young women who want to continue with their career for a few more years and tip the balance in favour of having a family slightly later. This make it more like an insurance policy, not a ‘choice’ about opting for IVF in the future, which given its often high failure rate can be no choice at all.

2016-10-20 12:56 Mike Butcher feedproxy.google.com

24 /40 Samsung's 8GB RAM module will let you run virtual machines on mobile devices Pretty soon it will be common for high-end smartphones to have as much -- if not more -- RAM than your PC, as Samsung just unveiled a new 8GB LPDDR4 module for mobile devices featuring large, UHD displays.

Samsung believes that mobile devices equipped with 8GB of RAM will be able to handle 4K video playback with ease but also virtual machines. The latter scenario is not a common on smartphones and tablets, but Samsung wants to bring mobile devices on a similar level to desktops and laptops, at least in consumers' minds.

The module, Samsung says, is twice as fast than the DDR4 RAM that is found in PCs, featuring a speed of up to 4,266 Mbps as opposed to 2,133 Mbps for desktops and laptops. It is also very small, measuring just 15 x 15 x 1.0mm, which means that it meets "the space requirements of most new, ultra slim mobile devices".

"The advent of our powerful 8GB mobile DRAM solution will enable more capable next- generation, flagship mobile devices around the world", said Joo Sun Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to provide advanced memory solutions offering the highest values and leading-edge benefits to meet the escalating needs of devices having dual camera, 4K UHD and VR features".

The 8GB LPDDR4 module uses four of Samsung's latest 16Gb chips made using 10nm technology. The module will be able to be stacked with a UFS storage module or mobile application processor, which is claimed to reduce the amount of space needed inside the package. It requires as much as its existing 4GB module made using the 20nm technology.

2016-10-20 12:51 By Mihăiţă feeds.betanews.com

25 /40 This is the CRISPR-inspired bio-terror drama we deserve, but not the one we need CRISPR is like graphene. It’s one of those exciting new technologies science nerds will invariably invoke as a sort of game changer for every industry imaginable. And indeed, the gene-editing tool has already been unleashed on an impressive range of life- altering tasks, from the removal of malaria from mosquitos to a potential treatment for HIV.

But there’s one job even those egghead scientists couldn’t have possibly foreseen: inspiration for a Jennifer Lopez-produced NBC futuristic bio-terror drama procedural.

I feel like I wouldn’t be able to do such a project the proper justice, so I’m going to go ahead and quote from The Hollywood Reporter’s synopsis of the upcoming NBC series CRISPR , which derives its dystopian plot points from the world-changing technology of the same name,

Oh, and apparently the two, “battle for control over the human genome in a game of cat and mouse in which the future of our species may rest and all disease could one day be eradicated.” Science!

The show will be penned by Bates Motel scribe Anthony Cipriano, and is set to do for genetic research what that series has done for the hospitality industry.

On the upside, CRISPR is about to become water cooler fodder for millions of Americans. On the downside, there seems to be a significant risk it will be treated with the same sort of delicacy Hollywood applies to that thing Mr. Burns used to block out the sun in Springfield and sharks with laser beams.

It’s no Nobel Prize , but it’s something.

2016-10-20 12:50 Brian Heater feedproxy.google.com

26 /40 What you need to know about quantum computing Most people will be familiar with Moore’s Law which states that the number of transistors it’s possible to get on a microprocessor doubles every 18 months. If this holds true it means that some time in the 2020s we’ll be measuring these circuits on an atomic scale.

You might think that that’s where everything comes to a juddering halt. But the next step from this is the creation of quantum computers which use the properties of atoms and molecules to perform processing and memory tasks.

If this all sounds a bit sci-fi, it’s because practical quantum computers are still some way in the future. However, scientists have already succeeded in building basic quantum computers that can perform certain calculations. And when practical quantum computing does arrive it has the potential to bring about a change as great as that delivered by the microchip.

How It Works

Like any other computer a quantum machine works on Turing Theory, using a string of zeroes and ones to give the machine its instructions. However – and this is where it begins to get a bit freaky -- a quantum computer isn’t limited to just two states.

Quantum bits (qubits) can be both zero and one, and all stages in between, at the same time -- something known as parallelism. Qubits represent atoms, ions, electrons or photons and their control devices, all working together to act as computer memory and a processor.

What this parallelism means in practice is that while a conventional Turing Machine processor can only perform one task at a time, a quantum machine can perform many tasks at once. They this have the potential to be hugely more powerful than even the largest current supercomputers.

To put that into numbers, today’s desktop computers typically have processing power measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second). A 30 qubit quantum computer has the potential to run at 10 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second).

There is of course a problem with all this. If a particle representing a qubit is in all states at all times, how do you get a meaningful reading of its value at any one time? The answer is in something called entanglement. This effectively links two particles together so that when disturbed they will adopt opposite values, allowing the qubit to be read.

Controlling Qubits

For quantum computing to be practical you need a way of controlling and reading the qubits. There are a number of possible techniques to achieve this. They can involve using magnetic or optical fields to trap ions, using light waves to control particles, dots of semiconductor material used to hold and manipulate electrons, or exploiting the impurities in semiconductors to contain particles.

Superconductors that allow electrons to flow with minimal resistance are also likely to be used in quantum computing. These need to operate at very low temperatures -- absolute zero -- currently, something which will need to be overcome for practical applications.

History and Development

The theory of quantum computing dates from the early 1980s when it was first mooted by scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory. In 1998 researchers at MIT managed to read a single qubit in an amino acid and hydrocarbon solution.

In 2000 Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US developed a seven qubit computer in a single drop of liquid, using magnetic resonance to manipulate the particles. In the same year IBM Research developed a five qubit computer, programmed by radio pulses and read by magnetic resonance imaging similar to that used in medical scanners. IBM’s team, led by Dr Isaac Chuang, was able to solve in a single step a mathematical problem that would take repeated cycles using conventional computers.

2005 saw the University of Innsbruck create a qubyte -- a series of eight qubits -- using an ion trap technique. A year later scientists in the US had developed controls for a 12 qubit system. By 2007 a Canadian company, D-Wave Systems , was able to demonstrate a 16 qubit machine able to solve pattern matching problems like sudoku.

In 2012 the magazine Nature reported that qubits had be successfully transferred between two laboratories. In the same year Cornell University carried out the largest quantum calculation yet using 28 computational qubits.

From May of 2016 IBM has had a quantum machine available on the cloud at its TJ Watson Research Center in New York. This is currently a five qubit system but IBM’s aim is to increase its power to 50 qubits, at which point the company claims it would be capable of outperforming the world’s current top 500 supercomputers put together.

The Future

Just as the transistor replaced the valve, quantum computers look set to replace silicon chips. However, the field of quantum computing is still a very theoretical one at the moment. No one has yet managed to manipulate more than a few qubits successfully. To be a practical computing method and be able to perform real world tasks a quantum computer would need to be capable of handling at least 36 or 48 qubits. But assuming practical quantum computers can be built in the near future, what impact are they likely to have?

We’ve already seen that quantum computers are very good at things like factoring and matching patterns. This has serious implications for security. If you were to have access to a working quantum computer today, none of the encryption systems currently in use on the Internet would be safe. The flip side of this is that quantum computing could enable much more complex encryption systems that would be impossible to crack with conventional means.

A quantum computer would be able to handle much larger volumes of information and search through databases much faster than current computers too. This is good news in terms of handling the huge amounts of information likely to be generated by the Internet of Things. It could also speed up the design of machinery including, new, more powerful quantum computers.

The requirement for very low temperatures to make superconducting materials work means that a quantum computer in your home or business isn’t likely to be practical in the near future. Linking just a few quantum computers together in the cloud could lead to a quantum internet which would make massive computing power available to everyone, and that could happen sooner than you think.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: The World in HDR / Shutterstock.com

2016-10-20 12:49 By Ian feeds.betanews.com

27 /40 Android 7.1 Developer Preview available, Swift 4.0 road map, and Chaos Monkey 2.0 released—SD Times news digest: Oct. 20, 2016 Android developers can get started with the new release of the developer preview of Android 7.1 Nougat. Developers have access to the SDK and tools right on their devices, and can enroll their devices in the Android Beta Program today.

With this preview, developers can test their apps on the new platform or extend it with features like app shortcuts, and image keyboard support, wrote Dave Burke, Android vice president of engineering. Developers also have access to an updated SDK and tools, documentation, and emulators for running apps on supported devices.

Other highlights include the finalization of new APIs as API Level 25. Also, the Android Developer team opened up publishing on Google Play for apps targeting this new API level. After this preview, the Android Developer team plans on delivering an update in November followed by the final public release in December.

Swift programming language to be divided into two stages Apple has revealed its plans for Swift 4.0. The programming language is focused on two goals: to provide stability for Swift 3 code, and to provide application binary interface (ABI) stability. Since there are two goals, Swift 4.0 will be divided into two stages.

The first stage focuses on the essentials for source and ABI stability, according to Swift’s GitHub page. Stage two is expected to start in the spring of 2017, and it will start once the implementation work in stage one features is “cresting,” according to its GitHub page.

Chaos Monkey 2.0 now available on GitHub Netflix announced an upgrade to its popular open- source projects, Chaos Monkey 2.0.

Chaos Monkey was created to randomly choose servers in Netflix’s production environment, with the ability to turn them off during business hours. With this new release, the Netflix Engineering Team rewrote the service for improved maintainability and added new features like integration with Spinnaker, Netflix’s Continuous Delivery platform. Now, service owners can set their Chaos Monkey configs through the Spinnaker apps. Also, integrating with Spinnaker allowed Netflix to improve the UX.

Chaos Monkey can be configured for specifying trackers, and it introduced small features like automatic opt-out for canaries, cross-account terminations, and automatic disabling during an outage.

Developers can find the code on the Netflix GitHub account.

Microsoft. NET Core tooling in Visual Studio “15” Microsoft is unifying the. NET project system and the build infrastructure with MSBuild. These tools give developers experience in Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code and the command line.

The final release of. NET Core tools will provide a unified build and project system with the rest of. NET project types. The. NET team has preserved key project.json characteristics that developers value, while still enabling new cross-project scenarios that were not possible before, wrote principal program manager on the. NET team David Carmona, and Joe Morris, a senior program manager on the. NET team.

The unified build system includes improved experiences like project references work, integrated package references, cross-targeting support, and the simplified csproj format. A standard build system will give developers access to more APIs, and it can be used to share code across all apps. Microsoft plans on shipping a preview update later this year, with the final version aligned with Visual Studio “15.”

The. NET team’s detailed plans on how to unify the project and build system can be found here. 2016-10-20 12:43 Madison Moore sdtimes.com

28 /40 Securly raises $4 million to put guard rails on the internet for K-12 students Thanks to the Childrens’ Internet Protection Act , schools in the U. S. that provide internet access to their students must also generally use web filtering systems that block them from accessing obscene or harmful content online.

The law, enacted originally in 2000 and updated in 2011, left school districts’ IT departments scrambling to adapt enterprise solutions that were built for deeper-pocketed corporations, for use in their schools.

Now, San Jose startup Securly , has raised $4 million in Series A funding to support the expansion of its cloud-based web filtering system to K-12 schools across the U. S., and the world wherever similar regulations exist.

According to Securly CEO and founder, Vinay Mahadik, the company wants to give schools, and parents, “plug and play security for kids.”

The company plans to invest some of its newly raised funds towards building tools that can detect and will alert parents, via text message, when their kids are threatening to harm another student, inflict self-harm or are expressing suicidal thoughts.

The company is using natural language processing, emotional learning and other machine learning techniques to understand the differences between when a kid is researching serious topics, versus engaging in harmful behavior.

Securly has begun to offer reports via email to parents that broadly outline details about how their kids are using the internet at school. Soon, the company will offer a Securly portal and app where parents can proactively get information about their kids’ digital habits as well, Mahadik said.

The younger the child, the more granular information a parent can attain about his or her internet use. Around age 10-12, when kids begin to understand and want privacy, Securly offers a report that’s more about the broad brushstrokes than the specific games, apps, searches or sites visited by an individual kid.

The company sells its software directly to school districts today. To install Securly, an IT administrator can attain a special IP address from the startup, drop it into a DNS server field in their systems, and within 15 minutes, the schools in their district will be protected by the web filter. Education-focused venture firm Owl Ventures led the Series A round in Securly.

Owl Ventures’ Amit A. Patel lauded Securly for offering schools a way to set their own policies about what is appropriate for students at which levels. There’s a big difference between what is safe for a kindergartener versus a high school junior to watch online, he noted.

Finally, the investor said Owl backed Securly because it has huge potential within the U. S. education enterprise market alone, but could also succeed internationally and as a consumer product.

“As schools within the U. S. and around the world start to incorporate more tech into their teaching, I’d say this is going to become universally needed. This company can serve students around the world, and it’s not necessary that you have certain curriculum that has to be readapted for it to work,” he noted.

The investor expects Securly to develop a home version of its app for parental control of internet-connected devices given the funding, and to continue to roll its enterprise product to schools across the U. S.

2016-10-20 12:36 Lora Kolodny feedproxy.google.com

29 /40 New automation tool helps businesses deploy Docker containers Automated software delivery specialist Puppet is launching a new Docker Image Build tool, which automates the container build process to help organizations as they define, build, and deploy containers into production environments.

It adds to existing Puppet functionality for installing and managing container infrastructure, providing a standard, consistent way to install Docker operating environments as well as building and deploying containers.

"For the last decade Puppet has enabled organizations to adopt the latest technologies and everything running on top of it, including virtualization, public and private clouds, and now containers," says Deepak Giridharagopal, CTO at Puppet. "Over the last year our work around containers has been focused on helping customers install and operate next-gen infrastructure. Now we're extending management to the software running on top of those environments to enable organizations to both build new services and move existing services to containers".

With Puppet Docker Image Build, organizations get a familiar, predictable way to define and deploy the services that run on Docker containers. Puppet's domain specific language supports reusing application configurations, regardless of the underlying infrastructure they run on. Because Puppet provides a straightforward way to move existing services to containers without needing to redefine those services or reinvent the wheel, organizations have a quicker way to get the services they already have deployed to containers and running in production.

The product is available from today and will be on show at this week's PuppetConf. It comes alongside a raft of other announcements including updates to Puppet Enterprise with new reporting capabilities to give teams significantly greater visibility into change, and new orchestration features to enable teams to segment their infrastructure and execute phased deployments. There's also a new vRealize plugin for Puppet Enterprise which enables self service provisioning of VMware infrastructure across on premises and cloud environments.

Image Credit: Stokkete / Shutterstock

2016-10-20 12:16 By Ian feeds.betanews.com

30 /40 Dutch bank ING returns to the UK with a mobile app Dutch bank ING is coming back to the UK after a four-year absence through a mobile app that enables people to manage their accounts with different banks in one place.

The app, known as Yolt , is ING’s first retail banking foray into the UK market since it sold ING direct to Barclays in 2012.

Yolt users can manage their money with different banks in one place by putting all bank accounts in one mobile dashboard. It also lets them know how many days are left till pay day, predicts their bank balance based on their direct debits and points out any significant changes in their spending patterns.

The app was developed in-house by ING’s Innovation Office in Amsterdam.

Ignacio Julia Vilar, chief innovation officer at ING, said the aggregation app is built to suit the way in which people think about money. “How long is it before their pay date, how much are they spending and what is the risk of them going overdrawn?”

The app has been tested with UK consumers since January 2016, as well as the bank’s staff in the ING wholesale banking operation, which continued after the sale of the retail unit.

Yolt is ready for the early adopters and will become available on iOS and Android in the coming months. “We believe we have to reinvent the way we are providing customer service – this is where becoming a platform and ‘the place to go’ is core to our strategy,” said Vilar.

ING CEO Ralph Hamers recently said the bank has the ambition to be a leader in digital banking, including moving to open platforms and new ecosystems, and Yolt is a step in that direction.

2016-10-20 12:00 Services Editor www.computerweekly.com

31 /40 31 /40 Osmo’s new Pizza Co. game uses augmented reality to teach kids about running a business With its latest title, educational game-maker Osmo is tackling a subject that’s close to CEO Pramod Sharma’s heart — entrepreneurship.

Co-founded by Sharma and Jérôme Scholler (both former Googlers), Osmo makes iPad games that combine touchscreen gameplay with real-world objects and physical activities in front of the screen. Past games have covered topics like coding, drawing and math.

Sharma compared the new game, Pizza Co., to the lemonade stand that many kids have operated in the past. (Sadly, I never had one.) The goal is to give players a fun way to understand what goes into running a business, and also help them practice skills like arithmetic and pattern recognition.

So if the lemonade stand is the model, why go with pizza? Sharma’s answer is simple: “Kids love pizza.”

The game’s physical components include a pizza pan and different toppings. Kids play by assembling pizzas based on customer’s orders. The game also comes with play money, so kids can make change for customers after they’ve eaten. (All of this physical activity is captured with Osmo’s reflective camera.)

Sharma noted that in schools, many classes already include store and cash register exercises, but he said Pizza Co. offers a much broader experience, so that kids can start thinking about things like customer satisfaction and using revenue to grow their business.

“I’ve gone through this journey of building a company, entrepreneurs are all going through this journey, so our goal with this was: How do we give that experience to children as a game?” Sharma said. “How can you give them the life of an entrepreneur?”

The main game is designed for kids 7-12, and there’s a “junior” setting for 5- and 6-year-olds.

Pizza Co. sells for $39 — or, if you don’t already own Osmo’s hardware (including an iPad base and camera mirror) you can buy a $59 Commerce Kit that includes the core hardware and the Pizza Co. game. Pizza Co. will also be available in Apple Stores worldwide next month.

2016-10-20 12:00 Anthony Ha feedproxy.google.com

32 /40 32 /40 Automatic launches a new lower cost connected car adapter Automatic went for a more expensive, but more full- featured offering with the 3G-enabled Automatic Pro earlier this year, but the new Automatic Lite delivers a more affordable connected car device with Bluetooth connectivity, at a lower price point than any previous hardware they’ve released.

The new Automatic Lite is $79.95, and will sell at Best Buy, Amazon and Automatic’s own site. The Lite carries no subscription, unlike the Automatic Pro which offers no subscription for connectivity for five years included in the $129.95 purchase price, but makes no specific promises after that. Lite connects to your phone and the new Automatic driving app via Bluetooth, and uses your device’s data connection to communicate with other apps and services.

The Automatic Lite sounds very similar to the original Automatic in terms of what kinds of fear it offers, connecting to your car’s OBD-II port and providing information about engine lights, should any appear on your dash, helping you locate mechanics, tracking trips for easy expensing and locating filling stations and tracking gas costs, too. The new hardware also supports Automatic’s expanding app ecosystem, which includes a number of third-party software optimized to use the data gathered from your car.

Automatic clearly wants to cover the spread here with a range that targets both price-sensitive and convenience-seeking customers. The gap of $50 still seems a little narrow to me, but they are obviously looking to optimize the pricing on the low-end. Cost of entry for this kind of aftermarket add-on is a key sticking point, since many drivers probably aren’t feeling that anything’s necessarily “missing” without these features, so any price savings is likely to attract a fair number of new potential users.

2016-10-20 12:00 Darrell Etherington feedproxy.google.com

33 /40 Bryan Johnson invests $100 million in Kernel to unlock the power of the human brain Earlier this year, former Braintree founder Bryan Johnson publicly announced his plans to forge Kernel , a company with the sole purpose of building hardware and software to augment human intelligence. Today, Johnson is investing $100 million of his own money into the concept, looking to rapidly double the size of his team, shore up a portfolio of intellectual property and prepare for animal and human testing trials for a forthcoming device aimed at reducing cognitive deficiencies for sufferers of conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Kernel is still very much in the planning stages, but the idea is rooted in the research of Theodore Berger, the company’s chief science officer. The futuristic device, which Johnson says might actually not need to be implanted beneath the skull at all, is designed to facilitate communication between brain cells by hacking the “neural code” that enables our brain to store and recall key information. With proper implementation, such a device could correct faulty signals to mend a cognitive impairment.

“We have done this before with biology and genomics,” said Johnson in an interview. “We can program yeast to do a specific function. We can expect the same path with neural code.”

Kernel is a phenomenally ambitious idea but it’s in its infancy. There’s nothing wrong with rooting for adventurous capital-backed ideas, so long as we don’t circle around and back stab them with the expectations of a 10X, 5-7 year growth trajectory. Johnson and his team will have to navigate scientific bottle necks, smooth over fears from the FDA, and win over people’s minds, without their neuroprosthesis of course, before the company really even gets to the Series B stage.

Despite Johnson’s $100 million dollar bet, this company is fundamentally a seed stage investment. In reality, every investment between now and true product market fit will straddle the line between seed and Series A regardless of whether Johnson continues to self-fund his venture or if Google Ventures, KPCB, and Founders Fund all jump in for a party round.

While the future may bring us a Kernel neuroprosthesis capable of turning us into Eddie from Limitless, the near term decisions we must make are a far better use of our time. Much like with fears around AI, it’s far more likely that societal risks will be born in the details. The threat from artificial intelligence today is not Hal 9000 taking over the world, but rather scenarios where deep learning could be used by groups to incite terror through the autonomous classification and destruction of people and places.

Johnson explains that individuals facing cognitive deficiencies will be the first super-humans. This is because the FDA has strict regulations around the enhancement of human brains. If the FDA does decide to relax those rules, it will have serious and profound implications around the right to purchase intelligence, and the right to self address diseases like anxiety and depression. “My intent is to build products for billions of people, not just elite or rich,” Johnson added.

For Johnson, the quest is innately personal. His step-father has early signs of Alzheimer’s. If successful, he hopes that implementing artificial intelligence alongside human intelligence could some day give him back his humanity. He also wants to re-write identity and shake up the ideological core of what it means to be human. No small ambition for a startup.

2016-10-20 12:00 John Mannes feedproxy.google.com

34 /40 34 /40 Jess Lee of Polyvore joins Sequoia Capital as its 11th investing partner Sequoia Capital has brought aboard Jess Lee as its eleventh investing partner in the U. S., becoming the firm’s first senior female U. S. investor in its 44-year-old history.

Lee was a former Google product manager turned CEO of the fashion site Polyvore, which was acquired for $230 million in cash by Yahoo last year. She had stayed on with Yahoo, which is now being sold, maybe , to Verizon, the parent company of TechCrunch.

Lee seemed to demonstrate a strong eye for startups long ago. Indeed, in 2008, as an avid user of Polyvore, which was then just months old, Lee wrote to its founder, Pasha Sadri, with whom she shared mutual friends. After offering him her unsolicited feedback via email about how to improve the site speed and other aspects of its product design, the two met for coffee and she was quickly brought into the company. By 2012, she was its chief executive.

The new appointment is a huge win for Lee, a Stanford grad who grew up in Hong Kong and joked to Fortune last year that she would have gone to art school but “Asian parents don’t really like that,” so she took a more traditional path; it has led her straight to the top of the venture industry.

The appointment is highly meaningful for Sequoia, too, of course. Though Sequoia China, a separate but affiliated fund, has five female investing partners, the storied Sand Hill Road firm has been pressed for years on its lack of any female investors in its ranks. Pressure on the firm seemed to intensify last year after longtime Sequoia investor Michael Moritz gave a widely watched interview given to journalist Emily Chang where they discussed whether Sequoia felt a responsibility to hire women.

Adjusting his collar uncomfortably at the time, Moritz said he’d like to think that the firm is “blind to somebody’s sex, to their religion, to their background.” He’d added that there is, in his view, a pipeline problem to explain the dearth of women at Sequoia. Asked if Sequoia might not be looking hard enough, Moritz had added that Sequoia “looks very hard. .. We just hired a young woman from Stanford who is every bit as good as her peers and if there are more like her, we’ll hire them. What we’re not prepared to do is to lower our standards.”

The comment drew scorn from across the internet, though a Bloomberg story this morning reports that longtime Sequoia partner Roelof Botha invited Lee to join Sequoia in the summer of 2015 when Yahoo acquired Polyvore. Lee reportedly turned the firm down out of loyalty to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who Lee knew from her days at Google.

Sequoia wouldn’t make Lee available for an interview this morning, saying she’d “rather not do any interviews at this time.” But Lee won’t be the lone female investor at Sequoia, which also employs in a more junior investing role Stephanie Zhan, who has enjoyed short-term roles at Nest Labs, Google, and Andreessen Horowitz, and who joined the firm last year.

That might have made some difference to Lee.

At a panel discussion this summer at Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference, Ann Miura- Ko, cofounder of the early-stage firm Floodgate, noted that in addition to herself, her own firm at one point employed a female operating partner, admin, and CFO, and that in searching for associates, “Probably 80 percent of our resumes were from women.” Said Miura-Ko, “It was interesting to me because women tend to feel like they can apply for a position where there are already are women — they feel more welcome there.

“I think an issue with these male dominated firms is they are very open to having women, but women don’t perceive that to the truth, so they may not apply,” Miura-Ko had added. “Or even if they apply and get the position, they question how they’ll fit in. That ends of being more of the issue, from what I’ve heard from other potential female partners [who are] interviewing at firms that only have men. [They’re wondering]: ‘Do I really want to be the first female there, and is that really setting myself up for success?’”

2016-10-20 11:58 Connie Loizos feedproxy.google.com

35 /40 Puppet tightens links to Docker, Jenkins, VMware Puppet is forging tight links between its devops platform and Docker containers, Jenkins continuous integration, and VMware virtual machines. These improvements are part of a series of product unveilings Thursday that also includes the latest version of the Puppet Enterprise datacenter orchestration platform.

For Docker, Puppet is offering its Docker Image Build tool for automating the container build process. "What this allows people to do is reuse their existing Puppet code," Tim Zonca, Puppet marketing vice president, said. If users have already defined a set of services in Puppet, they can take these definitions and feature them in containers in Docker. This adds to previous Puppet capabilities for installing and managing container infrastructure, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos. Docker Image Build is from Puppet's Project Blueshift, which focuses on next-generation infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Jenkins Pipeline plugin lets users set up continuous integration pipelines in Enterprise and build Puppet orchestration jobs targeting deployments to particular applications or infrastructure. "People who optimize their entire software production system can now cut out a host of manual steps," with Jenkins going through CI pipeline details and then creating Puppet orchestration jobs, Zonca said. Puppet could, for example, move software from Jenkins into production, staging, or pre-production. Finally, Puppet's VMware vRealize plugin for Enterprise provides self-service provisioning and enables development of blueprint templates for virtual machines using the vRealize Automation interface. Shipping next month, the plugin also triggers Enterprise to manage the VM so that IT teams have automated, self-service provisioning while enforcing desired configurations on an ongoing basis; developers thus get configured infrastructure upon request.

Also on the docket for Puppet today is Enterprise 2016.4, which adds insight around changes and improves system querying. "The additional insight around change is we've introduced the ability to see corrective change vs. intentional change," Zonca said. Most changes in Puppet are intentional, but in many cases, something can be changed in the infrastructure that is out of compliance with Puppet. This capability helps users understand the difference between the two while speeding up troubleshooting.

The upgrade also features an interface to Puppet Query Language to make it easy to ask questions directly to Puppet without having to code through an API. Puppet users can query the system to get a sense of what is happening with the software they run, getting information, for example, on OpenSSL versions and the number of Windows Server 2008 machines still operating in a particular datacenter.

2016-10-20 11:45 Paul Krill www.infoworld.com

36 /40 EnterpriseDB joins Dell EMC Technology Connect Program EnterpriseDB (EDB), the Postgres database platform company, today announced that it is now an Advantage-level partner in the Dell EMC Technology Connect Partner Program. The Dell EMC Business Partner Program for Technology Connect Advantage Partners provides validated solutions with Dell EMC platforms and leading third-party applications. Joint EDB-Dell EMC customers can purchase Dell EMC solutions validated with the EDB Postgres Advanced Server database.

“We see ever-increasing pressure for scale and performance as we support mission-critical workloads with our open source-based EDB Postgres Advanced Server. Dell EMC’s XtremIO all-flash technology provides our mutual customers with a strong option for optimized storage, allowing us to scale and perform to the standards of our enterprise customers,” said Lenley Hensarling , Senior Vice President, Strategy and Product Management, EnterpriseDB. “Our work with Dell EMC to validate this solution supports our customers’ goal of using open source-based databases as a cost-effective way to support their enterprise digital transformation efforts.”

Dell EMC is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. The Technology Connect Partner Program validates Dell EMC with complementary products. EDB and Dell EMC have collaborated, for example, to demonstrate the performance of the EDB Postgres Advanced Server database on the EMC XtremIO all-flash scale-out array. In testing, Dell EMC found that EDB Postgres on XtremIO consistently delivered high performance in the kind of virtualized environments known for their unpredictability. With XtremIO always-on and in-line, data services like deduplication, compression, and virtual copies help to reduce overall storage capacity requirements.

Dell EMC and EDB also tested the EDB Postgres Advanced Server on DSSD D5, the leader in a new category of flash storage – Rack-Scale Flash support. DSSD’s modern architecture is designed for the most data-intensive applications, both traditional and next-generation, that require extreme levels of performance and the lowest possible latency. DSSD D5 reaches new performance heights, with real-world results that speed applications such as genetic sequencing calculations, fraud detection, credit card authorization, and advanced analytics. With parallelized execution of sequential scans, joins and aggregates enabled in EDB’s upcoming release of EDB Postgres Advanced Server, DSSD’s differentiated performance will be a game changer and will open up new use cases for the joint solution. Already, the results of the Dell EMC and EDB tests show that the unparalleled performance of the DSSD D5, together with flexibility of the EDB Postgres database, provides a unique platform for customers to modernize their traditional database workloads.

Also, currently being tested with EDB Postgres is the DD Boost file system plug-in (BoostFS), a feature of Data Domain Boost software. BoostFS offers increased backup speeds through distributed deduplication, reduced bandwidth requirements, and advanced load balancing and failover. It is simple to deploy and can be up and running in minutes. Administrators of EDB Postgres can now easily meet their most stringent data protection SLA requirements with faster, more efficient backup and recovery.

“We have been working closely with EnterpriseDB testing solutions for relational database workloads where there is a clear need for cost effective and resilient infrastructure,” said Russ Barck , Senior Director for Technology Alliances at Dell EMC. “Through combining Dell EMC’s leadership in Servers, All Flash Storage and Enterprise Backup with EnterpriseDB’s leadership in Operational DBMS support, customers can now experience the scale, performance and data protection of Dell EMC with the simplicity of EnterpriseDB.”

2016-10-20 11:39 SD Times sdtimes.com

37 /40 Outcry as Facebook removes Swedish breast cancer video The video, displaying animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, aimed to explain to women how to check for suspicious lumps.

Sweden's Cancerfonden said it has tried to contact Facebook without any response and has decided to appeal the decision to remove the video.

Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

"We find it incomprehensible and strange how one can perceive medical information as offensive," Cancerfonden communications director Lena Biornstad told AFP.

"This is information that saves lives, which is important for us," she said. "This prevents us from doing so. " Facebook faced outrage in September for repeatedly deleting a historic Vietnam War photo included in a post by Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

It said the iconic photo of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm bombing violated its rules but later backtracked on the decision.

Explore further: Facebook apologizes for removing 'napalm girl' photo

2016-10-20 11:38 phys.org

38 /40 Award-winning software quality leader Undo raises $3.3 million in Series A financing Undo , the leading commercial supplier of next-generation software quality tools for Linux and Android developers, today announced it has closed a $3.3 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a preferred investor for the University of Cambridge and a Cambridge-based investor in technology companies. The latest round of funding will enable the expansion of Undo’s product portfolio, with a strong emphasis on Continuous Integration (CI) and DevOps.

In addition to CIC, investors include Rockspring, Martlet, Sir Peter Michael (founder of Quantel, Classic FM and California’s Peter Michael Winery), the Cambridge Angels group and Jaan Tallinn (a founder of Skype and Kazaa). The round closed in October 2016.

“We are thrilled to have a group of CIC’s stature to lead our Series A investment round. We will use the funds to drive company growth via continued innovation in our core technology and specific investments in initiatives that further strengthen use of the technology in CI and other test automation for DevOps teams.” said Greg Law, CEO and co-founder, Undo. “Debugging is a $312 billion industry problem each year [1]. While there are lots of tools on the market that can tell us when performance goes bad, few can reliably determine why and precisely where. Our technology tackles this issue, helping our customers increase their productivity and improve their overall software quality.”

Undo secured its initial seed funding in 2012, when the company was based in Greg’s garden shed. Today, Undo is a recognized leader in software debugging and recording technology that gives developers precise visibility into their software failures. The technology is able to record a Linux or Android program’s execution for subsequent replay and analysis. A developer can go back in time to any instruction in the program’s history and view any location in memory.

Undo’s products are used today by many of the world’s biggest and best technology companies and leading global banks. The technology has received numerous awards, including winning ‘Best Software Product’ at the 2015 ARM Innovation Challenge and the Accenture FinTech Innovation Programme 2016. The financing comes on the heels of the company’s expansion into the Jenkins community. Undo announced a Live Recorder plugin for Jenkins in September at the Jenkins World 2016 conference.

“With nearly half of all developers spinning their tires on debugging, Undo’s products not only solve complex real-world problems for thousands of DevOps and development teams, but do so on a global scale,” said Victor Christou, CEO, Cambridge Innovation Capital. “Undo’s innovative technologies, combined with exciting expected growth in its core market globally, make it a great addition to the high calibre of businesses that continue to bloom here in Cambridge.”

2016-10-20 11:37 SD Times sdtimes.com

39 /40 Google reportedly signs deal with CBS for Unplugged, YouTube's upcoming streaming TV service CBS has become the first major network to sign up for YouTube’s upcoming over-the-top Internet television service according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

People familiar with the matter tell the Journal that Google is also close to signing a distribution deal with 21 st Century Fox and is conducting advanced talks with Comcast’s Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal. Variety also corroborated the Journal’s report.

Rumors surfaced earlier this year that YouTube would be launching an over-the-top television service called Unplugged that’ll debut in early 2017 at the soonest.

Like rivals Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, the idea behind Unplugged is to offer consumers a low-cost option to pay-TV targeting both cord-cutters and those that may have never done business with traditional cable and satellite providers.

Both Apple and streaming provider Hulu are reportedly building streaming TV services. AT&T is also working on a DirecTV-powered streaming video service that’s likely to arrive by the end of the year, setting the stage for what could quickly become a crowded market.

CBS and YouTube aren’t exactly strangers. Nearly a decade ago, the two reportedly flirted with a partnership that would have let YouTube host clips from various CBS shows after they aired on broadcast television. A deal would have created additional revenue for both parties but ultimately fell apart as the two sides couldn’t agree on how best to implement it.

2016-10-20 11:30 Shawn Knight www.techspot.com

40 /40 AWS, VMware Pact Eases Hybrid Cloud Adoption The pact between VMware and Amazon Web Services has enough engineering chops to it that a carefully configured, virtualized application inside the enterprise no longer needs to be fit into an Amazon Machine Image instance when it arrives at the AWS cloud.

In the past, AWS converted the VMware workload to its own preferred form of virtualization -- an Amazon Machine Image -- and required the customer to select a predefined combination of CPU, memory, and storage to fit it. The fit would rarely be perfect. Amazon did its best to satisfy everyone by fielding 45 different server instances, from T2 Nano to D2 8XLarge. It's still not the same as keeping the virtual machine you've already built.

As VMware brought increasing sophistication into data center management, the value of constructing exactly what the customer wanted went to waste when that workload was transferred to the AWS EC2 cloud. It wasn't only a different virtual machine format, but also a different virtual network and security scheme. In addition, the preset AWS instances overrode many of the customer's previous choices.

Not only that, but the management tools VMware had developed -- it's the leader in the marketplace, according to Gartner -- needed to be discarded and the Amazon way of doing things adopted.

So what if the operations manager had carefully followed the procedures in VMware's vRealize Suite in configuring, deploying, and planning the capacity of his or her infrastructure? That went by the boards when it came time to move workloads into the Amazon cloud.

That's why the agreement VMware and AWS announced Oct. 13 may prove fruitful beyond any present reckoning.

The gap between AWS and VMware environments was an opening that one of their mutual competitors, Microsoft, was in a position to fill.

Microsoft Windows Server and System Center were already inside the enterprise data center, alongside VMware. Cloud operations were the chink in VMware's armor.

Even if its higher-priced products continued to hold sway over the data center operations, what were its customers going to do as they pursued hybrid cloud computing (running a data center that could work seamlessly with a public cloud service)? Microsoft offered some answers, down to the ability to create an Azure-like environment inside the corporate data center.

Since August 2013, VMware's answer was the vCloud Air public cloud service.

However, with the virtualization market slowing down, VMware's ability to build out a large chain of vCloud Air data centers around the world was limited. Nor was it clear that its existing customers, already gaining experience with Amazon and other clouds, would wait for it to do so.

Building cloud data centers was a long way from its core competence -- serving as an enterprise software company. On the other hand, the public cloud was the one place where archrival Microsoft, supplier of Hyper-V virtualization, was doing well.

By 2015, Microsoft's Azure cloud was beginning to pull away from Google, IBM, and Rackspace. As a matter of fact, it was leaving VMware's vCloud Air in the dust. If VMware continued to put its chips only in its own public cloud, the advantage in building a hybrid cloud operation might slip away.

VMware faced a choice: Did it wish to bet big on its own future as a cloud supplier and continue to hope its customers would eventually turn to vCloud Air? Or could it adopt a different strategy and negotiate a cooperative agreement with Amazon?

VMware former COO Carl Eschenbach once disparagingly characterized Amazon as "a company that sells books. " But on Oct. 13, VMware swallowed its pride and decided a bookseller might not be such a bad cloud partner after all.

VMware and AWS are promising the full vSphere environment currently managing the majority of enterprise data centers can now be duplicated on Amazon EC2. All the tools and deployment systems that work inside vSphere will work there as well. As previously noted, carefully calibrated virtual machine workloads will be accepted as is and run as is on the AWS public cloud.

In addition, AWS now allows its cloud-scaled Aurora database system to be linked directly to the AWS Lambda service. That might not sound like a breakthrough, but that means a stored procedure in the database can invoke a Lambda function (a microservice, stored on EC2 waiting to be woken up), and use it to check for the latest data or bring some other essential ingredient to what a database application is doing.

[Want to see a previous cloud supplier agreement VMware struck? Read VMware Customers Cautious About vCloud Air, Ready for IBM .]

Amazon is beginning to knit cloud services useful to IT together. Ultimately they will be made available to the VMware virtual machines running on the AWS VMware Cloud Foundation.

This is hybrid cloud computing, where the enterprise never builds another data center but invokes the public cloud instead. It's hybrid cloud computing when an overworked application in the enterprise is vMotioned out onto the cloud for additional processing power the few times a year that it's needed.

Microsoft, which has already leaped a number of hurdles to match VMware in virtualization, suddenly has another high hurdle in front of it. It will once again be playing catch-up to VMware and AWS as it tries to duplicate all the capabilities that their technical partnership enables.

It looked like it was catching up, but it may take one or two years, possibly more, before observers will be saying that again. Meanwhile, the potent duo of AWS and VMware won't be standing still in their new partnership.

2016-10-20 11:05 Charles Babcock www.informationweek.com

Total 40 articles.

Created at 2016-10-21 00:01