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82 articles, 2016-04-06 00:03 1 Twitter makes it easier to share tweets privately with new button on iOS and Android While nowhere near as big as this morning's news that Twitter will live stream the NFL's Thursday Night Football, the company is announcing another change to.. 2016-04-05 20:16 (2.00/3) 2KB feedproxy.google.com 2 Roku debuts a new Streaming Stick with a quad-core processor, support for private listening Roku this morning introduced the third generation of its lower-cost streaming service, the Roku Streaming Stick, priced at $49.99, and a competitor to other.. 2016-04-05 20:16 4KB (2.00/3) feedproxy.google.com 3 Black Duck Names Open-Source Rookies of the Year The 2015 Open-Source Rookies class reflects three technologies shaping open-source software's future: Docker containers, open collaboration and AI. 2016-04-05 05:58 1KB

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4 Jury awards $20 million in YouTube video game channel dispute A Dallas jury has awarded two businessmen a total of $20.3 million as a result of wrongdoings related to a YouTube gaming channel. 2016-04-06 00:03 2KB www.techspot.com 5 Automatic programming makes swarm robots safer and more reliable Researchers have applied a novel method of automatically programming and controlling a swarm of up to 600 robots to complete a specified set of tasks simultaneously. 2016-04-05 23:34 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 6 Quick drawing of complex relationships Quality criteria for a readable graphic representation of complex relationships are high. For example, the node points have to be located at sufficient distances in order to be identifiable. At the same time, the graph drawing tool has to arrange all edges in a way that... 2016-04-05 23:34 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 7 Speed-reading your microbiome Researchers have built a microbiome analysis platform called QIIME (pronounced “chime” and short for “Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology”). This software will now be more readily accessible to hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world through BaseSpace, a cloud-based app store. 2016-04-05 23:33 5KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 8 How is a developing brain assembled? NIH 3-D software tracks worm embryo's brain development A new, open-source software that can help track the embryonic development and movement of neuronal cells throughout the body of the worm, is now available to scientists. 2016-04-05 23:33 6KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 9 New open source software for high resolution microscopy With their special microscopes, experimental physicists can already observe single molecules. However, unlike conventional light microscopes, the raw image data from some ultra-high resolution instruments first have to be processed for an image to appear. For the ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy that is... 2016-04-05 23:33 3KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 10 Stratford Festival launches new Shakespeare online toolkit The Stratford Festival in Canada is commemorating the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death by making his plays accessible to a generation raised on the Internet. 2016-04-05 22:13 1KB phys.org 11 Nations ranked on their vulnerability to cyberattacks: United States ranked 11th safest of 44 nations studied, highlighting critical vulnerabilities Some nations are better prepared than others to deal with damaging cyberattacks from criminals, terrorists and rogue nations. Data experts have ranked the vulnerability of 44 nations to cyberattacks. The United States ranked 11th safest, while several Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland)... 2016-04-05 22:22 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 12 Think twice about android root: Engineers quantify amount of Android root exploits available in commercial software and show that they can be easily abused In recent years the practice of Android rooting, that is the process of allowing an Android phone or tablet to bypass restrictions set by carriers, operating systems or hardware manufacturers, has become increasingly popular. Many rooting methods essentially operate by launching an exploit (or malicious... 2016-04-05 21:04 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 13 Security Think Tank: Ignoring software patching spells trouble What strategies can companies adopt to help keep up with and deal with the huge volume of software updates they are facing? 2016-04-05 21:15 1KB www.computerweekly.com 14 New vulnerability discovered in common online security One of the world's most common security software packages – used as the basis of protection for many web browsers – has been found to be vulnerable to a specific form of attack, according to research. 2016-04-05 21:14 3KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 15 Dynamic cyber warning software looks promising Researchers are seeing potential in a software application that could effectively warn users when they are about to give away sensitive personal information online. 2016-04-05 21:13 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 16 Modified laser cutter prints 3-D objects from powder: Bioengineers make open-source laser sintering printer for biomaterials fabrication An open-source system has been created that uses a laser to melt powdered plastics and biomaterials into intricate 3-D designs. The OpenSLS selective laser sintering system costs about 40 times less than its commercial counterparts and allows researchers to work with their own specialized powdered materials. 2016-04-05 21:12 7KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 17 Development of an evaluation platform capable of validating wide-area distribution systems: Training scenarios for complicated, simultaneous disasters and interference to become possible A new research project developed 'DESTCloud,' an evaluation platform that validates the disaster tolerance and fault tolerance of wide-area distribution systems consisting of multiple computers on a network. This platform, utilizing a wide-area virtualized environment comprised of multiple research institutes known as ... 2016-04-05 21:11 5KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 18 TiE Global Chairman Venktesh Shukla Joins Fenox Venture Capital as General Partner Fenox Venture Capital is bringing on TiE Global Chairman and the founder of TiE Angels, Venktesh Shukla, as General Partner. For the unfamiliar, TiE is a.. 2016-04-05 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com

19 Thrive Market brings its organic grocery store to Android A company tapping into consumers' growing desire for healthier food and organic products, Thrive Market is today bringing its online grocery store to Android.. 2016-04-05 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 20 Etsy launches Pattern, a website builder for its sellers With the launch of a new service called Pattern, Etsy is making it easier for people to sell custom goods on their own websites. Apparently, more than.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 21 Marijuana deliverer Meadow rolls up $2.1M for dispensary sales software Meadow already lets you get a prescription for medical marijuana over video chat and order from a nearby shop that delivers. Now it wants to be the backbone.. 2016-04-05 20:16 7KB feedproxy.google.com 22 Cookies teases its payment app that wants to become the Venmo of Europe Cookies wants to become the Venmo of Europe with a consumer app to pay back your friends in no time and with no fees. The company promises a speedy onboarding.. 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 23 WhatsApp completes end-to-end encryption rollout It's a security project that's taken around two years to complete, but messaging giant WhatsApp has now fully implemented strong end-to-end encryption on its.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 24 Sony is launching PS4 remote play on Mac and PC tomorrow A few months after teasing the feature on Twitter, Sony is adding remote play on Windows and OS X with the new PS4 3.50 update that is going to be available.. 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 25 Chat app Kik launches a bot store and anyone can make bots for it It seems like barely a day passes without some notable mention of chat bots in the tech industry. Now one of North America's most used chat apps has jumped on.. 2016-04-05 20:16 7KB feedproxy.google.com 26 Flywheel raises $4M for its designer-focused WordPress hosting platform WordPress sites make up a massive chunk of the Internet, so it's no surprise there are also plenty of services that specialize in hosting them. WordPress.. 2016-04-05 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 27 Lydia is launching a bot to pay back your friends directly from Slack Lydia and Slack are two charming services and I like using them. So when I learned the two of them were having a baby together, you bet I was excited... 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 28 PayPal cancels plan to hire 400 people in North Carolina to protest anti-LGBT law PayPal is taking a strong stance in favor of the LGBT community. A couple of weeks ago, North Carolina lawmakers passed a disappointing law that prohibits.. 2016-04-05 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 29 IKEA ponders the future of retail with virtual reality pilot app IKEA is coming to VR, but it's sadly leaving the Swedish meatballs behind in regular reality. The cheapo furniture company unexpectedly announced this.. 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 30 Starz launches a streaming service for cord cutters with support for downloads Another premium cable TV network, Starz, is taking the plunge into the streaming video market with today's launch of its own standalone streaming service,.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 31 The Awl and other indie publishers are moving to Medium Medium is releasing a new set of tools for publishers to convince them to drop their good old content management systems. And it seems to be working as a few.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 32 Intel acquires Italy’s Yogitech to improve functional safety of autonomous cars, IoT systems The concept of the Internet of Things is getting a big boost from emerging industries like autonomous cars and robotics, and today Intel announced an.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 33 DreamHost’s OpenStack-powered EC2 rival comes out of beta DreamHost is best known as a web hosting service, but the company has also long been a major contributor to the open source OpenStack platform for.. 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 34 Google’s head of ads and commerce is coming to Disrupt NY Yep, ads are going to be a big topic at Disrupt New York. We've already announced speakers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and AdBlock Plus, but.. 2016-04-05 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 35 Aiming to be the OpenTable of kids’ activities, Sawyer raises $1.5 million Numerous startups now sell class passes for children's activities, including KidPass, which announced $325,000 in seed funding in January, and Pearachute (it.. 2016-04-05 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 36 These mixed-reality trailers show you exactly what gaming on the HTC Vive is like One of the toughest things about VR gaming is explaining it to people who have never played it. That can be a tough obstacle to companies trying to get.. 2016-04-05 20:16 1KB feedproxy.google.com 37 The reality of AR/VR business models There is nearly as much confusion as there is excitement about augmented and virtual reality. While VR could be big and AR could be bigger (and take longer),.. 2016-04-05 20:16 9KB feedproxy.google.com 38 Senders (dangerously) wants to know everything about your email recipients The advent of email tracking has caused quite a bit of ruckus, and is generally, rather creepy. A NY-based startup called One More Company made an attempt.. 2016-04-05 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 39 IBM Kick-Starts Eclipse OMR, a Toolkit for Creating Language Runtimes IBM has created Eclipse OMR, an open-source virtual machine toolkit to create runtime environments for any language. OMR aims at leveraging general improvements in virtual machine technology across languages, like garbage collection or hardware integration. To achieve this, IBM is generalising its own JVM, J9. 2016-04-05 18:35 4KB www.infoq.com

40 Microsoft's Mehdi: Data security is always under attack Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices Group, Yusuf Mehdi, discusses the state of security and privacy in tech as well as the possibility that the company may acquire Yahoo, on the sidelines of Microsoft's Build 2016 conference. 2016-04-05 19:07 854Bytes video.cnbc.com 41 Microsoft's Xbox Kinect breathes new life into respiratory assessment Xbox Kinects could be used in the future to assess the health of patients with conditions such as cystic fibrosis. Normally found in the hands of gamers rather than medics, the Microsoft sensors could be used to assess the respiratory function of patients. 2016-04-05 18:36 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 42 GIMPS project discovers largest known prime number The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the new largest known prime number, having 22,338,618 digits, on a university computer volunteered by Curtis Cooper for the project. The global network of CPUs peaking at 450 trillion calculations per second remains the... 2016-04-05 18:35 7KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 43 Apache Java Tool for Editing PDF Programming book reviews, programming tutorials,programming news, C#, Ruby, Python,C, C++, PHP, Visual Basic, Computer book reviews, computer history, programming history, joomla, theory, spreadsheets and more. 2016-04-05 17:17 2KB www.i-programmer.info 44 Hadoop Creator Cutting Talks Big Data Past, Present, Future Hadoop creator Doug Cutting led off the keynote addresses at the Strata + Hadoop event in San Jose on March 30, marking the 10th anniversary of the big data technology and talking about what the future may hold. 2016-04-05 21:00 4KB www.informationweek.com 45 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it Irony alert: Google Translate bug brands Russians as occupiers when translating from Ukrainian 2016-04-05 16:58 3KB www.v3.co.uk 46 Lightning Rock invokes nostalgia with new game 'Marble Mountain' If you were a fan of the classic 80's title Marble Madness, you're sure to find some feelings of nostalgia for Lightning Rock's 'Marble Mountain'. The marble puzzle title is now available via Steam. 2016-04-05 17:14 1KB feedproxy.google.com 47 Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO — March 9, 2016 — Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc... 2016-04-05 19:50 2KB news.microsoft.com 48 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner Google retracted its ‘mic drop’ option from Gmail only a few hours after launch when it became abundantly clear, the fun just didn’t seem... 2016-04-05 16:43 21KB feeds2.feedburner.com 49 Google Play logos get a new look Google has refreshed its Play logo with a brighter lick of paint, and is introducing more consistent branding in the coming weeks, with new icons designed around its Material Design visual language. 2016-04-05 16:18 1KB feedproxy.google.com

50 IT pros have bad security habits Double standards, double standards everywhere. Our IT bosses might force us to change our passwords every so often, but they rarely change their own credentials, even though theirs offer administrative privileges. Double standards, double standards everywhere. Our IT bosses might force us to... 2016-04-05 15:50 2KB feeds.betanews.com 51 Get this "Windows 10 at Work for Dummies" ebook, for free Claim your "Windows 10 at Work for Dummies" free eBook (valued at $17.99) today. The fast and easy way to get up and running with Windows 10 at work, offered for free by Wiley. 2016-04-05 15:08 2KB feedproxy.google.com 52 Would you pay $3.99 a month for an Outlook.com Premium subscription? Outlook.com offers all the right features that most consumers expect in an email service these days. But, if you are power users, Microsoft believes you may be looking for more, which is why the software giant is now trialling a Premium subscription. Outlook.com... 2016-04-05 15:05 2KB feeds.betanews.com 53 iPhone SE launch weekend sales "lackluster," but iPad Pro proves popular While the majority of reviews for Apple’s recent iPhone SE have been overwhelmingly positive, calling it the best 4-inch phone you can buy, the public reception has been slightly muted. 2016-04-05 15:00 2KB www.techspot.com 54 HP's new Spectre laptop is thinner and more powerful than Apple's MacBook HP's latest laptop for consumers is targeted directly at Apple's MacBook, and although it might impress with its powerful internals and luxurious design, it's definitely not perfect. 2016-04-05 14:52 3KB feedproxy.google.com 55 HP introduces world's thinnest laptop, the Spectre 13.3 with sixth-gen Core i5 / i7 CPUs The next MacBook (Air) killer – it’s a cliché that’s way past its prime but when a company sets about designing a notebook for that specific purpose, how else can you describe it? 2016-04-05 14:15 2KB www.techspot.com 56 Open source database targets the big data analytics market Leader in open source databases MariaDB is announcing the release of its new big data analytics engine, MariaDB ColumnStore. Leader in open source databases MariaDB is announcing the release of its new big data analytics engine, MariaDB ColumnStore. It unifies transactional and massively parallelized analytic workloads o… 2016-04-05 14:12 2KB feeds.betanews.com 57 Reducing costs is a growing priority for IT departments IT departments in businesses across Europe are still focused on saving money, and not on adding value to the company, or innovating to support further growth. Those are the results of a new survey by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Claranet. IT departments in businesses across... 2016-04-05 14:12 2KB feeds.betanews.com 58 Android Auto Rolls Into 18 New Countries Google's Android Auto tool that gives drivers access to features including maps, music, and search, is now available in a larger selection of countries around the world. 2016-04-05 14:06 2KB www.informationweek.com 59 This is what happens if you drop your Galaxy S7 Edge on the edge Should you get a case for your Galaxy S7 Edge? Well if you think you'll drop it on the edge, it's probably worth getting some protection for your $700 smartphone, as it's remarkably easy to shatter the curved glass. I've… 2016-04-05 13:30 1014Bytes www.techspot.com 60 Ashampoo releases Photo Optimizer 2016, Backup 2016 Berlin-based developer Ashampoo has released two free programs: Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2016, and Ashampoo Backup 2016. Berlin-based developer Ashampoo has released two free programs: Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2016, and Ashampoo Backup 2016. Photo Optimizer 2016 is a stripped down version of the company’s commercial … 2016-04-05 13:28 2KB feeds.betanews.com 61 Tesla misses Q1 shipping target raising doubts over Model 3 production goals Tesla missed its Q1 shipping target for its current cars, the Model S and the Model X. The main cause was a shortage of parts. This episode raises doubts over whether the Model 3 won't face delays. 2016-04-05 13:20 1KB feedproxy.google.com 62 Behavior ID strengthens mobile and web security Whether it's down to stolen credentials, weak passwords or bot-based attacks, the threat of an account takeover is one of the major worries for most users. Whether it’s down to stolen credentials, weak passwords or bot-based attacks, the threat of an account... 2016-04-05 13:09 2KB feeds.betanews.com 63 Save 89% off The Complete Computer Science Bundle via Deals Save more than $300 off The Complete Computer Science Bundle. Eight courses (78+ hours) to get a quality tech education - from coding to design - without paying exorbitant tuition fees. 2016-04-05 13:04 1KB feedproxy.google.com 64 Artificial intelligence could be another tool for blind programmers A blind Microsoft developer can see by using an artificial intelligence headset, expanding the arsenal of tools for blind developers 2016-04-05 12:58 2KB sdtimes.com 65 China's Huatai Securities vying to acquire AssetMark - sources April 5- Huatai Securities Co Ltd is seeking to acquire U. S. asset management software maker AssetMark Inc for as much as $800 million, according to people familiar with the matter, in the latest example of a Chinese company taking an interest in U... 2016-04-05 12:11 2KB www.cnbc.com 66 Next-Generation Databases Shift IT Priorities As organizations consider analytics in an era of big data, they are also considering a range of new database types to accommodate the challenges that come with it. A new survey looks at the databases under consideration, the big concerns of IT pros in charge of these... 2016-04-05 12:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 67 The Valve-Backed HTC Vive is Virtual Reality at its Best and Worst Valve and HTC's Vive is the most immediately impressive (and imposing) VR headset on the market. And it comes with a price to match: $800. Once you've got everything setup you can walk through a virtual space with your own legs and... 2016-04-05 12:00 10KB www.techspot.com 68 Salesforce acquires MetaMind, the Civil Infrastructure Project, and Appy Builder— news digest: April 5, 2016 Salesforce acquires an AI company; the Linux Foundation focuses on critical civil services; Appy Builder makes Android development easy 2016-04-05 11:34 2KB sdtimes.com

69 Facebook's AI Technology Describes Photos To Visually Impaired Users Visually impaired Facebook users will now find it easier to catch up with their friends' and family's photos with automatic alternative text for iOS. The new feature, called automatic alternative text, is based on the social network's AI technology. 2016-04-05 11:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 70 SmartBear announces new developer-focused test automation tool TestLeft Helps Developers Create Robust Tests within IDEs, Minimizing Test Creation and Maintenance Time in a Continuous Delivery Environment 2016-04-05 10:47 5KB sdtimes.com 71 Red Hat introduces new DevOps training and certifications Offerings will help IT professionals expand expertise in container, OpenShift, Ansible, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, and Puppet technology 2016-04-05 10:45 1KB sdtimes.com 72 Toptal acquires business talent marketplace Skillbridge Acquisition creates the world’s largest network for top freelance developers, designers, and business professionals 2016-04-05 10:44 3KB sdtimes.com 73 Microsoft squashes Xbox neXt rumors With reports stating that Sony is planning to announce a new version of the PlayStation 4 later this year - possibly before the arrival of the console’s VR headset in October - people are now wondering if Microsoft will follow… 2016-04-05 10:30 2KB www.techspot.com 74 Mobile Revolution Will Kill Siloed Apps, Forrester Says Forrester anticipates a future in which mobile apps give way to experiences that draw from multiple services to address consumer needs. Here's what it means to your business. 2016-04-05 10:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 75 Watch as this master artisan meticulously sculpts a Deathclaw from Fallout 4 Sculpting has always been a fascination of mine. Regardless of the raw materials in play, it’s amazing to watch what a skilled artisan can do with some clay, metal wire and… aluminum foil? 2016-04-05 09:45 1KB www.techspot.com 76 Microsoft Outlook Premium Enters Beta Testing Microsoft has begun testing a new Outlook Premium service, which will be free for the first year and $4 per month after that. 2016-04-05 09:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 77 Perfecto expands its digital reach Perfecto Mobile is expanding its Continuous Quality Lab to help enterprises deliver high- quality web and mobile experiences to end users 2016-04-05 08:00 3KB sdtimes.com 78 VMware goes after Outlook with Boxer email app for AirWatch VMware launched a new version of the Boxer iOS app for companies using VMware to manage their employees' mobile devices 2016-04-05 06:17 2KB www.infoworld.com 79 This startup uses math to show whether your network is safe Veriflow uses a verification system from the space program to study all possible data paths 2016-04-05 04:28 4KB www.infoworld.com 80 Windows Device Recovery Tool images for older devices will not be updated to Windows 10 Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Phone 8.1 recovery images will continue to be available through the Windows Device Recovery Tool for devices that have been upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile. 2016-04-05 03:34 1KB feedproxy.google.com 81 Microsoft clarifies potential changes to the Start Menu in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update During the Build developer conference, Microsoft noted some possible changes to the Start Menu, which includes a hamburger menu. Here is what that menu will look like and what it will do. 2016-04-05 03:14 1KB feedproxy.google.com 82 Tickets to the 2016 The International Dota 2 Championships go on sale this week Valve recently revealed that tickets for this year’s The International Dota 2 Championships will go on sale later this week. Here’s everything you need to know about the year’s largest eSports event. 2016-04-05 00:15 2KB www.techspot.com Articles

82 articles, 2016-04-06 00:03

1 Twitter makes it easier to share tweets privately with new button on iOS and Android (2.00/3) While nowhere near as big as this morning’s news that Twitter will live stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football , the company is announcing another change to its service today aimed at increasing the functionality and usage of its Direct Message (private messaging) feature. Starting today, the company is adding a new “Message” button to tweets on iOS and Android that will allow users to more easily take a public conversation private. That is, when you click this button, you’ll be able to share the tweet via Direct Message (DM) right from your Twitter Timeline. To be clear, the ability to share tweets privately is not new. In fact, this feature was first introduced in late 2014 with support for desktop and mobile. Even at that time, the option wasn’t something Twitter users were exactly clamoring for — it served more as a nice addition, if anything. But Twitter now sees a need to promote this type of interaction — the transition from public conversations to private ones — as the feature’s usage is growing. Twitter claims the number of tweets shared privately grew 200 percent in the second half of 2015. That’s faster than growth in private messaging in general, which climbed 60 percent in 2015. According to the company, the addition of the button is in response to user feedback about the feature. Users said they wanted it to be easier to share tweets like this, Twitter claims. Before, the option was available by tapping the “More” button, then choosing “Share via Direct Message.” Now the button is right there on the tweet itself, taking up valuable real estate on mobile’s small screens. The change is also one of many tweaks Twitter has been making to its Direct Messaging feature in recent months. The company has also introduced support for GIFs and emojis , group messaging and customer service features , and it removed the 140-character limit for DMs. Many have said that Twitter should consider breaking out private messaging as its own application, but that has yet to come to pass. Still, Twitter insiders have continued to pitch this idea internally, a report from re/code notes. This change, while far from realizing that vision, still shows that Twitter is carefully considering the importance of private messaging in a world where its app competes with things like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and others. The new button is arriving today in the Twitter for iOS and Android updated applications. 2016-04-05 20:16 Sarah Perez

2 Roku debuts a new Streaming Stick with a quad-core processor, support for private listening (2.00/3) Roku this morning introduced the third generation of its lower-cost streaming service, the Roku Streaming Stick, priced at $49.99, and a competitor to other sticks and dongles, like Google’s Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. The new device now includes a quad-core processor which will make using Roku’s software feel speedier than before, and it also introduces a way to use the Stick and Roku’s mobile application for private listening. That is, thanks to a forthcoming mobile app update, Roku Streaming Stick owners will be able to plug in their headphones to their smartphone, then push a button in the app to stream the audio from their program to their mobile device. Wireless headphones will also be supported. A similar feature has previously been available for the Roku streaming player models (3 and 4), thanks to a headphone jack on the accompanying remote control – but it had not yet been possible for the stick. The company says the new device has 8 times the processing power of the prior version, and with the quad-core processor it now tops the processing power of other competitors’ sticks, including those from Google and Amazon. This is meant to be a big selling point for new Roku, as this entry-level device is meant to attract those who want the convenience of a portable form factor, but who don’t want to suffer from a poor streaming and browsing experience. That hasn’t always been the case with Roku’s earlier models, however – its previous generation sticks could feel a little slow, especially in comparison with its streaming players. While Roku doesn’t break out which of its devices are the most popular in terms of sales, the company did tell us that overall, the streaming stick category is the fastest-growing in the wider market. That’s why it makes sense that it’s now rolling out a new model – its last update to the Stick was in 2014, after the initial version was introduced in 2012. In addition, the updated Stick includes other features like more performant, dual-band MIMO wireless for connectivity; the ability to cast video from apps like Netflix and YouTube to the TV; the ability to use the Roku mobile app to play personal videos, music, and photos as well as use it as a remote control; and the recently launched “Hotel and Dorm Connect” feature which makes it easier to connect to wireless networks that have an authentication page. Like Roku’s newest streaming player, the Roku 4, the Roku Streaming Stick will also run the latest version of the company’s operating system, Roku OS 7.1. This includes changes to the Roku Feed that help you better discover new shows and movies, track those that are coming soon, and follow your favorite programs so you know when new episodes are available. The update comes at a time when Roku has established itself as one of the leading players in the streaming device market, with roughly 10 million active account holders across 10 countries who are streaming more hours than ever before via their Roku devices. In 2015, streaming was up 73 percent over the year before, for example. To some extent, of course, Roku’s growth is a reflection of the larger shift away from watching live TV to streaming services, and the need for hardware devices that make that possible for those times you still want to watch on the TV’s big screen. However, Roku’s advantage in this space is that, because it’s an independent product without its own streaming service to promote, it can be agnostic about its offerings. Today that means over 3,000 streaming channels, and 300,000 movies and TV episodes. Meanwhile, devices like Chromecast, Android TV and Amazon Fire TV/TV Stick don’t always play well with each others’ competing services. Plus, Roku’s simplified menu and minimalist remote control are a better fit for a more mainstream audience who find the software and hardware from companies like TiVo more complicated to learn. The Roku Streaming Stick is available for pre-order on Roku.com and will retail later this month at stores like Best Buy, Walmart, and others. The retail price is still $49.99, as with the prior model. 2016-04-05 20:16 Sarah Perez

3 Black Duck Names Open-Source Rookies of the Year (2.00/3) Black Duck , which provides automated solutions for securing and managing open-source software, has announced its annual Open Source Rookies of the Year awards, recognizing the top new open- source projects initiated in 2015. Patrick Carey, Black Duck's director of product management, who headed the selection process, said the chosen projects show how diverse and ambitious open-source software development has become. "This year's Rookies are impressive examples of how far open source has come, with start-ups like Mattermost and Glucosio as well as big players like Google, Facebook and Red Hat leveraging the open-source community to help drive innovation in everything from DevOps and Docker container solutions to diabetes monitoring and real-time communication," he said. The 2015 Rookies class reflects three hot technologies shaping the future of open-source software: Docker containers, open collaboration and artificial intelligence. In 2014, a number of Docker ecosystem players emerged, and the trend continued into 2015 with several, including projects sponsored by Red Hat and Capital One. This eWEEK slide show looks at the winners and honorable mentions of the 2015 Black Duck Rookie of the Year awards. 2016-04-05 05:58 Darryl K

4 Jury awards $20 million in YouTube video game channel dispute A Dallas jury has awarded two businessmen a total of $20.3 million as a result of wrongdoings related to a YouTube gaming channel. The Dallas Morning News reports that the two men, David T. Moss of North Carolina and Brandon Keating from Illinois, invested $1,500 each into the YouTube channel VideoGames in 2012. According to the men, the channel’s founder, Marko Princip, promised them each a 30 percent stake in the “business” and thus, each would get 30 percent of the profits. According to the investors, Princip and his fellow business partner, Brian Martin of California, failed to hold up their end of the contract and thus, committed fraud and tortious interference. Lawyers for the defendants argued that Moss terminated his partnership in 2012 and that Keating never signed the final partnership agreement. The plaintiffs presented evidence that showed the channel had received 813 million clicks. At $3 per 1,000 clicks, the channel reportedly generated roughly $2.5 million in ad revenue. The four-woman, three-man jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding them 60 percent of the $2.5 million plus $1.5 million in future earnings and a whopping $16 million in punitive damages. Dallas lawyer Dan Wyde, who represented Moss and Keating, said the case demonstrates the big business that YouTube has become, adding that there are cable networks that don’t have the viewers that [some YouTube channels] do. Robert Wilson, a lawyer representing the defendants, didn’t respond to the publication’s request for comment. 2016-04-06 00:03 Shawn Knight

5 Automatic programming makes swarm robots safer and more reliable This reduces human error and therefore many of the bugs that can occur in programming, making it more user-friendly and reliable than previous techniques. This could be particularly advantageous in areas where safety of using robotics is a concern, for example, in driverless cars. The team of researchers from the University of Sheffield applied an automated programming method previously used in manufacturing to experiments using up to 600 of their 900-strong robot swarm, one of the largest in the World, in research published in the March issue of Swarm Intelligence journal. Swarm robotics studies how large groups of robots can interact with each other in simple ways to solve relatively complex tasks cooperatively. Previous research has used 'trial and error' methods to automatically program groups of robots, which can result in unpredictable, and undesirable, behaviour. Moreover, the resulting source code is time-consuming to maintain, which makes it difficult to use in the real-world. The supervisory control theory used for the first time with a swarm of robots in Sheffield reduces the need for human input and therefore, error. The researchers used a graphical tool to define the tasks they wanted the robots to achieve, a machine then automatically programmed and translated this to the robots. This program uses a form of linguistics, comparable to using the alphabet in the English language. The robots use their own alphabet to construct words, with the 'letters' of these words relating to what the robots perceive and to the actions they choose to perform. The supervisory control theory helps the robots to choose only those actions that eventually result in valid 'words'. Hence, the behaviour of the robots is guaranteed to meet the specification. We are increasingly reliant on software and technology, so machines that can program themselves and yet behave in predictable ways within parameters set by humans, are less error- prone and therefore safer and more reliable. The experiments carried out in the research required up to 600 robots to each make decisions independently to achieve the desired actions of gathering together, manipulating objects and organising themselves into logical groups. This could be used in a situation where a team is needed to tackle a problem and each individual robot is capable of contributing a particular element, which could be hugely beneficial in a range of contexts -- from manufacturing to agricultural environments. Dr Roderich Gross, Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at Sheffield, said: "Our research poses an interesting question about how to engineer technologies we can trust -- are machines more reliable programmers than humans after all? We, as humans set the boundaries of what the robots can do so we can control their behaviour, but the programming can be done by the machine, which reduces human error. " Reducing human error in programming also has potentially significant financial implications. The global cost of debugging software is estimated at $312billion annually and on average, software developers spend 50 per cent of their programming time finding and fixing bugs. The research at Sheffield is an important step forward in the area of swarm robotics. The next stage of the research will focus on finding ways in which humans can collaborate with swarms of robots so the communication is two-way and they can learn from each other. The research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) capital grant 'Human-Machine Co-operation in Robotics and Autonomous Systems'. 2016-04-05 23:34 feeds.sciencedaily

6 Quick drawing of complex relationships "KaDraw" is based on two methods. First, parallelization is achieved by using multi-core processors. This increases computation capacity, as the computation load is distributed to several processor cores. Second, innovative algorithms are applied. These algorithms generate a hierarchy of increasingly smaller graphs from the complex input graph. To obtain a good representation of the input graph, the smallest graph is drawn first. Then, the drawing is gradually transferred to larger graphs and improved on every larger level. "With this method, we can accelerate drawing by several factors. KaDraw can draw graphs about 30 times quicker than previous tools. And the quality of the results remains comparable," Christian Schulz reports. "KaDraw" cannot only draw static graphs quicker. Also dynamic graphs, i.e. graphs, the relationships of which change in the course of time, can be handled much more efficiently by the tool. An example of dynamic graphs are friendships in social networks. These are subject to constant change, as soon as additional friends are made. "In case of dynamic graphs, an already existing drawing can be input in the system. It then draws a new layout with new relationships," Henning Meyerhenke explains. Free Software In a next step, the scientists plan to develop a method of increased efficiency. "By improving algorithmic complexity, we want to further enhance the efficiency of the method," Martin Nöllenburg says. But before starting this work, "KaDraw" is made available to the public. From now on, the drawing tool will be available under a general public license (GPL). In parallel, the scientists will present their tool at the "Graph Drawing and Network Visualization" conference. Link to download KaDraw: http://algo2.iti.kit.edu/kadraw/ 2016-04-05 23:34 feeds.sciencedaily

7 Speed-reading your microbiome To this end, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine's Rob Knight, PhD, and his team built a microbiome analysis platform called QIIME (pronounced "chime" and short for "Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology"). This software will now be more readily accessible to hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world through BaseSpace, a cloud- based app store offered by Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops life science tools for the analysis of genetic variation. "Previously, we relied on personal contacts and scientific publications to spread the word about QIIME, and then users needed to download several different software packages to their own computers. Users also needed some technical programming skills to use QIIME," said Knight, professor of pediatrics and computer science and engineering. "By working with Illumina, not only will many more researchers now be able to access QIIME from the cloud, the BaseSpace interface will make it much easier for non-technical researchers to analyze their data. This advancement will significantly ease the bottleneck in a variety of human and environmental microbiome studies. " Two high-profile microbiome studies that rely on QIIME are the Human Microbiome Project, a National Institutes of Health-led initiative akin to the Human Genome Project, and the American Gut Project, a crowdsourced, crowdfunded project in which Knight's team is sequencing as many human microbiome samples as possible, from anyone who wants to participate. "QIIME has proven to be a widely successful open-source project -- the original paper our group published on it in 2010 has been cited by more than three thousand other papers since," said Yoshiki Vázquez-Baeza, an incoming UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering graduate student in Knight's lab. "This collaboration, among many other things, will help us expand our user base and increase the availability of our methods. " Like Knight and more than 25 other members of his lab, Vázquez-Baeza relocated from Colorado to UC San Diego this year, in part because of the collaborative spirit and innovative resources found in San Diego's life sciences research and biotechnology community. "BaseSpace is a cloud solution for data repository and analysis options that help streamline the processing of the seemingly ubiquitous genomic and metagenomic sequence data that researchers generate every day," said Jay Patel, associate product manager of BaseSpace applications at Illumina. "QIIME is a highly utilized tool in metagenomics research and we are excited to make it part of the Illumina ecosystem. " Researchers are already eager to use QIIME in their own studies, including many at UC San Diego. "We look forward to using QIIME on BaseSpace for our upcoming deep dive into the differences in the human gut microbiome in healthy people compared to people with inflammatory bowel disease," said Larry Smarr, PhD, professor and founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UC San Diego. Here's how Knight, Smarr and their teams plan to apply QIIME to determine if certain microbes are associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). They will process fecal samples from a group of IBD patients and a control group of healthy people and send the microbial genetic material they collect to the UC San Diego School of Medicine's Institute for Genomic Medicine for sequencing. When complete, the researchers will receive an email from the facility director indicating that their data are available on BaseSpace. Once they log into BaseSpace and click on the QIIME app, the researchers will see their raw data and ask the program to generate a 3- D scatterplot of the differences and similarities between their IBD and healthy control samples. If there is a significant difference in the microbial populations present in the two groups, then the researchers will go back to the lab to further investigate those differences and what cause-or- effect roles they might play in IBD. Eventually, Knight, Smarr and team hope they will be able to use this information to develop new tests that predict a person's risk of developing IBD and new methods for treating the disease. According to leading genomic and metagenomic assembly expert Pavel Pevzner, PhD, the Ronald R. Taylor Professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the addition of QIIME to BaseSpace adds to a growing collaboration between UC San Diego and Illumina on computational tools. "Our own software -- SPAdes Genome Assembler -- has been available in the Illumina BaseSpace app store for some time, and has helped thousands of users assemble their genome data in a range of medical and scientific applications," said Pevzner, who also directs the NIH Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry. "Adding QIIME to the expanding toolbox of world-leading bioinformatics software for genomic and metagenomic analysis paves the way for future innovations and collaborations with Illumina in this space. " 2016-04-05 23:33 feeds.sciencedaily

8 How is a developing brain assembled? NIH 3-D software tracks worm embryo's brain development As far as biologists have come in understanding the brain, much remains to be revealed. One significant challenge is determining the formation of complex neuronal structures made up of billions of cells in the human brain. As with many biological challenges, researchers are first examining this question in simpler organisms, such as worms. Although scientists have identified a number of important proteins that determine how neurons navigate during brain formation, it's largely unknown how all of these proteins interact in a living organism. Model animals, despite their differences from humans, have already revealed much about human physiology because they are much simpler and easier to understand. In this case, researchers chose Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), because it has only 302 neurons, 222 of which form while the worm is still an embryo. While some of these neurons go to the worm nerve ring (brain) they also spread along the ventral nerve cord, which is broadly analogous to the spinal cord in humans. The worm even has its own versions of many of the same proteins used to direct brain formation in more complex organisms such as flies, mice, or humans. "Understanding why and how neurons form and the path they take to reach their final destination could one day give us valuable information about how proteins and other molecular factors interact during neuronal development," said Hari Shroff, Ph. D., head of the NIBIB research team. "We don't yet understand neurodevelopment even in the context of the humble worm, but we're using it as a simple model of how these factors work together to drive the development of the worm brain and neuronal structure. We're hoping that by doing so, some of the lessons will translate all the way up to humans. " However, following neurons as they travel through the worm during its embryonic development is not as simple as it might seem. The first challenge was to create new microscopes that could record the embryogenesis of these worms without damaging them through too much light exposure while still getting the resolution needed to clearly see individual cells. Shroff and his team at NIBIB, in collaboration with Daniel Colon-Ramos at Yale University and Zhirong Bao at Sloan-Kettering, tackled this problem by developing new microscopes that improved the speed and resolution at which they could image worm embryonic development. (Read more at: http://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/new-microscopes-nih-reveal-live-developing- cells-unprecedented-3-d-clarity ) The second problem was that during development the worm begins to "twitch," moving around inside the egg. The folding and twisting makes it hard to track cells and parse out movement. For example, if a neuron moves in the span of a couple of minutes, is it because the embryo twisted or because the neuron actually changed position within the embryo? Understanding the mechanisms that move neurons to their final destination is an important factor in understanding how brains form--and is difficult to determine without knowing where and how a neuron is moving. Finally, it can be challenging to determine where a neuron is in 3D space while looking at a two-dimensional image--especially of a worm that's folded up. Imagine you're trying to keep track of everyone in a crowded auditorium, except that you can only see one person at a time, and the auditorium itself is invisible. This is what it's like trying to track how neurons in the worm relate to each other," said Ryan Christensen, Ph. D., the postdoctoral fellow who led the project. "You either need the ability to see everyone at once, or make the auditorium visible so you can place each person in the proper spot and figure out everyone's movements that way. Our untwisting software allows us to make the auditorium visible and allows us to place individual people (neurons) in their proper context. " The worm embryo is normally transparent, but the researchers made several cells in the embryo glow with fluorescent proteins to act as markers. When a microscopic image of these cells is fed into the program, the computer identifies each cell and uses the information to create a model of the worm, which it then computationally "untwists" to generate a straightened image. The program also enables a user to check the accuracy of the computer model and edit it when any mistakes are discovered. "In addition, users can also mark cells or structures within the worm embryo they want the program to track, allowing the users to follow the position of a cell as it moves and grows in the developing embryo. This feature could help scientists understand how certain cells develop into neurons, as opposed to other types of cells, and what factors influence the development of the brain and neuronal structure. Shroff and his colleagues say that such technology will be pivotal in their project to create a 4D neurodevelopmental "worm atlas," (see also http://www.wormguides.org ) that attempts to catalog the formation of the worm nervous system. This catalog will be the first comprehensive view of how an entire nervous system develops, and Dr. Shroff and his colleagues believe that it will be helpful in understanding the fundamental mechanisms by which all nervous systems, including ours, assemble. They also expect that some of the concepts developed, such as the approach taken to combine neuronal data from multiple embryos, can be applied to additional model organisms besides the worm. 2016-04-05 23:33 feeds.sciencedaily

9 New open source software for high resolution microscopy Conventional light microscopy can attain only a defined lower resolution limit that is restricted by light diffraction to roughly 1/4 of a micrometre. High resolution fluorescence microscopy makes it possible to obtain images with a resolution markedly below these physical limits. The physicists Stefan Hell, Eric Betzig, and William Moerner were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2014 for developing this important key technology for biomedical research. Currently, one of the ways in which researchers in this domain are trying to attain a better resolution is by using structured illumination. At present, this is one of the most widespread procedures for representing and presenting dynamic processes in living cells. This method achieves a resolution of 100 nanometres with a high frame rate while simultaneously not damaging the specimens during measurement. Such high resolution fluorescence microscopy is also being applied and further developed in the Biomolecular Photonics Group at Bielefeld's Faculty of Physics. For example, it is being used to study the function of the liver or the ways in which the HI virus spreads. However, scientists cannot use the raw images gained with this method straight away. 'The data obtained with the microscopy method require a very laborious mathematical image reconstruction. Only then do the raw data recorded with the microscope result in a high- resolution image,' explains Professor Dr. Thomas Huser, head of the Biomolecular Photonics Group. Because this stage requires a complicated mathematical procedure that has been accessible for only a few researchers up to now, there was previously no open source software solution that was easily available for all researchers. Huser sees this as a major obstacle to the use and further development of the technology. The software developed in Bielefeld is now filling this gap. Dr. Marcel Müller from the Biomolecular Photonics Group has managed to produce such universally implementable software. 'Researchers throughout the world are working on building new, faster, and more sensitive microscopes for structured illumination, particularly for the two- dimensional representation of living cells. For the necessary post-processing, they no longer need to develop their own complicated solutions but can use our software directly, and, thanks to its open source availability, they can adjust it to fit their problems,' Müller explains. The software is freely available to the global scientific community as an open source solution, and as soon as its availability was announced, numerous researchers, particularly in Europe and Asia, requested and installed it. 'We have already received a lot of positive feedback,' says Marcel Müller. 'That also reflects how necessary this new development has been.' 2016-04-05 23:33 feeds.sciencedaily

10 Stratford Festival launches new Shakespeare online toolkit The festival just unveiled an online teaching platform that will include each of Shakespeare's scripts, a film clip of every scene and notes to understand each piece of dialogue. "King Lear" is the first play to be offered using these tools and more titles will be added as part of the festivals to capture on film the complete works of Shakespeare over the next 10 years. Created by the Festival's Education Department in collaboration with D2L Corporation, the toolkit—called PerformancePlus—is targeted for students and teachers in grades 9 to 12 but is available to all. Explore further: Exhumation of Shakespeare to determine cause of death and drug test More information: Online: www.stratfordfestival.ca/PerformancePlusLear 2016-04-05 22:13 phys.org

11 Nations ranked on their vulnerability to cyberattacks: United States ranked 11th safest of 44 nations studied, highlighting critical vulnerabilities Data-mining experts from the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech recently co-authored a book that ranked the vulnerability of 44 nations to cyberattacks. Lead author V. S. Subrahmanian discussed this research on Wednesday, March 9 at a panel discussion hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D. C. The United States ranked 11th safest, while several Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland) ranked the safest. China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea ranked among the most vulnerable. "Our goal was to characterize how vulnerable different countries were, identify their current cybersecurity policies and determine how those policies might need to change in response to this new information," said Subrahmanian, a UMD professor of computer science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). The book's authors conducted a two-year study that analyzed more than 20 billion automatically generated reports, collected from 4 million machines per year worldwide. The researchers based their rankings, in part, on the number of machines attacked in a given country and the number of times each machine was attacked. Machines using Symantec anti-virus software automatically generated these reports, but only when a machine's user opted in to provide the data. Trojans, followed by viruses and worms, posed the principal threats to machines in the United States. However, misleading software (i.e., fake anti-virus programs and disk cleanup utilities) is far more prevalent in the U. S. compared with other nations that have a similar gross domestic product. These results suggest that U. S. efforts to reduce cyberthreats should focus on education to recognize and avoid misleading software. In a foreword to the book, Isaac Ben-Israel, chair of the Israeli Space Agency and former head of that nation's National Cyber Bureau, wrote: "People--even experts--often have gross misconceptions about the relative vulnerability [to cyber attack] of certain countries. The authors of this book succeed in empirically refuting many of those wrong beliefs. " The book's findings include economic and educational data gathered by UMD's Center for Digital International Government, for which Subrahmanian serves as director. The researchers integrated all of the data to help shape specific policy recommendations for each of the countries studied, including strategic investments in education, research and public-private partnerships. Subrahmanian's co-authors on the book are Michael Ovelgönne, a former UMIACS postdoctoral researcher; Tudor Dumitras, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center; and B. Aditya Prakash, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. A related research paper on forecasting the spread of malware in 40 countries--containing much of the same data used for the book--was presented at the 9th ACM International Conference of Web Search and Data Mining in February 2016. Another paper, accepted for publication in the journal ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology , looked at the human aspect of cyberattacks--for example, why some people's online behavior makes them more vulnerable to malware that masquerades as legitimate software. The book, "The Global Cyber Vulnerability Report," V. S. Subrahmanian, Michael Ovelgonne, Tudor Dumitras and B. Aditya Prakash, was published by Springer in December 2015. The research paper, "Ensemble Models for Data-Driven Prediction of Malware Infections," C. Kang, N. Park, B. A. Prakash, E. Serra, and V. S. Subrahmanian, appears in Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conf. on Web Science and Data Mining (WSDM 2016), San Francisco, February 2016. The research paper, "Understanding the Relationship between Human Behavior and Susceptibility to Cyber-Attacks: A Data-Driven Approach," M. Ovelgönne, T. Dumitras, A. Prakash, V. S. Subrahmanian, and B. Wang, was accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems & Technology in February 2016. 2016-04-05 22:22 feeds.sciencedaily

12 Think twice about android root: Engineers quantify amount of Android root exploits available in commercial software and show that they can be easily abused Many rooting methods essentially operate by launching an exploit (or malicious code) against a vulnerability in the Android system. Due to the fact that Android systems are so diverse and fragmented and that Android systems have a notoriously long update cycle (typically due to the hold time at mobile carriers), the window of vulnerabilities is typically very large. This creates the opportunity for business of offering root as a service by many companies, but at the same also creates opportunities for attackers to compromise the system using the same exploits. Rooting comes with plenty of advantages. With full control of the device, users can do everything from remove unwanted pre-installed software, enjoy additional functionalities offered by specialized apps and run paid apps for free. But, it also comes with potential significant disadvantages, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering has found. In a first-of-its-kind study of the Android root ecosystem, Zhiyun Qian and two student researchers set out to (1) uncover how many types and variations of Android root exploits exist publically and how they differ from ones offered by commercial root providers and (2) find out how difficult it is to abuse the exploits. They found that few of the exploits could be detected by mobile antivirus software and that are systematic weaknesses and flaws in the security protection measures offered by commercial root providers that make them susceptible to being stolen and easily repackaged in malware. "This is a highly unregulated area that we found is ripe for abuse by malware authors looking to gain access to all kinds of personal information," Qian said. "And, unfortunately, there is not much users can do except hope that a security update gets pushed out quickly by Google, vendors and carriers, which they usually aren't. " Qian has outlined the findings in a paper, "Android Root and its Providers: A Double-Edged Sword," which he will present at the 22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Denver from Oct. 12 to 16. The paper is co-authored by two graduate students working with Qian: Hang Zhang and Dongdong She. Rooting is a response to that fact that users or mobile phones and tablets are not given full control over their devices. In the Apple and iOS ecosystem, rooting is known as jailbreaking. In this paper, Qian focuses on Android because the system is more open and has more developers and models, making it a better area for research. Development of root exploits generally fall into two categories. Individual developers or hackers often identify vulnerabilities, develop and make public exploit tools. In addition, there are commercial companies that develop exploits. These take the form of apps, which are typically free, that users voluntarily download and then click on to activate the exploits. "This is a really a phenomena in computer history, in which users are essentially voluntarily launching attacks against their own devices to gain control," Qian said. Unfortunately, he added, as his findings show, attackers can acquire such exploits by impersonating a regular user. To make matters worse, large commercial root providers have a large repository of root exploits, which gives attackers a strong incentive to target such providers. In his research, Qian and the student engineers focused on seven large commercial root providers, one of which they studied more in depth. They found that one company had more than 160 exploits, which they subcategorized into 59 families. That 59 figure is almost double the number of exploits (39) they found publically available from individual developers. "If we were able to do this," Qian said, "hackers can definitely do it too. " 2016-04-05 21:04 feeds.sciencedaily

13 Security Think Tank: Ignoring software patching spells trouble Regularly servicing your infrastructure with software patches is an integral part of keeping systems safe, reliable, supportable and secure. Any company that ignores this is asking for trouble, just like ignoring those worn brake pads on your car. Sooner or later, something will go wrong in an unpatched environment. While security seems to get the most attention when it comes to patching , do not forget that patching will also keep systems running smoothly. Reliability and uptime are often ignored, plus older software versions quickly go out of support so you might find yourself with the latest and greatest software which is too many patch versions behind to get critical support when you need it. 2016-04-05 21:15 Tim Holman

14 New vulnerability discovered in common online security OpenSSL provides encryption protection for a range of applications on most types of computers and is similar to the encryption packages used by the web browsers Google Chrome (BoringSSL) and Firefox (Mozilla's Network Security Service (NSS)). Dr Yuval Yarom, Research Associate at the University of Adelaide's School of Computer Science, says he and colleagues Daniel Genkin (Tel Aviv University) and Dr Nadia Heninger (University of Pennsylvania) have discovered that OpenSSL is vulnerable to a type of attack known as a "side channel attack. " A side channel attack enables a hacker to take important information about software by examining the physical workings of a computer system -- such as minute changes in power usage, or observing changes in timing when different software is being used. Dr Yarom has found that it is possible to "listen in" to the workings of the OpenSSL encryption software. In the team's case, they measured highly sensitive changes in the computer's timing -- down to less than one nanosecond (one billionth of a second). From these measurements they recovered the private key which OpenSSL uses to identify the user or the computer. "In the wrong hands, the private key can be used to 'break' the encryption and impersonate the user," Dr Yarom says. "At this stage we have only found this vulnerability in computers with Intel's 'Sandy Bridge' processors. Computers with other Intel processors may not be affected in the same way. " Dr Yarom says the likelihood of someone hacking a computer using this method is slim: "We seem to be the first to have done it, and under controlled conditions. "Servers, particularly Cloud servers, are a more likely target for this side-channel attack. It's less likely that someone would use it against a home computer. There are so many easier-to-exploit vulnerabilities in home computers that it's unlikely someone would try to do this in the real world - - but not impossible. " Dr Yarom says there have been debates about this form of attack on OpenSSL for more than 10 years now, with some manufacturers claiming it couldn't be done. "But we have proven the vulnerability exists," he says. "With OpenSSL being the most commonly used cryptographic software in the world right now, it's important for us to stay vigilant against any possible attack, no matter how small its chances might be. "Once we discovered the vulnerability, we contacted the developers of OpenSSL and have been helping them to develop a fix for the problem," he says. 2016-04-05 21:14 feeds.sciencedaily

15 Dynamic cyber warning software looks promising Dr. Frank Zhu, a computer science associate professor, and Dr. Sandra Carpenter, a psychology professor, say the software, originally developed to adapt eye recognition equipment for use in their behavioral research involving online information disclosure, has been promising in displaying warnings in a dynamic manner that is more readily perceived and less easily dismissed by the user. Computer Science doctoral student Mini Zeng has been working on the software and the behavioral research for about 2 ½ years. "I need to know how long the user's eyes stay on the area and I need to use that input in my research," Ming says. The eye tracker detects where a user's eyes are at the computer screen and records how long they gazed at that spot. Zeng uses these two functions to find when a user's eyes remain on a request for sensitive personal information. At that moment, a warning box displays. The app tracks the amount of time the user's eyes are on the warning, and the box stays on the screen until sufficient time has passed to ensure it has been read, then when the user looks away it disappears. "That's the novelty here, is using the eye tracker as an input to warn people what not to do," says Dr. Zhu. If the user looks away from the warning, it remains active until the app detects that enough time has been spent on it to read it. The relative unpredictability of a warning that can pop up anywhere on a screen when a user is looking at a request to divulge personal information helps overcome behavioral obstacles to paying attention to standard warnings that the researchers have identified in their work. "If you get a warning every single time and it becomes annoying or habitual, you are going to ignore it," says Dr. Carpenter. For their behavioral research, Zeng created an app that mimics a restaurant reservation app asking for personal information. That app is used along with the warning software to determine the effectiveness of warnings in test subjects. 2016-04-05 21:13 feeds.sciencedaily

16 Modified laser cutter prints 3-D objects from powder: Bioengineers make open-source laser sintering printer for biomaterials fabrication The design specs and performance of Rice's OpenSLS platform, an open-source device similar to commercially available selective laser sintering (SLS) platforms, are described in an open- access paper published in PLOS ONE. OpenSLS, which was built using low-cost, open-source microcontrollers, cost less than $10,000 to build; commercial SLS platforms typically start around $400,000 and can cost up to $1 million. "SLS technology has been around for more than 20 years, and it's one of the only technologies for 3-D printing that has the ability to form objects with dramatic overhangs and bifurcations," said study co-author Jordan Miller, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice who specializes in using 3-D printing for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. "SLS technology is perfect for creating some of the complex shapes we use in our work, like the vascular networks of the liver and other organs. " He said commercial SLS machines generally don't allow users to fabricate objects with their own powdered materials, which is something that's particularly important for researchers who want to experiment with biomaterials for regenerative medicine and other biomedical applications. "Designing our own laser-sintering machine means there's no company-mandated limit to the types of biomaterials we can experiment with for regenerative medicine research," said study co-author Ian Kinstlinger, a graduate student in Miller's group who designed several of the hardware and software modifications for OpenSLS. The team showed that the machine could print a series of intricate objects from both nylon powder -- a commonly used material for high- resolution 3-D sintering -- and from polycaprolactone, or PCL, a nontoxic polymer that's commonly used to make templates for studies on engineered bone. "In terms of price, OpenSLS brings this technology within the reach of most labs, and our goal from the outset has been to do this in a way that makes it easy for other people to reproduce our work and help the field standardize on equipment and best practices," Kinstlinger said. "We've open-sourced all the hardware designs and software modifications and shared them via Github. " OpenSLS works differently than most traditional extrusion-based 3-D printers, which create objects by squeezing melted plastic through a needle as they trace out two-dimensional patterns. Three-dimensional objects are then built up from successive 2-D layers. In contrast, the SLS laser shines down onto a flat bed of plastic powder. Wherever the laser touches powder, it melts or sinters the powder at the laser's focal point to form a small volume of solid material. By tracing the laser in two dimensions, the printer can fabricate a single layer of the final part. "The process is a bit like finishing a creme brulee, when a chef sprinkles out a layer of powdered sugar and then heats the surface with a torch to melt powder grains together and form a solid layer," Miller said. "Here, we have powdered biomaterials, and our heat source is a focused laser beam. " In SLS, after each layer is finished, a new layer of powder is laid down and the laser reactivates to trace the next layer. "Because the sintered object is fully supported in 3-D by powder, the technique gives us access to incredibly complex architectures that other 3-D printing techniques simply cannot produce," Miller said. Miller, an active participant in the open-source maker movement, first identified commercial CO2 laser cutters as prime candidates for a low-cost, versatile selective sintering machine in early 2013. Laser cutters are commonly used to make trophies, jewelry, toys, acrylic figurines and other commercial products. "The cutter's laser is already in the correct wavelength range -- around 10 micrometers -- and the machines come with hardware to control laser power and the x-axis and y-axis with high precision," Miller said. In the summer of 2013 Miller hosted a four-week crash course in hardware prototyping called the Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute, and AMRI participant Andreas Bastian, an artist and engineer, took on the challenge of creating the open-source SLS printer. He designed an integrated, high-precision z-axis and powder-handling system and fitted it with open-source, 3-D printer electronics from Ultimachine.com . Miller said Bastian even used the machine's laser-cutting features to produce many of the acrylic parts for the powder-handling system. "You can actually cut most of the required parts with the same laser cutter you are in the process of upgrading," Miller said. "It's around $2,000 in parts to build OpenSLS, and adding the parts to an existing laser cutter and calibrating the machine typically takes a couple of days. " By the time Bastian left Rice in the fall of 2013, "we had demonstrated proof of concept," Miller said, "but a great deal of additional work still needed to be done to show that OpenSLS could be useful for bioengineering, and that is what Ian and the rest of the team accomplished. " Miller said Kinstlinger's tests with PCL, a biocompatible plastic that can be used in medical implants for humans, were particularly important. "Biology in the body can take advantage of architectural complexity in 3-D parts, but different shapes and surfaces are useful under different circumstances," Miller said. For example, Kinstlinger said, the increased surface area found on rough surfaces and in interconnected pore structures are preferred in some situations, while other biological applications call for smooth surfaces. Kinstlinger addressed each possibility with PCL by developing an efficient way to smooth the rough surfaces of PCL objects that came out of the printer. He found that exposing the parts to solvent vapor for short time periods (around 5 minutes) provided a very smooth surface, due to surface-tension effects. In tests using human bone marrow stromal cells -- the type of adult stem cells that can differentiate to form bone, skin, blood vessels and other tissues -- Kinstlinger found that the vapor-smoothed PCL structures worked well as templates for engineered tissues that have some of the same properties as natural bone. "The stem cells stuck to the surface of the templates, survived, differentiated down a bone lineage and deposited calcium across the entire scaffold," he said. Miller said, "Our work demonstrates that OpenSLS provides the scientific community with an accessible platform for the study of laser sintering and the fabrication of complex geometries in diverse plastics and biomaterials. And it's another win for the open-source community. " 2016-04-05 21:12 feeds.sciencedaily

17 Development of an evaluation platform capable of validating wide-area distribution systems: Training scenarios for complicated, simultaneous disasters and interference to become possible After the Great East Japan Earthquake, information systems that can achieve "disaster recovery" to recover from loss of information due to large-scale disasters as well as "business continuity plans" that enable quick continuation of services in the aftermath of disasters have been gathering attention in Japan. However, even though strengthening of facilities and formulation of procedures have been carried out, surveys have shown that the frequency that disaster exercises based on plans formulated using the constructed disaster recovery systems are implemented is low. This evaluation platform assumes the occurrence of multiple, simultaneous disasters including earthquakes and communication failure due to damaged communication infrastructure, thereby making it possible to conduct training for various disaster scenarios. Through this training, it will become possible to preemptively evaluate whether or not these wide-area distribution systems will be able to continue providing their services even in times of large-scale disaster. Using functions provided by this evaluation platform will make it possible to quantitatively evaluate the disaster tolerance and fault tolerance of wide-area distribution systems such as the Internet. These research results were presented at the international conference SC15 in Austin, Texas, USA, on November 15, 2015. This project, led by Hiroki Kashiwazaki (Assistant Professor, Osaka University), Ikuo Nakagawa (Visiting Associate Professor, Osaka University), Yoshiaki Kitaguchi (Assistant Professor, Kanazawa University), Kohei Ichikawa (Associate Professor, Nara Institute of Science and Technology), Tohru Kondo (Associate Professor, Hiroshima University), and Yutaka Kikuchi (Professor, Kochi University of Technology), has pushed forward with research to apply parallel distributed storage technology, which handles storage units provided by multiple computers as a single storage unit, to disaster recovery methods. In this research, the wide-area virtualized environment "distcloud" was constructed, with hubs located at Osaka University, Tohoku University, National Institute of Informatics, Kanazawa University, Kyoto University, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Hiroshima University, Kochi University of Technology, the University of California, San Diego, as well as data centers in Sapporo and Okinawa. The aim of this research development is to verify the validity of plans for business continuation in times of disaster and quantitatively evaluate the deterioration of the quality of these systems in such a disaster by emulating a failure state of systems during a large- scale disaster in a virtualized environment, thereby improving wide-area systems. Efforts have already been carried out to validate fault tolerance through loss of virtual machines within a single organization, but following a large-scale disaster, various forms of interference occur simultaneously over a wide area. In order to realize more realistic disaster training, this research project has focused on "Software Defined Network (SDN)" technology, which enables users to control network settings by changing software (i.e., programmable), and applied this SDN technology as "technology to destroy the network. " The motivation for research and development of the evaluation platform "DESTCloud" is to realize the emulation of more complex interference through the utilization of SDN to cause interference in networks connecting organizations and change the network topology of wide-area systems. Benchmark tests will be carried out until February 2016 in a wide variety of disaster environments through collaboration with corporations developing software for the project. Experimental results will be fed back to these corporations, which are expected to contribute to the improvement of product quality. This project will continue research and development towards the establishment of more practical technology by promoting international standardization regarding SDN control methods of this evaluation platform, establishing a consortium to increase social awareness on network disaster prevention, and increasing the number of hubs. 2016-04-05 21:11 feeds.sciencedaily

18 TiE Global Chairman Venktesh Shukla Joins Fenox Venture Capital as General Partner Fenox Venture Capital is bringing on TiE Global Chairman and the founder of TiE Angels, Venktesh Shukla, as General Partner. For the unfamiliar, TiE is a non-profit mentoring network for entrepreneurs and promoter of entrepreneurship worldwide. Its annual conference, TiECon , is in its 23rd year. According to Fenox VC’s Head of Investments, Vivek Ladsariya , the firm will rely on Shukla to source deals in, and help entrepreneurs from around the world to scale their businesses in India. Shukla will also help connect tech entrepreneurs and other investors in India to those in Silicon Valley. Fenox VC runs 11 funds, each focused on specific industries or technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics and health. While 8 of its funds are still active and putting capital into new deals and follow-on rounds, 3 are closed with all capital deployed. The company’s portfolio includes, among others: Scanadu the health diagnostics tech company inspired by Star Trek’s Tricoder; Jibo which makes a social robot for home use, entertainment and education; electric motorbike makers Terra Motors ; and WeVorce , a site that helps couples through a divorce process. Shukla was not immediately available to comment on his new role with FenoxVC. 2016-04-05 20:16 Lora Kolodny

19 Thrive Market brings its organic grocery store to Android A company tapping into consumers’ growing desire for healthier food and organic products, Thrive Market is today bringing its online grocery store to Android users with the launch of a dedicated mobile application. The new app will allow users to shop for natural and organic products right from their phone, including its more recently launched private label items. Described as a cross between Whole Foods and Costco, Thrive Market’s business has been booming this year. To give you an idea of its traction, the company now claims to have more than 200,000 paying members. It also hit a $100 million run-rate in early February, after just 14 months into its business, and it reached nearly $10 million in sales last month. (The startup is not yet profitable, however.) The business has grown from 14 employees in November to nearly 400 today. And it has two fulfillment centers — one in Commerce, California and another in Batesville, Indiana. This allows it to guarantee two-day shipping to more than 85 percent of the U. S., the company claims. Unlike a traditional e-commerce store, Thrive Market’s business model is more like that of Costco’s — that is, members pay a fee of $60 per year to shop on the site. Also like Costco or other clubs, Thrive Market promises wholesale prices on the items it sells. That means customers can buy its organic and speciality merchandise online, ship it to their home as quickly as if they were using Amazon Prime and pay less than if they shopped at Whole Foods. (Shipping is not free as with Prime, we should note — only orders over $49 are free.) In addition to its membership fees, Thrive Market is also generating revenue on its private label products, which include things like organic coconut oil and tomato sauce, for example. Notably, the startup caters to consumers who care about how a business contributes to society as a whole. Through its “Thrive Gives” program , the company donates one free membership to a low-income family for every paid membership it sells. This “social mission” is designed to provide those without access to quality food at lower prices a way to better feed their families. As the company explains its website, 49 million Americans experience food insecurity, more than 23 million live in “food deserts” (neighborhoods where healthy food is not available) and 80 percent of low-income families buy food they know isn’t healthy just to make ends meet. With a free membership to the site, these low-income shoppers can instead choose to buy natural and organic products at 25-50 percent off retail. The Android app’s launch in particular is important because the majority of the “Thrive Gives” families are Android users (51 percent are). However, mobile access to Thrive Market was previously available on iOS, where the app has already seen more than 50,000 installs in its first month, and has a 5-star rating on iTunes after 200+ reviews. The Android app is available as a free download here . I’ve personally used Thrive Market, and found the site to be easy to browse, thanks to its extensive breakdown of category listings. (It even separates “cooking and meal ingredients” from “baking,” for instance). Plus, it offers a simple way for users to shop by their “values,” meaning vegan, gluten-free, paleo, raw, etc. And you can filter items by environmental and social concerns, too, like “locally sourced,” “fair trade” and more. That being said, the site today works better for those who already know how to eat well or who adhere to a particular diet. It would be nice to see an expanded set of educational materials and recipes (like this ), which could help teach people how to make healthier dishes. Right now, recipes are randomly posted to the company blog alongside other articles, which makes finding those that match your interests and tastes more difficult. L. A.-based Thrive Market has raised $58 million to date, including a still-open convertible note of $20 million. Investors include John Legend, Zoe Saldana, Sofia Vergara, Dr. Mark Hyman, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Mark Sisson, Jillian Michaels, Brian Lee (of Honest.com), Blake Mycoskie (of TOMS Shoes), Gary Hirshberg (of Stonyfield Farm), Mark Rampolla (of Zico Coconut Water) and David Barber (of Blue Hill Farm). 2016-04-05 20:16 Sarah Perez

20 Etsy launches Pattern, a website builder for its sellers With the launch of a new service called Pattern , Etsy is making it easier for people to sell custom goods on their own websites. Apparently, more than one-third of Etsy’s 1.6 million active sellers have said they’re interested in setting up their own site, but they found the process of registering a domain, creating a site, maintaining it and managing the inventory too complicated. With Pattern, those sellers can create a site in just a few minutes — a feat that Etsy product lead Joe Lallouz demonstrated this morning for an audience of journalists at the company’s Brooklyn headquarters. Sellers can register web domains from within Pattern, then choose from five existing themes (some of them emphasizing a seller’s brand and story, others putting the products for sale front-and-center.) Of course, an easy-to-use website builder is not a new idea, so what really makes Pattern different is its integration with Etsy. When you set up a Pattern website, Etsy automatically imports your content and inventory from your store, and will keep everything synced up. You’ll also be able to see analytics for your Etsy store and your Pattern website side-by-side on the same dashboard. As Lallouz put it, the aim is to provide “two shops in one” — you only worry about managing one store while getting the benefits of both. “Our focus is delivering value to existing Etsy sellers,” added Senior Vice President of Product Mike Grishaver in an interview. “We’ve spent a great deal of time and research to find what are the pain points for an Etsy seller and we’re building tools to address those.” When I suggested that other Etsy sellers might already have their own websites and would appreciate more store integrations with the web publishing tools that already exist, Grishaver said there are no current plans, but, “You did identify a real pain point.” Looking at the bigger picture, while Etsy finished 2015 on a strong note , it has struggled to impress Wall Street since it went public last year. Services like this could help Etsy retain sellers and attract new ones. It could also help them make more money from those sellers — after a 30- day trial, Etsy will cost $15 a month. Etsy is also announcing a redesigned landing page for each Etsy seller, called the Shop Home. The new page is more brand- and image-centric, leading with a big cover image. It’s also optimized to look good on both desktop and the mobile web. Sonia Kedzierski, Etsy’s product manager for membership and identity, said the goal of these changes is to “highlight that human connection [between buyer and seller] even more.” 2016-04-05 20:16 Anthony Ha

21 Marijuana deliverer Meadow rolls up $2.1M for dispensary sales software Meadow already lets you get a prescription for medical marijuana over video chat and order from a nearby shop that delivers. Now it wants to be the backbone of the weed business, too. Pot dispensaries can’t use standard point-of-sale or inventory software because they aren’t compliant with the industry’s strict regulations. So over the last year, since graduating Y Combinator, Meadow has been raising a $2.1 million seed round on a rolling basis to build out specialized cannabis sales software. Today it announced the round is sealed, with participation from ex SV Angel David Lee, YC’s Justin Kan, Reddit’s Steve Huffman, Kissmetrics’ Hiten Shah, Slow Ventures, SOMA Capital and Poseidon Asset Management. The cash will help Meadow build out weed-friendly alternatives to QuickBooks and Square, and pay for marketing to smoke its big competitor Eaze. Next, it wants to keep working up the supply chain to build software for every part of the business, from farm to joint. “I’ve been smoking since high school, and it’s always made me feel great” co-founder David Hua tells me. The expectedly super-chill entrepreneur explains that “it’s helped me in so many different ways,” and now he wants to help others provide everything from psychoactive euphoria to pain relief in pot form. Hua was the head of platform at Sincerely, which let people turn their camera phone photos into gift cards and other physical products. But after Sincerely was acquired by Provide Commerce, he craved more of the startup life, and left with some co-workers to devise a new venture. They brainstormed everything from landlord-tenant software to shift management for small businesses, “but ultimately those ideas petered out. We weren’t totally passionate about it.” Then Hua visited Oaksterdam, a marijuana entrepreneur academy in Oakland, California where he met Debby Goldsberry, founder of pioneering dispensary Berkeley Patients Group. Her day- to-day business sounded hellish because of how much she had to do manually or with a Frankenstein-combination of generic software. Meanwhile, Hua was frustrated by the few medical marijuana delivery services, which he tells me had outdated menus, inaccurate delivery times and felt insecure. “They’d say they’d come in 2 to 4 hours, or on ‘friday afternoon’ and you’re just sitting and waiting,” he gripes. “And I didn’t feel comfortable emailing my ID and doctor’s recommendation to a random email address or texting it.” So his squad decided to start Meadow. Meadow never handles marijuana itself. Hua refers to it as an ancillary service. That makes the whole business cleaner and simpler to fund. Today Meadow has three strains of revenue. Its original business is a directory of nearby marijuana dispensaries that do deliveries. Meadow makes it simple to upload your prescription paperwork, browse up-to-date menus, learn about and compare different types of pot, fill a shopping cart and get delivery in well under an hour. It earns around a 10 percent fee on transactions from dispensaries for delivering them customers, and now has serviced about 38 percent of zip codes in California. But many customers don’t have their prescription already, or it’s expired after a year. There’s a big business in states that have legalized medicinal marijuana where doctors in dingy offices ask a few vague questions about what ails you (stress? back pain? insomnia?), take $50 to $100 from you and write you a prescription on the spot. Still, it requires an annoying physical visit somewhere that might not be close or comfortable. Meadow went a step further with Meadow MD. At first, they let users schedule a doctor to come to their house to do the dance and get prescribed. Hua says Meadow’s first doc actually rode around San Francisco on an electric skateboard. But now for $100 you can instantly be connected to a doctor over HIPAA-compliant video chat and get your prescription fired over to you electronically, in minutes. That gets slid over to Meadow’s delivery directory and suddenly you’ve gone from illegal pot wanter to legal pot smoker in an hour. It’s more expensive than competitor Eaze’s $40 video prescription service, but Meadow’s directory visitors are so hyped to buy pot they might not go looking elsewhere. Where Hua sees the not-so-hazy future of Meadow’s business is software. First there’s its online menu system that it says boosts average order size by more than 50 percent. Dispensaries can embed the menu on their own sites or let people buy through Meadow, track their delivery people in real time and message with customers. For in-store purchases, Meadow also makes an iPad-based point-of-sale system similar to Square POS or Revel, but designed for compliance with medical marijuana laws that require strict tracking of how much pot gets sold to whom. Its analytics show which products are bought most, and helps stores manage inventory so they never run out of what’s selling. Hua relays rumors of Intuit and Square giving marijuana businesses a hard time or even kicking them off their services. So Meadow plans to use its new cash to keep expanding its monthly fee SAAS platform, and assist dispensaries with more of their finance, payroll and other back office problems. Hua is understandably relaxed in general. But when asked about his biggest fear for his company, he says it is a delivery driver routed by Meadow injuring a pedestrian, and the ensuing fallout like “people calling for over-regulation and more safety checks and things that are beyond our control.” As for competitors like Eaze, he repeats a popular YC adage that “99% of startups die by suicide” rather than being murdered by other startups. There’s plenty of green fields for Meadow and the other marijuana startups. Millions of people smoke every day, and the habit can add up to hundreds of dollars in weed a month. Legal pot sales climbed over $5 billion in 2015, and that’s sure to rise as more states allow medicinal and recreational usage. Hua hopes that if Meadow can nurture the business of pot, the taxes generated will convince more states to decriminalize the plant. He believes that could keep non-violent, often minority offenders out of jail and get actually sick patients medicine with fewer worrisome side-effects than pain killers and other drugs. Eighty years ago when alcohol prohibition was repealed, it created a gold rush that spawned an enormous range of businesses. Now we’re on the cusp of the green rush, and Meadow wants to make the transition cushy. 2016-04-05 20:16 Josh Constine

22 Cookies teases its payment app that wants to become the Venmo of Europe Cookies wants to become the Venmo of Europe with a consumer app to pay back your friends in no time and with no fees. The company promises a speedy onboarding experience and a great design. And today, the company is showing a bit more about the app. With the following screenshots, you can see what Cookies is building. It’s a messaging-meet- payment app with a lot of emojis. You can send or request money, chat directly inside the app and confirm payments with the Touch ID sensor or a PIN code. It’s not groundbreaking if you’ve been using apps like Lydia in France, but it looks like a polished experience. There are two things that set Cookies apart. The two founders, Garry Krugljakow and Lamine Chelou, met when they were working for Number26 , a German fintech startup that has managed to convince more than 100,000 people to open a new bank account. Second, Cookies isn’t an e-wallet. You connect your Cookies account with your bank account so that Cookies can withdraw and credit money directly without relying on your credit card. It lets you skip one step and it means you’re not going to forget about some money you have on your e-wallet. I still believe there’s more to see about Cookies. If the startup can integrate in other apps, it could become a seamless and ubiquitous way to pay back your friends. And an API approach makes a lot of sense in the payment space. The service is launching soon and is going to work with all German bank accounts. 2016-04-05 20:16 Romain Dillet

23 WhatsApp completes end-to-end encryption rollout It’s a security project that’s taken around a year and a half to complete, but messaging giant WhatsApp has now fully implemented strong end-to-end encryption on its platform and across all mobile platforms for which it offers apps. This means users of the latest versions of the messaging app will have their comms and media end-to-end encrypted by default. And there are a lot of WhatsApp users; earlier this year the Facebook owned company announced it had passed a billion active users. Securing cross-platform video comms was the last piece of the puzzle, according to a WhatsApp spokesman. End-to-end encryption means the content of communications are not stored in plaintext on WhatsApp’s servers. Nor is the company able to decrypt users’ messages to access them since it does not hold the encryption keys. So WhatsApp will be unable to be compelled to hand over messaging data — even if served with a warrant by authorities demanding access. While the WhatsApp news may seem timely in light of the recent high-profile battle between Apple and the FBI over an encrypted iPhone, the company has in fact been implementing encryption since 2013, the year NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden triggered a global privacy storm by revealing the extent of government mass surveillance programs. WhatsApp then went on to partner with Open Whisper Systems the following year, and has been integrating its widely respected end-to-end encryption Signal Protocol specifically since late 2014. In a blog post today the not-for-profit hacker collective behind the latter open source tech confirmed the WhatsApp implementation is now complete. “This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10,” it wrote. “Users running the most recent versions of WhatsApp on any platform now get full end to end encryption for every message they send and every WhatsApp call they make when communicating with each other.” Although the completion of default end-to-end encryption is a hugely important security milestone for the WhatsApp platform, it does not mean that from here on in every communication sent via the app is end-to-end encrypted, because that’s reliant on all users being upgraded to the latest version of the software. But the WhatsApp client will now notify users of the encryption status of chats, including showing a notice in the messaging screen, to help bridge the transitional phase: “Eventually all the pre-e2e [end-to-end] capable clients will expire, at which point new versions of the software will no longer transmit or accept plaintext messages at all,” notes Open Whisper Systems. WhatsApp users will also be able to confirm the person they are chatting with is the person they think it is, rather than an imposter performing a man-in-the-middle attack, by verifying the authenticity of the encryption session via scanning a QR code or reading aloud a number string. For its part, Open Whisper Systems says it is looking ahead to additional rollouts of its tech, saying it will “continue to work with additional messengers” over the next year. The group also has its own encrypted messaging app, Signal , which launched in March last year. Albeit, the question now is whether Edward Snowden will be switching to WhatsApp… 2016-04-05 20:16 Natasha Lomas

24 24 Sony is launching PS4 remote play on Mac and PC tomorrow A few months after teasing the feature on Twitter, Sony is adding remote play on Windows and OS X with the new PS4 3.50 update that is going to be available tomorrow . This isn’t uncharted territory for Sony as you can already stream your games to your PlayStation Vita and some Sony phones. You can also buy a PlayStation TV to stream your PS4 games to another TV. But this is still a useful feature if your kids are watching cartoons on the TV and you really want to play Destiny on your desktop computer. You’ll be able to use your standard DualShock 4 controller with a USB cable and download an app for your computer. And of course, the feature will work better if your PS4 and computer are both connected to your local network using Ethernet cables. Unfortunately, Sony doesn’t expect great performance from the remote play feature. With a default definition of 540p and 30 images per second, it’s much lower than the best definition you can get on the PS4 with well-optimized games (1080p and 60 frames per second). If you have a good setup, you’ll be able to play games on your computers at 720p and 60 images per second. If you have an Xbox One, Microsoft enabled remote play for your PC last year. But you need to run Windows 10, which is unfortunate for Mac users. Today’s news might also mean that better drivers for the PS4 controllers are coming to the PC. The PS4 controller features a touchpad in the middle, so you’ll be able to use this touchpad on a PC or Mac, at least for your PS4 games. 2016-04-05 20:16 Romain Dillet

25 Chat app Kik launches a bot store and anyone can make bots for it It seems like barely a day passes without some notable mention of chat bots in the tech industry. Now one of North America’s most used chat apps has jumped on the wagon after Kik , the billion dollar mobile messaging service particularly popular with young people, opened its doors to bots. First of all, let’s check on exactly what a bot is. They are automated accounts that follow specific instructions to interact with users. They commonly serve up content — like a GIF or the weather forecast — but can be programmed to do all manner of things. There’s plenty of hype around them because chat apps are so sticky that bots are easier to engage with than downloading apps, and could be an important vehicle for reaching consumers. There aren’t too many examples of bots in the market right now, although Facebook is hotly tipped to throw its hat into the ring at F8. Currently, privacy-focused Telegram and fast-growing work chat app Slack are the highest profile services that feature bots, but neither has a particular stronghold among the youth, a demographic that is hotly sought after by brands. That’s very much Kik’s domain. The Canada-based company says that 70 percent of its 275 million registered users are aged between 13 and 24, and that around 40 percent of all teens in the U. S. use its service. That’s a hugely attractive segment, and Kik has already let some companies in to play. In 2014, Kik it allowed selected brands to pay to develop broadcast bot accounts that could chat with users and serve up things like content or fashion recommendations. These accounts allowed brands — and particularly those in entertainment — to interact with users in an app they use daily and on an opt-in basis, potentially helping to forge a meaningful connection. But they were one-way only, whereas bots can be added to conversations — if you want to pull up the weather while discussing a trip, for example — as well as one-on-one chats, and a whole lot more. Kik has taken its first step into developing that potential after it opened a bot store inside its app, alongside the tools to allow any developer or brand to create their own bot. Users can access the bot store on the tab where they create new chats, while developers are able to go ahead and get started at dev.kik.com . (Kik is also working with developer shops that can help get bots off the ground.) The Kik bot store is off to a rolling start today, with 15 bots from established companies ready and waiting for users. Those include entertainment, such as Vine, Riffsy and FunnyOrDie, games, like TicTacToeBot, and other specific use apps, like The Weather Channel and cosmetics store Sephora. The Vine bot Bots right now might seem basic, but there are a lot of smart minds who see the potential for them to do a whole lot more in the future. Kik CEO Ted Livingston — who will speak at our Disrupt event in New York in May — has heralded them as the new mobile apps. That’s to say that, with fewer smartphone owners downloading apps these days and apps offering a bridge between iOS and Android, a bot that lives in their favorite messaging app could be a better way to engage with a consumer. “Chat is going to be the next great operating system. Apps will come to be thought of as the new browsers; bots will be the new websites. This is the beginning of a new internet,” Livingston wrote recently. Since Kik has long supported HTML5 websites, which are optimized for its in-app browser , a bot on its service can also be used as a trigger, perhaps to send users to a news story or website that has a feature-rich experience inside the Kik app? (Kik hasn’t shipped a payments API with its boy developer tools at this point.) “This is just the beginning,” Livingston told me over Kik. “The deeper we go, the more we find.” Right now, Kik is hoping to draw in developers who can help it build out many of the norms and standards for how bots should operate. “It’s been a bit of a low start” for the chat bot industry in general thus far, Mike Roberts, head of mobile development at Kik, admitted to TechCrunch in an interview. “We’re working with lots of partners… it sounds easy to get started but we are all figuring out what the UX will be like. It’s taken a long time for mobile [apps, it’s been] eight years since the iPhone launched, and we are still figuring that out, too,” Roberts added. Initially, Roberts said that Kik expects the first wave of bots to be in the entertainment space, partly because that is what will appeal strongly to Kik’s young userbase but also, again drawing comparisons with mobile, those were the type of apps that drew early success when smartphone apps first took off. Roberts expects brands to be particularly keen to translate their experiences to bots. While the user experience is still up in the air, we also don’t know what users will think. Admittedly I’m not a heavy Kik user nor one of the average — I’m based outside of the U. S. and aged over 30 — but already my Kik contact list is full of bots I sampled. Roberts is wary that, though a novelty initially, users who overdose on bots might be turned off. “It’s hard to say what the total number [of bots users typical have] will be,” he said. “We think this is another app store opportunity, but we want to grow carefully with the right kind of bots. “Unlike app fatigue, developing a bot makes sense because they can sit in [a user’s] contact list until they need them. So we think there will be a core set of bots that users will interact with, and a small set of core bots that live in conversations,” Roberts said. I tested a number of Kik bots and found them to operate much like those in Slack and Telegram — all bots are created fairly equally at this point. The Vine bot spewed out random clips, not always in a funny way, and the weather bot is limited to North America where I do not live. I don’t have a need for cosmetics, either, but the Sephora sized up my style for future suggestions and I can see how that could appeal to the right person. The Sephora bot Tech savvy people who are long accustomed to typing “/giphy lol” into Slack won’t be blown away by Kik’s bots, but that’s not really the point. Few of Kik’s hardcore users will be familiar with Telegram, Slack or others apps that are at the same stage of their botvolution as Kik. For them this will be a new experience. How these Kik users react, and how developers use these tools to move things forward are the crucial elements here. Livingston is right, this is just the beginning. 2016-04-05 20:16 Jon Russell

26 Flywheel raises $4M for its designer-focused WordPress hosting platform WordPress sites make up a massive chunk of the Internet, so it’s no surprise there are also plenty of services that specialize in hosting them. WordPress hosting and management service Flywheel , which focuses on designers and creative agencies, today announced it has raised a $4 million Series A round led by Kansas City’s Five Elms Capital. This round comes about a year and a half after the Omaha, Nebraska- based company raised a $1.2 million seed round led by Linseed Capital . Flywheel says it currently has about 40,000 agencies, freelancers and creatives on its platform. The company’s pricing plans start at $15 per month. Now that Flywheel has a stable and popular platform, the company is looking at how it can provide additional value to its users (and differentiate its service from competitors). The company recently introduced its “ Organizations ” feature, for example, which offers real-time project visibility in a Twitter-like feed, and team management tools. “Obviously we’ll continue to scale support, sales & marketing — but we’re most excited to be able to use the money to invest in new product and platform ideas specific for designer and agency workflows,” Flywheel co-founder and CEO Dusty Davidson tells me. “I think ultimately our product and its designer/agency focus is what separates us from the rest of the hosts on the planet.” 2016-04-05 20:16 Frederic Lardinois

27 27 Lydia is launching a bot to pay back your friends directly from Slack Lydia and Slack are two charming services and I like using them. So when I learned the two of them were having a baby together, you bet I was excited. Lydia is a French payment app, a sort of Venmo for Europe like stealth startup Cookies. It lets you instantly send and receive money with your friends without paying any fee. And it’s a great alternative to cash. The result of the Slack integration is a Slack bot. Once you install the bot for your Slack, it will monitor at-mentions and figure out if you’re trying to send money. For instance, you could say “I hope you enjoyed the burgers. @jordan @matt you owe me €10 each. cc @lydia.” Then, Jordan and Matt receive a notification on their phones asking them to confirm the payment. They can review and accept and you get back your €20. What if they don’t have Lydia? Non-Lydia users receive a link to pay using their credit cards. They just have to open a web page and enter their credit card information. If you are collecting payments and don’t have a Lydia account, you can enter your IBAN to get the money on your bank account directly. For small companies based in France, this could be a great way to pay for your lunch or even pay back expenses. Instead of having to fiddle with your bank account’s web interface, you can mention Lydia on Slack and send payments in no time. This is a step in the right direction for Lydia. Having a great app is one thing, but Lydia can also leverage its backend to integrate payment features in all sorts of apps, such as Slack. Now let’s hope the startup will release an API soon and expand to other European countries. 2016-04-05 20:16 Romain Dillet

28 PayPal cancels plan to hire 400 people in North Carolina to protest anti-LGBT law PayPal is taking a strong stance in favor of the LGBT community. A couple of weeks ago, North Carolina lawmakers passed a disappointing law that prohibits protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This law also discriminates transgender people by forcing them to go to the wrong bathroom. PayPal won’t accept that and said in a statement that the company won’t open a new office in Charlotte after all. The new global operations center in Charlotte was supposed to employ 400 people. And it looks like the company won’t change its mind as long as this law is still valid. “The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman wrote. “As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.” PayPal isn’t the only one protesting the law. The White House is currently reviewing it, a federal lawsuit is in progress as well. Other governments have banned nonessential government travel to the state of North Carolina in order to protest the law. 100 other companies have asked to repeal the law, but PayPal seems to be the most vocal opponent with its canceled plan to add jobs in the state. Here’s the full statement: 2016-04-05 20:16 Romain Dillet

29 IKEA ponders the future of retail with virtual reality pilot app IKEA is coming to VR, but it’s sadly leaving the Swedish meatballs behind in regular reality. The cheapo furniture company unexpectedly announced this morning that they were releasing a pilot experience for the HTC Vive on the SteamVR store. Gameplay in the app is limited to wandering a kitchen and changing the color of the cabinets so it’s not exactly earth-shattering, but it’s very cool to see IKEA wanting to get in on the ground floor of this technology. VR has huge implications for retail, especially in preparing companies for the game-changing potential of augmented reality technologies, which will undoubtedly shape the space significantly. “Virtual reality is developing quickly and in five to ten years it will be an integrated part of people’s lives. We see that virtual reality will play a major role in the future of our customers. For instance, someday, it could be used to enable customers to try out a variety of home furnishing solutions before buying them,” said Jesper Brodin, the managing director at IKEA of Sweden in a statement. What’s cool about the potential for this app is that the Vive can theoretically pretty easily get accustomed to the size of the room it’s tracking so in the future this app could be a great way to see if items fit in your actual room without you having to bust out the measuring tape. While we’re likely a ways away from wandering the halls of IKEA for hours in VR, retail companies are just getting started in terms of toying with what this new computing platform can bring to their industry and their customers. 2016-04-05 20:16 Lucas Matney

30 Starz launches a streaming service for cord cutters with support for downloads Another premium cable TV network, Starz , is taking the plunge into the streaming video market with today’s launch of its own standalone streaming service, aimed at cord cutters. The move follows the launches of HBO’s over-the-top offering, HBO NOW, introduced last year, as well as a similar effort by Showtime. However, Starz’ service will differentiate itself by providing access to both streaming content and downloads, the company notes, and a lower price. This is the first time the company has made its content library available through a subscription service, but unlike with HBO, it’s not breaking out its streaming service into a separate application. HBO, as you may recall, maintains two applications: HBO GO for cable TV subscribers and HBO NOW for those who stream its programming over the web. Instead, Starz says that its single, all-in-one application will be used to offer access to the streaming service, access by authenticated “TV Everywhere” subscribers (those with a traditional cable TV or satellite subscription), and it will offer access for digital retail sales. Starz’ service is also coming in at a lower price point than its competitors. Where HBO costs $14.99/month and Showtime is $10.99/month, Starz is a more competitive $8.99/month. Of course, the network doesn’t have a breakout success like HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” which could justify asking top dollar. At launch, the programming lineup involves over 2,400 selections monthly, including its series “Outlander,” “Power” and the upcoming “American Gods.” However, it will be bringing in several notable Hollywood movies, like “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and later this year, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Once subscribed, up to four users can watch via the app simultaneously. The app is initially available for iOS, Apple TV, and Android. The company is also heavily promoting how its app will allow users to download content for offline viewing. While this is definitely a great feature to have – especially if you plan to be somewhere with poor service, or without an internet connection, like an airplane. However, it’s not quite a streaming industry first. Amazon Prime Video last fall began allowing users to download select titles for offline viewing as well – something that it hoped would help it stand out from Netflix. Unfortunately, in Amazon’s case, it’s a limited selection of its larger catalog. Starz, meanwhile, is promoting “virtually unlimited downloads.” (We asked the company to clarify this, and were told that “nearly all” of its catalog is available for download – or around 2,200 of the 2,400 total titles at launch.) Also like Amazon, these downloads are only accessible to actively paying subscribers. “Starz has entered the market today with an enormous value proposition for consumers. Our programing will now be more widely available to the 20 million broadband only homes of cord nevers, cord cutters and cord shavers, including Millennials and other underserved consumers who need other viable subscription service options,” said Starz CEO Chris Albrecht in a statement. The new service is launching today, and will allow signups from the app or via the web. 2016-04-05 20:16 Sarah Perez

31 The Awl and other indie publishers are moving to Medium Medium is releasing a new set of tools for publishers to convince them to drop their old content management systems. And it seems to be working as a few independent publishers are going all-in on Medium, such as The Awl , Pacific Standard , Electric Literature and others. And in case you’re wondering how it’s going to look, many of these websites are already live on Medium. For instance, Pacific Standard now runs on Medium. At the top of the screen, you can see a Pacific Standard banner with a couple of tags below. If you click on “News” or “Features” for instance, you can see all the latest posts in these categories in reverse chronological order. There’s also an about page listing all the people working for Pacific Standard as well as their Medium profiles. You can search or follow a publication on various social networks from this banner as well. Below the header, a Medium-powered site features different collections of stories. I believe Pacific Standard is manually crafting this homepage by adding a story to one of these collections. When you click on an article, it looks like a Medium article except that there’s a Pacific Standard logo at the top that brings you to the publication’s homepage. I browsed a few other Medium-powered websites and they all look the same. It’s not bad, but publishers lose a bit of personality when they move to Medium. They can’t pick a font, play with the layout or innovate on the product front. In other words, they’re outsourcing all the product part of their respective publications. It’s good and bad at the same time because Medium has built a powerful social graph by making users autofollow people they already follow on other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. Millions of people are now receiving Medium newsletters with article recommendations based on this social graph. Medium is also likely to adopt new web technologies more quickly compared to independent publishers. Medium supports Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles for example. And yet, by switching to Medium you create a massive dependence with Medium. You don’t have a say on the roadmap and you outsource advertising to Medium. The startup will soon roll out promoted stories from Bose, SoFi, Nest, Intel, and Volpi Foods. These advertisers will pay to highlight their Medium stories below other Medium posts. If readers click on these promoted stories, publishers get a cut. Medium will also enable monthly subscriptions to access members- only content. Existing publishers switching to Medium can import their old content and map existing URLs with Medium pages. Here’s the full list of publishers: Medium wants to host all sorts of text for everyone. The startup wants be the home of your personal blog, your corporate blog, your one-off article that you want to share on Twitter or Facebook, your presidential campaign , your indie publication and more. By doing this, we’re letting Medium control distribution of everyone’s content on the Internet. Signing with Medium is a risky bet, but it looks like the startup found a way to convince some of the most interesting indie publications. 2016-04-05 20:16 Romain Dillet

32 Intel acquires Italy’s Yogitech to improve functional safety of autonomous cars, IoT systems The concept of the Internet of Things is getting a big boost from emerging industries like autonomous cars and robotics, and today Intel announced an acquisition that could help it make sure that its own developments and products in this market are fault-free: it is acquiring Yogitech , a small company based out of Italy that works on functional safety for semiconductors. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, and it looks like this is Intel’s first acquisition in Italy. Yogitech is not your typical startup. Founded in 2000, it had raised less than $3 million , and its investors included the chamber of commerce of Pisa. Intel has confirmed to me that it was not an investor itself, although the two were already working together, namely by way of Altera , which Intel acquired last year. Yogitech works directly with chipmakers like Infineon and it’s not clear right now how the acquisition will affect those relationships. “Functional safety” may not sound like the sexiest aspect of self-driving vehicles and and other kinds of robots that will do our bidding, but it’s one of the more essential ones. What Yogitech (and companies like it do) is make sure that the very processors that are running these systems work as they should, and alert us humans accurately and in real time when they do not. Getting this aspect of the business right will be essential in getting these services off the ground and accepted by the wider public. Yogitech will become a part of Intel’s IoT group. Intel is not spelling out exactly how its tech will be implemented although a recent deal between it and Altera could point to where its tech will increasingly get embedded: here, the companies are working together to embed a so-called “lockstep” safety solution for the Nios II embedded processor. Altera said this “reduces risk in design cycles and helps system designers simplify certification for industrial and automotive safety applications.” Further to that, today Ken Caviasca, VP and GM of platform engineering and development in the Internet of Things Group at Intel, underscored that the sort of problems that Yogitech is solving are those that Intel is trying to address right now: “For years, Intel has been providing high-performance, IoT systems that allow people and businesses to make better-informed decisions,” he writes in a blog post. The industry is now moving from automating data to inform better decisions, to automating actions informed by real- time data. You can see this evolution in the autonomous vehicle prototypes that nearly all have Intel inside. Functional safety is a requirement for these and other IoT customers. We see the combination of high performance and functional safety as a natural evolution of Intel’s IoT platform and strategy.” 2016-04-05 20:16 Ingrid Lunden

33 DreamHost’s OpenStack-powered EC2 rival comes out of beta DreamHost is best known as a web hosting service, but the company has also long been a major contributor to the open source OpenStack platform for enterprises. For the last few years, it’s also been running its own OpenStack- based cloud computing service DreamCompute in beta. Today, DreamCompute is coming out of beta and announcing a new pricing model that’s a mix of pay-as-you-go pricing and predictable monthly plans. DreamCompute, which combines OpenStack with the Ceph storage system and Dreamhost- incubated Project Astara network orchestration service, is a direct challenger to Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. Based on its long experience with running DreamCompute in beta with about 1,200 customers, the team rolled out a completely new architecture in DreamHost’s U. S.-East data center. According to the company’s VP for Cloud Jonathan LaCour, this new architecture provides almost twice the performance of DreamCompute’s beta service. The team started working on this new architecture about a year ago. As LaCour told me, the team quickly realized that its users wanted SSD storage, for example, and were more interested in fast single-core performance than having lots of core available to them. Because DreamCompute sits on top of OpenStack, developers can get full root access to their machines and also use the OpenStack APIs to work with them. DreamHost charges for machines on a per-hour basis, but you never pay for more than 25 days per month. Pricing starts at $4.50 per month. On the old cluster with traditional hard drives, that’ll get you a 1GB machines with one virtual CPU, though on the faster SSD-based cluster, that’ll only pay for 512MB of RAM (a 1GB machine will set you back $6/month). Every DreamCompute cluster comes with 100GB of free block storage. You can find DreamCompute’s pricing table here. With today’s launch, the company is also launching a new knowledge base to help its users run their applications on its service. All the information is published on GitHub and the company encourages its users to fork it and then contribute back to the project. Over time, LaCour tells me, the company may also give some incentives to users who contribute tutorials and other documentation (similar to what Linode does , I assume). 2016-04-05 20:16 Frederic Lardinois

34 Google’s head of ads and commerce is coming to Disrupt NY Yep, ads are going to be a big topic at Disrupt New York. We’ve already announced speakers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and AdBlock Plus , but we’ll also be joined by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s vice president of ads and commerce. Despite the transition to mobile, Google remains the big name in online advertising — in fact, a strong earnings report in February sent its stock skyrocketing and ( briefly ) made its parent company Alphabet the most valuable company in the world. Of course, the mobile transition is still very much underway, and Google is facing growing competition from Facebook and others. So Ramaswamy can both look back at how Google has shifted its focus over the past few years to mobile, while also talking about how its strategy will evolve. Disrupt will take place from May 9 to 11 in Brooklyn. You can buy tickets here. Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Advertising & Commerce, Google Sponsors make TechCrunch events possible. If you want to learn more about sponsorships with TechCrunch, shoot an email to [email protected] . 2016-04-05 20:16 Anthony Ha

35 Aiming to be the OpenTable of kids’ activities, Sawyer raises $1.5 million Numerous startups now sell class passes for children’s activities, including KidPass , which announced $325,000 in seed funding in January, and Pearachute (it raised $1.2 million last month). Now, a Brooklyn-based startup named Sawyer is trying to separate itself from the little kid pack. Its very grown-up ambition: to become an OpenTable -like platform that makes it easier for museums, theaters, sports centers, and kid- focused service providers to sell children’s classes directly to families. It’s easy to see why. While Sawyer might not follow its model exactly, OpenTable generates plenty of revenue. It charges restaurants a fee to get set up; its clients then pay a monthly price for access to its software, plus a fee per patron. In fact, that vision partly explains the $1.5 million that seven-month-old Sawyer was able to raise from investors, including Notation Capital, Collaborative Fund, VC1, and other strategic angel investors. (Part of that money was raised last fall via a convertible note; Sawyer converted that funding into equity and closed on some more this past Friday.) Of course, every new company has to start somewhere. For now, Sawyer is centered on class passes as its source of revenue, charging a flat monthly fee for access to a mix of venues. Parents and caregivers in Brooklyn (and soon Manhattan) can pay either $99 per month for access to six classes or $39 monthly for access to two classes, says CEO Marissa Evans. The economics are tough, acknowledges Evans, who declines to discuss how much of that monthly subscription fee Sawyer keeps on average and how much it sends on to the vendors with which it’s working. The company — which employs just seven people currently and was originally named The Kids Passport — has “obviously been experimenting in recent months,” including with ways to drum up sales affordably. One effective solution to date, says Evans, is turning to “mostly moms who’ve recently left the workforce and aren’t interested in crazy lawyer hours any more.” Paid on commission, they’ve pulled 80 vendors onto the platform to date. Sawyer has also decided against offering any kind of unlimited package of monthly deals, which is something with which its direct competitors are currently experimenting. (“We retain some margin” that way, says Evans.) Asked how many clients have signed up for the service so far, Evans declines to say, offering instead that customers have so far booked more than 1,000 classes through the platform and that it features 4,000 other listings (including across dates and times). She adds that despite the competition, Sawyer feels less pressure to expand into more cities quickly than to “get it right” in Brooklyn and Manhattan.”We’re more focused right now on innovating than trying to get as many families on the platform as quickly as we can,” says Evans, who was most recently a general manager at Rent The Runway, where she met her cofounder, Stephanie Choi. “Ultimately,” she says, “the passport will be just one line of business.” 2016-04-05 20:16 Connie Loizos

36 These mixed-reality trailers show you exactly what gaming on the HTC Vive is like One of the toughest things about VR gaming is explaining it to people who have never played it. That can be a tough obstacle to companies trying to get consumers to buy expensive virtual reality headsets. After months and years of anticipation, the HTC Vive virtual reality headset is officially out. Check out my full review here if you’re debating between a Vive or a Rift or just want to se what the hell all of this virtual reality nonsense is about. Alongside the official launch, Valve (who collaborated closely with HTC on the SteamVR OS, is showing off some really awesome mixed-reality trailers that are great ways of highlighting for consumers exactly what it looks and feels like to experience the Vive. More footage of gameplay is available on Valve’s site. The Vive is on sale now for $799 and ships with download codes for Fantastic Contraption, Job Simulator and Tilt Brush. 2016-04-05 20:16 Lucas Matney

37 The reality of AR/VR business models There is nearly as much confusion as there is excitement about augmented and virtual reality. While VR could be big and AR could be bigger (and take longer) , there are more questions than answers out there. I’ll be doing a deep dive on one aspect of AR/VR every month. This month we’re kicking off with business models. AR/VR hardware sales, e-commerce sales, ad spend and mobile data/voice could drive more than 80 percent of all AR/VR revenues. Things might look a little different than what you expect. Business models are hard to figure out during platform shifts, but can play out to great success (as in the case of mobile over the last decade). AR/VR is the fourth major platform shift (after PC, web and mobile). CEOs need to decide how to play. At the end of the day, business models come down to installed bases, use cases and unit economics, so let’s dip our hands in the virtual money pot and see what comes out. Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus. Magic Leap took $1.4 billion from Google (and others). Apple bought Metaio. Plus major commitments from Microsoft , HTC/Valve , Sony , Samsung and other heavyweights. Serious folks. Not their first rodeo. But hardware is hard to win. So why this much interest in an unproven early-stage hardware market? Looking at the future through the lens of the past helps, and that’s what is happening here. Apple owns global mobile hardware profits in the market it created, making it the most valuable company on the planet (mostly). Google has taken MVP as well, but increasingly relies on advertising sold using other people’s mobile devices — even though it owns Android. Facebook learned valuable lessons from how mobile played out, including its early fumble and spectacular recovery. Hardware is the strategic high ground during platform shifts, and these guys know it. AR/VR could have an installed base in the low single-digit hundreds of millions by 2020, ranging from low-end VR Cardboard up to premium AR Magic Leap (and everything in between). With long-run unit prices from free up to something equal to top-end smartphone prices, hardware sales could drive more than $4 of every $10 spent on AR/VR by 2020. Ignoring hardware is not an option for established leaders and new insurgents. Hardware sales could be the one business model to rule them all in AR/VR, and early investment looks like smart money. Alibaba led Magic Leap’s $793.5 million round at a $4.5 billion valuation , with vice chairman Joe Tsai joining the board. Alibaba and Tsai are amongst the best and brightest in China (and the world). Why would a Chinese e-commerce company throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a Florida hardware startup with no sales? E-commerce sales (goods and services, not in-app purchases) could take almost $2 of every $10 spent using AR/VR in five years’ time. Alibaba, Amazon, eBay and a range of new startups will be able to sell stuff to folks in totally new ways. Some of this might cannibalize existing e- commerce/m-commerce, but AR/VR could also grow e-commerce’s share of all sales. For app and content developers (not selling hardware, goods or services), advertising sales could be the most valuable business model at around $1 of every $10 generated by AR/VR. The first AR advertising unicorn emerged this year with Blippar , and that’s before the head-mounted display market hits its stride. As advertising formats emerge, from virtual banner equivalents to full-blown, native AR/VR formats like The Martian VR Experience , AR/VR advertising could follow the path blazed by web and mobile. With one-third of global advertising and half of all Chinese advertising in web/mobile in 2016 , platform change means serious business for advertisers. AR/VR advertising is more immersive than any rich media (when done right), and ad spend should follow the eyeballs. Mobility will drive installed base for AR/VR. For VR, installed base will be driven by price, with mobile VR solutions trending down from $99 to free. Free is the most compelling price point, despite high-end VR giving a more complete experience (for now). (Note: PlayStation VR will be the other volume driver for VR installed base, again due to price plus PS4’s existing installed base.) For AR, mobility is even more fundamental than for VR. AR devices that can’t make phone calls or access cloud-based services all day out of Wi-Fi range won’t be able to replace smartphones in the long run. AR devices that don’t help mobile networks make money from data/voice won’t be cross-subsidized by the telcos — a key to mass adoption. We’ve pushed hard for AR hardware makers to prioritize cellular capability and longer battery life on roadmaps for this reason. Mobile network data revenue from AR/VR could be golden for the telcos. YouTube estimates that each frame of 360 video requires 4-5 times the bandwidth of traditional video. High- resolution, high-frame rate, stereo images and data could drive some applications even higher in terms of bandwidth requirements; someone has to pay for all that data. AR/VR data could be the catalyst to break mobile networks out of their current annual revenue growth of less than 2 percent — so it’s a big deal. Mobile network voice revenue for AR/VR (voice with mobile Quality of Service, not VoIP) will largely cannibalize existing mobile voice revenues rather than add new revenues for the telcos. They’ll be there, but this isn’t new money. For mobile developers, in-app purchases are one of the core business models. Top-grossing mobile charts are dominated by free apps, and even premium console/PC games markets see downloadable content as a major business model. The AR/VR free versus paid app question is yet to be answered, but users have been trained that digital content is mostly free. Younger users, in particular, rarely pay for content, so there’s no putting the free genie back in the bottle. In-app purchases should be a major business model for AR/VR developers, whether through speed-ups/virtual items or additional services. There will be a premium apps market (see below), but in-app purchases could play as big a role in AR/VR as they already do in the mobile and web markets. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Spotify and others proved how effective subscription business models can be for web/mobile. AR/VR content and SaaS players are set to offer services that folks will happily subscribe to every month (although these might come at the expense of other platforms). Higher levels of service and ad-free services could drive AR/VR subscription revenues, although more innovative models may arise. The enterprise market is well-served by AR players like Microsoft, Meta, ODG and DAQRI, as well as a range of VR service/solution providers. With use cases across military, medical, education, architecture/construction, maintenance and beyond, enterprise sales will be a driver for both AR and, to a lesser extent, VR. Replacing traditional desktop/laptop machines might take some time, but business users will be able to improve productivity in specific areas. With HoloLens now on the International Space Station , AR/VR will reach new heights for enterprise users (pun intended). B2B sales from AR/VR services/solutions providers will also be part of the mix. B2B revenues will come from areas like graphics engines ( Epic’s Unreal Engine at the high end to bundled, free services like Amazon Lumberyard with AWS), facial animation ( Cubic Motion ), gesture recognition ( Leap Motion , Gestigon ), 3D model distribution ( Sketchfab ) and more. Premium apps will have a role to play in AR/VR, despite the potential dominance of free apps. The higher-end the user experience, the greater the potential for paid business models. High- end VR games could see the highest proportion of premium apps, leveraging an installed base of console/PC gamers accustomed to paying up to $60 for their fun. Non-games AR/VR consumer apps more broadly could see a lower proportion of premium apps, similar to the paid share of mobile apps today. Back when Angry Birds’ 99-cent app ruled mobile, few predicted Supercell’s and King’s in-app purchase business models would dominate today. So while long-term business models could look different than those we’ve explored, AR/VR entrepreneurs don’t need to reinvent the virtual wheel. They get to augment it. In the coming months we’ll be digging in all over the place, so feel free to reach out if your company is doing something special (no guarantees on covering you, it’s a big market). Topics will include AR/VR video, commerce, social, voice/messaging, data, enterprise/B2B, advertising, space (I’ve been talking to NASA), games, theme parks, user interfaces, optics, processing (CPU/GPU/VPU), audio, platforms, tracking/sensors, countries (U. S., China, others), pricing and users. 2016-04-05 20:16 Tim Merel

38 Senders (dangerously) wants to know everything about your email recipients The advent of email tracking has caused quite a bit of ruckus, and is generally, rather creepy. A NY-based startup called One More Company made an attempt to tackle this head-on with a service called Trackbuster , but now they’re interested in something else: “enhancing emails” by adding relevant and contextual info. Yes, that does sort of strike me as doing the opposite, though it is not without some benefits. Called Senders , the email service creates a sort of contact card within emails, including social networks, a short bio, photo, company address and other relevant info. Thus, performing searches on the person(s) within your emails can be easier, if not rendered moot, since Senders will fetch and catalog most of the publicly available information for you — all within the email correspondence. An example of Senders working on the first try, with my own corporate email address can be seen below: For those concerned about the information that would become too easily (or readily) available within the card, there is a way to stay somewhat elusive: a user can sign-up and edit the information that Senders will pull. In my case, I added additional info while also making corrections, but the reverse can be done where my details within the card are whittled down. Senders is currently in beta but is accepting sign-ups now, so that potential users can see whether or not it’s of some use to them. Personally, I am content with making multiple precision searches regarding those that I correspond with via email, and don’t advocate the use of third-party cloud services which scan your emails in the hopes of enhancing them, as this poses a potential security risk. To each his own, but personally, I’ll pass. 2016-04-05 20:16 Stefan Etienne

39 IBM Kick-Starts Eclipse OMR, a Toolkit for Creating Language Runtimes IBM has created Eclipse OMR , an open-source virtual machine toolkit to create runtime environments for any language. OMR aims at leveraging general improvements in virtual machine technology across languages, like garbage collection or hardware integration. To achieve this, IBM is generalising its own JVM, J9. Although the JVM is increasingly becoming a generic runtime for a plethora of languages, its tight relationship with the Java language means a large part of its design and functionality is heavily linked to Java itself. This causes challenges when trying to use the JVM as a runtime for other languages, specially dynamically typed ones: up until the addition of InvokeDynamic in Java 7, dynamic languages had to to make use of inefficient workarounds to overcome the JVM's statically-typed nature, with significant impact to performance. As indicated by Daryl Maier and other members of the OMR project , this leaves language creators two choices: either create a runtime for the new language from scratch, which brings in prohibitive costs, or, as most teams have done, adapt the language to work with an existing runtime environment, accepting the limitations. OMR provides a third option. Although OMR is not a runtime on itself, it is a toolkit to easily create runtimes. Created through refactoring components out of J9, IBM's Java Virtual Machine, OMR provides a language-agnostic implementation of the most common features of any runtime, together with a set of interfaces to create what the authors call "language glue", or language-specific code that will act as a bridge between the generic functionality provided by OMR and the particulars of the language at hand. Combining OMR with the language glue, language designers obtain a runtime that includes: In order to accelerate adoption, the interfaces for language glue don't need to be implemented completely from the outset, language designers can implement only parts of it depending on what runtime functionalities they want to obtain. For instance, one could have single-threaded mark / sweep garbage collection by simply implementing three of the APIs, while implementing more of them could also provide concurrent marking, parallelism or generational collection. An interesting side effect of this refactoring is that the individual components are becoming easier to test. Prior to this change, components like garbage collection could only be exercised by using the runtime as a whole, which means testing required a lot of complex setup and analysis. However, after splitting and decoupling this complex logic, the individual parts can be tested in isolation, which simplifies test setup and analysis. However, the most promising feature of OMR is probably the fact that it will be an open-source project run through the Eclipse Foundation (of which IBM is a strategic member ). The project leaders hope that the Eclipse Foundation will foster a community of developers to provide innovative contributions to OMR, which then will be distributed to all languages that base their runtimes on this toolkit. This could help OMR gain terrain against OpenJDK which, although also open source, has traditionally suffered from some difficulties to incorporate interesting contributions, like for instance Google's performance improvements for CMS. There are also downsides to this approach though. While forcing language designers to adapt to an existing runtime may present some challenges, it also means that the different languages can run simultaneously in the same virtual machine, therefore enabling language interoperability. OMR's approach of creating a different runtime for each language means interoperability will be much harder to achieve, if at all possible. The end result may be that different language designers will choose one approach or the other depending on their strategic priorities, weighing between ease of interoperability or ease of language development. 2016-04-05 18:35 Abraham Marín

40 Microsoft's Mehdi: Data security is always under attack Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices Group, Yusuf Mehdi, discusses the state of security and privacy in tech as well as the possibility that the company may acquire Yahoo, on the sidelines of Microsoft's Build 2016 conference. 2016-04-05 19:07 Getty Images

41 Microsoft's Xbox Kinect breathes new life into respiratory assessment Normally found in the hands of gamers rather than medics, the Microsoft sensors could be used to assess the respiratory function of patients. Researchers at the Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick and the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, University of Birmingham and Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) have developed a method of using the devices. The system consists of four Kinect sensors which are capable of quickly creating a 3D image of a patient's torso. This enables physicians to measure and assess how a chest wall moves. In tests it has proven to be as accurate as a patient breathing into a spirometer -- the current method used -- but providing additional information about the movement of the chest, which could help in identifying numerous respiratory problems. The project lead, Dr Chris Golby at the Institute of Digital Healthcare, said: "We have developed a low-cost prototype which provides a more comprehensive measurement of a patient's breathing then existing methods. " Their work is detailed in their paper "Chest Wall motion Analysis in Healthy Volunteers and Adults with Cystic Fibrosis using a Novel Kinect-based," which is published in Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing. Spirometry is the technique most commonly used treat to lung diseases including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and chronic obstructive airways. It requires a patient to take the deepest breath they can, and then exhale into the sensor as hard as possible, for as long as possible. However it has significant limitations as it doesn't allow doctors to assess how different areas of each lung function. It can result in inaccurate readings of some patients' breathing such as older people and children, and those with facial abnormalities or muscle weakness are often unable to form a tight seal around the mouthpiece. Dr Golby said: "For patients who report to A&E a quick and low-cost method of chest wall motion assessment is required. There are some conditions that doctors can't detect or assess using spirometry such as collapsed lung segments or respiratory muscle weakness. However our prototype allows physicians to make accurate assessments. "It is also potentially very useful in assessing changes in respiratory physiology that occur during exercise. This is in contrast with existing systems which rely on data from one viewpoint. " Babu Naidu, Chief Investigator, Thoracic Surgeon at HEFT and clinical scientist at the University Birmingham said: "'A 'game changer' in screening, diagnostics, monitoring therapy and providing bio feedback the Xbox can be used in any condition affecting breathing. " Respiratory diseases kill one in five people in the UK and cost the NHS more than £6billion a year. However the proposed system consists of software and four Kinect sensors each of which cost just £100. Professor Theo Arvanitis, Head of Research at Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, said: "With this and other technologies developed here we hope to innovate in e-healthcare and translate these advances into clinical practice. " The academics trialled their prototype initially using a resuscitation mannequin, then on healthy volunteers and adults with cystic fibrosis. As the Kinect has an infrared beam it allowed them to measure changes in distances across the chest wall. The system uses four sensors which allow measurement of movement from more than one viewpoint. Using off-the-shelf and bespoke software they were able to create a 3D image of a patient's chest wall. The University of Warwick team are now planning to develop their prototype further using Microsoft's new version of the Kinect, working with cystic fibrosis and other respiratory conditions. 2016-04-05 18:36 feeds.sciencedaily

42 GIMPS project discovers largest known prime number The new prime number, also known as M74207281, is calculated by multiplying together 74,207,281 twos then subtracting one. It is almost 5 million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. It is only the 49th known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly difficult to find. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered all 15 of the largest known Mersenne primes. Volunteers download a free program to search for these primes with a cash award offered to anyone lucky enough to compute a new prime. Prof. Chris Caldwell maintains an authoritative web site on the largest known primes and is an excellent history of Mersenne primes. The primality proof took 31 days of non-stop computing on a PC with an Intel I7-4790 CPU. To prove there were no errors in the prime discovery process, the new prime was independently verified using both different software and hardware. Andreas Hoglund and David Stanfill each verified the prime using the CUDALucas software running on NVidia Titan Black GPUs in 2.3 days. David Stanfill verified it using ClLucas on an AMD Fury X GPU in 3.5 days. Serge Batalov also verified it using Ernst Mayer's MLucas software on two Intel Xeon 18-core Amazon EC2 servers in 3.5 days. Dr. Cooper is a professor at the University of Central Missouri. This is the fourth record GIMPS project prime for Dr. Cooper and his university. The discovery is eligible for a $3,000 GIMPS research discovery award. Their first record prime was discovered in 2005, eclipsed by their second record in 2006. Dr. Cooper lost the record in 2008, reclaimed it in 2013, and improves that record with this new prime. Dr. Cooper and the University of Central Missouri is the largest contributor of CPU time to the GIMPS project. Dr. Cooper's computer reported the prime in GIMPS on September 17, 2015 but it remained unnoticed until routine maintenance data-mined it. The official discovery date is the day a human took note of the result. This is in keeping with tradition as M4253 is considered never to have been the largest known prime number because Hurwitz in 1961 read his computer printout backwards and saw M4423 was prime seconds before seeing that M4253 was also prime. GIMPS Prime95 client software was developed by founder George Woltman. Scott Kurowski wrote the PrimeNet system software that coordinates GIMPS' computers. Aaron Blosser is now the system administrator, upgrading and maintaining PrimeNet as needed. Volunteers have a chance to earn research discovery awards of $3,000 or $50,000 if their computer discovers a new Mersenne prime. GIMPS' next major goal is to win the $150,000 award administered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered for finding a 100 million digit prime number. Credit for GIMPS' prime discoveries goes not only to Dr. Cooper for running the Prime95 software on his university's computers, Woltman, Kurowski, and Blosser for authoring the software and running the project, but also the thousands of GIMPS volunteers that sifted through millions of non-prime candidates. Therefore, official credit for this discovery shall go to "C. Cooper, G. Woltman, S. Kurowski, A. Blosser, et al. " About Mersenne.org 's Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) was formed in January 1996 by George Woltman to discover new world record size Mersenne primes. In 1997 Scott Kurowski enabled GIMPS to automatically harness the power of hundreds of thousands of ordinary computers to search for these "needles in a haystack. " Most GIMPS members join the search for the thrill of possibly discovering a record-setting, rare, and historic new Mersenne prime. The search for more Mersenne primes is already under way. There may be smaller, as yet undiscovered Mersenne primes, and there almost certainly are larger Mersenne primes waiting to be found. Anyone with a reasonably powerful PC can join GIMPS and become a big prime hunter, and possibly earn a cash research discovery award. All the necessary software can be downloaded for free at www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm. GIMPS is organized as Mersenne Research, Inc., a 501(c)(3) science research charity. Additional information may be found at www.mersenneforum.org and www.mersenne.org ; donations are welcome. More Information on Mersenne Primes Prime numbers have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians. An integer greater than one is called a prime number if its only divisors are one and itself. The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. For example, the number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5. A Mersenne prime is a prime number of the form 2 P -1. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, and 127 corresponding to P = 2, 3, 5, and 7 respectively. There are only 49 known Mersenne primes. Mersenne primes have been central to number theory since they were first discussed by Euclid about 350 BC. The man whose name they now bear, the French monk Marin Mersenne (1588- 1648), made a famous conjecture on which values of P would yield a prime. It took 300 years and several important discoveries in mathematics to settle his conjecture. Previous GIMPS Mersenne prime discoveries were made by members in various countries: Euclid proved that every Mersenne prime generates a perfect number. A perfect number is one whose proper divisors add up to the number itself. The smallest perfect number is 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 and the second perfect number is 28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. Euler (1707-1783) proved that all even perfect numbers come from Mersenne primes. The newly discovered perfect number is 2 74,207,280 x (2 74,207,281 -1). This number is over 44 million digits long! It is still unknown if any odd perfect numbers exist. There is a unique history to the arithmetic algorithms underlying the GIMPS project. The programs that found the recent big Mersenne finds are based on a special algorithm. In the early 1990's, the late Richard Crandall, Apple Distinguished Scientist, discovered ways to double the speed of what are called convolutions -- essentially big multiplication operations. The method is applicable not only to prime searching but other aspects of computation. During that work he also patented the Fast Elliptic Encryption system, now owned by Apple Computer, which uses Mersenne primes to quickly encrypt and decrypt messages. George Woltman implemented Crandall's algorithm in assembly language, thereby producing a prime-search program of unprecedented efficiency, and that work led to the successful GIMPS project. School teachers from elementary through high-school grades have used GIMPS to get their students excited about mathematics. Students who run the free software are contributing to mathematical research. David Stanfill's verification computation for this discovery was donated by Squirrels ( airsquirrels.com ) which services K-12 education and other customers. 2016-04-05 18:35 feeds.sciencedaily

43 Apache Java Tool for Editing PDF PDFBox, an open-source Java tool for working with PDF documents, has been released by Apache. Apache PDFBox is a Java library that can be used to create and edit PDF documents, and to extract their content for external use. You can also use it to digitally sign, print and validate files against the PDF/A-1b standard. The utility includes a number of command line utilities that can be called for encrypting and decrypting, overlaying, merging, debugging, converting text to PDF and PDF to an image. PDFBox was originally created in 2002 by Ben Litchfield. It was taken up as an Apache Incubator project in 2008, and became an Apache top level project in 2009. This latest release is an updated version with improved rendering and text extraction. It offers unicode support for PDF creation, and has better support for interactive forms. The support for signing and encrypting PDFs has also been improved, along with the parser. This now has a 'self-healing mechanism' that will attempt to recover malformed or corrupted PDFs. Other improvements include lower use of memory and other resources, an enhanced preflight module for PDF/A-1b conformance checking, and a rearranged package structure to allow smaller runtime environments. There are some breaking changes in the library. A number of API calls have been removed, and other API changes include the removal of now returns the matching subtype. has been renamed to to be more in line with the PDF specification, and similarly has been renamed to The final breaking change is the simplification of: To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2016-04-05 17:17 Written by

44 Hadoop Creator Cutting Talks Big Data Past, Present, Future Apache Hadoop has moved from a fledgling technology championed by open source advocates to a platform that has increasingly become mainstream in enterprise IT shops over the last 10 years since it was initially created. In a keynote address on March 30 at the Strata + Hadoop conference in San Jose, Doug Cutting, Hadoop creator and chief architect at Hadoop distributor Cloudera, provided an informal State of Hadoop and Big Data address, looking back at the last 10 years and forward to what the future may hold for big data. "It used to be different between open source and enterprise," Cutting told attendees during an address that led off the morning keynotes -- with open source "hippies" attending O'Reilly conferences while enterprise IT focused their attention and budgets elsewhere. "Now we've seen a merger of these communities -- enterprise and hacker. " Several factors combined to bring big data and Hadoop to this moment, he said, including the inexpensive hardware driven by the PC revolution and the open source community that created standards and turned these platforms into something that people could use at a very low cost. "We had all the ingredients to really begin this change to ignite this revolution," he said. "Hadoop was the first to combine this into a single system. " The elements of that system have essentially remained the same over the past 10 years -- the HDSF storage system, YARN scheduler, and MapReduce execution engine. But over those 10 years more technologies have been introduced to improve Hadoop, including Apache Spark, which many organizations are now using instead of MapReduce. Create a culture where technology advances truly empower your business. Attend the Leadership Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! "Technologies have developed around the [Hadoop] kernel," Cutting said. "And that's what will survive longer than the Hadoop project itself. A new family of technology has arrived, and a great example of that is Spark… Spark came out of the University at Berkeley. It didn't come out of a business. It came about because folks found it useful. We are seeing this again and again. " Cutting said that the Hadoop ecosystem will see this again and again. There's competition for the best technologies at the storage level and at the query level and in other areas, too. As these new technologies arrive, they will improve the whole. "Hadoop's legacy is creating a new way of developing an ecosystem with collaboration," he said. Today the hardware and software needed to run Hadoop is available at a much lower cost, and the system itself is much more scalable, Cutting said, with systems regularly scaling to tens of petabytes. The technology is part of what is driving changes across all industries as they move to digital operations and customer service. "Banks, insurance companies, manufacturers, retailers, and healthcare providers are adopting data technologies not at the periphery, but at the center of the business," Cutting said. "Data is becoming the fundamental driver of economic growth for the century. " Cutting provided a few predictions for Hadoop and big data in the next 10 years, too. Beyond the software stack, he said that he believes big data will get a boost from improvements to computer hardware. For instance, he said, Intel has created a new memory technology called 3D XPoint that improves memory speed. "We've grown up with systems where the primary bottleneck was I/O," he said. "We are going to have the majority of data sets stored in memory, and that's going to change the applications that we can build. " Cutting also said that cloud computing has reached maturity, noting that Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched at around the same time as Hadoop and has gone through a similar adoption curve. More companies are now storing data in the cloud, he said. "But the biggest change in the next 10 years is not going to be something I can predict, but will be things that you are involved in," he told attendees. "We now have a system that is in your hands. It is being created with your input. You can make a difference here. More so than ever before. " 2016-04-05 21:00 Jessica Davis

45 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it As a fan of Cossack dancing, Eastern Bloc architecture, vodka and pervasive government oppression, Sneak loves Russia. And while he accepts that Siberia is a vast and mostly empty land mass, capable of killing the unwary in numerous ways, he would not liken it to Mordor, the dark, ash-covered, orc-infested land in the south-east of Tolkien's Middle Earth. But, according to multiple reports, the all-seeing, all-knowing Sauron Google believes that Russia is in fact Mordor. Or more accurately a bug in the Google Translate tool translated the Ukrainian word for 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'. Not content with effectively calling Russia a nation of twisted, down-trodden creatures ruled by a brutal dictator, Google Translate went one step further by translating 'Russians' into 'okkupanty' meaning ‘occupiers' in Sneak's second language, that being English. C++ is his mother tongue. Then to pour a granary of salt into the virtual wound, Google translated the surname of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov into the Russian for 'sad little horse', according to The Telegraph. Sneak thinks that's rather cute in a slightly Eeyore way. Yes he knows Eeyore is a fictional donkey. Please don't write in. Now, that noise you're hearing is Sneak's irony alarm going off at full pelt, given that Ukraine is not exactly having the best time with Russia and pro-Russian rebels at the moment, particularly as in 2014 Russia annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine, simply because it could. Google has apologised for the error and blamed the automated aspect of Translate, but Sneak is not convinced that it was a bug and, to indulge the conspiracy theorist in him, believes that a disgruntled pro-Ukraine programmer decided to tweak Google Translate to offer this slight at Russian users. Back in his early years as an IT chap at Northern Rock, Sneak ended up dating a lovely Russian systems analyst called Natasha. She had a mononym. Next thing he knew she disappeared one evening after a heady mix of vodka and Kerplunk! and disappeared with Sneak's server room key card. Then the banking crisis happened, Northern Rock went under and Sneak took indefinite sick leave. The moral of the story is that annoying the Russians might not be wise, otherwise the road to Google's Mountain View HQ could end up being blocked by Soviet-era tanks with president Putin straddling a turret, topless and declaring "You shall not pass" to befuddled Google engineers. Or perhaps they will take it in good humour. After all as the video below explains: Russians love to boogie. 07 Jan 2016 2016-04-05 16:58 www.v3

46 Lightning Rock invokes nostalgia with new game 'Marble Mountain' Remember Marble Madness? If not, it's a game that was released in the mid 80's that offered players the thrill of navigating a marble through tricky isometric courses. While spiritual successors have peppered the gaming landscape over the past decade, Lightning Rock's Marble Mountain is the latest, offering this generation a taste of a game that "combines the retro game play of Marble Madness and Super Monkey Ball with the cinematic experience of Indiana Jones to deliver an exciting adventure anyone can enjoy, but with depth for gamers to master. " The puzzler will offer 25 levels that take place in a variety of different environments. Marble Mountain is now available on Steam for Windows, OS X and Linux for $9.99. In addition to its traditional form of play, the game will also support the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, for those that want to experience the title in a VR environment. Source: Steam 2016-04-05 17:14 Timi Cantisano

47 Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO — March 9, 2016 — Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc. on Wednesday signed a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement covering each company’s respective consumer electronics products, including Linux and Android-based devices. “Our agreement with Rakuten reinforces the opportunities that cross-licensing can bring to companies across the technology spectrum,” said Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing. “We’re pleased to have found a mutually beneficial path of collaboration that will ultimately benefit consumers.” “This agreement gives us the freedom to bring our customers new and exciting products, while jointly recognizing the value of patented innovation,” said Akio Sugihara, managing executive officer and director of Rakuten. The terms of the agreement are confidential. Microsoft’s commitment to licensing IP The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant technology ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, it has entered into more than 1,200 licensing agreements. More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing . About Rakuten Inc. Rakuten, Inc. (TOKYO: 4755) is one of the world’s leading Internet companies, offering a wide variety of services for consumers and businesses with a focus on e-commerce, finance, and digital content. Since 2012, Rakuten has been ranked among the world’s ‘Top 20 Most Innovative Companies’ in Forbes magazine’s annual list. Rakuten is expanding worldwide and currently operates throughout Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Founded in 1997, Rakuten is headquartered in Tokyo, with nearly 12,000 employees worldwide. For more information: http://global.rakuten.com/corp/ About Microsoft Technology Licensing Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC was formed in 2014 to acquire, manage and license Microsoft’s patent portfolio. 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. 2016-04-05 19:50 By Microsoft

48 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner Google retracted its ‘mic drop’ option from Gmail only a few hours after launch when it became abundantly clear, the fun just didn’t seem to be happening. A statement on its official blog stated that the internet giant had “…pranked ourselves this year.” The original ‘mic drop’ option was added to the service for April 1 st . The idea was that users were able to send an email and then mic drop the message after it was sent, automatically attaching a gif of a yellow minion dropping a microphone in such a manner as to convey in a humorous fashion that the conversation was over, as far as the sender was concerned, and effectively ending the conversation so no one could reply. On its own, it was actually pretty funny. Quickly after mic drop launched however, disgruntled Gmail users started posting that due to the close proximity of the ‘mic drop’ option with the normal send button…. users were accidentally using it in conversations with clients, bosses and others, who might not necessarily get the joke. In the end Google killed the ‘mic drop’ option pretty quickly, and followed soon after with an apology. As part of saying sorry, Google also announced it was doing its best to sort out all the mic dropped emails that had subsequent replies in users’ inboxes so that people will at least be able to read threads and emails they were cut out of. As an aside, Google also said that perhaps it should have asked its users for permission rather than just blanket enabling ‘mic drop’ for everyone, and also admitting that it hadn’t really considered the consequence of accidental clicks. Google will probably put a lot more thought into next year’s effort. The post Google Says Sorry For The Mic Drop On April Fool’s Day appeared first on FileHippo News . There’s little doubt that schools–whether K12 public or private, or even higher education institutions–are struggling under the burden of balancing security with operations. The sheer amount of data that schools are required to gather on their students and employees is staggering; it’s only compounded by invasive background checks on employees who work with underaged children, proof of eligibility for special education services, and government requirements to qualify for any kind of school-based nutrition assistance. Obviously, schools rely heavily on software to keep their databases organized and to make data entry as easy as possible. The unfortunate reality, though, is that selecting software for a school system isn’t as simple as it is for a business or organization. The privacy concerns are only one small factor; working around state and federal funding requirements is a whole other issue. That’s why one school system in Wisconsin is glad to finally shed the DOS-based software they’ve literally been using since 1985. Yes, around the same time that Matthew Broderick nearly launched World War III with the WOPR computer and Arnold Schwarzenegger came back from the future to keep Skynet from being disabled, the Sheboygan school system implemented a software-based network that remained in use for over thirty years. The parents of some of today’s students were not yet born when this software was introduced, but due to the headaches of finding, installing, training, and implementing a newer title, their original system was still in place. Now, the school system will be working with Skyward (don’t worry, no known relation to Skynet), an all-in-one product that handles everything from letting parents pay for school lunches online to letting teachers enter grades in the computer and generate report cards. As for the ever- prevalent fear of data breaches , Skyward has only had one newsworthy breach that resulted in teachers’ Social Security numbers and identifying information being shared, but that event appears to have been user error on the part of the client. As with many decisions for academic institutions, the Skyward agreement is only for three years, which is typical of this kind of working arrangement. The district, however, doesn’t foresee a change due to their history of sticking with a company and with the positive response towards the software from other school systems in the state. The post School Software Concerns While Protecting Students appeared first on FileHippo News . That’s right, adblocking may be coming to Redmond’s flagship browser in the next scheduled release for its Internet Explorer replacement. If it happens, Microsoft will become another high profile tech firm that allows for adblocking software as standard. This new feature for Edge would mean that web users would no longer need the 3 rd party extension AdBlock or AdBlock Plus, and would further annoy and concern publishers and website owners that rely on the revenue from online ads to survive. Despite the fact that Google and Google’s Chrome browser is the world’s preferred way to surf the web, Microsoft still have a substantial subset proportion of the market, especially among enterprise users. According to Microsoft themselves, there are currently over 200 million devices running Windows 1o worldwide, and that number is growing. And of course, the Edge browser comes as standard with Windows 1o, whether users choose to use Bing or Google to do their surfing. News of feature has spread quickly after Cotton spotted the new extension at a Microsoft Build conference, called “What’s Next for Microsoft’s New Browser,” – in one slide that seemed to show the next version of Edge would include adblocking capability when it is released. While adblocking was for many years primarily only of benefit mainly to the tech heads of the world, in recent times, it has become much more popular among users. The growth in adblocking has risen greatly in the last few years. Toward the end of last year, Apple , brought the concept to most its ‘i’ users by allowing its latest version of its own browser, Safari, to carry third party adblockers. In January of this year, a Mozilla Co-Founder, launched Brave , a web browser that came with adblocking built in and turned on as standard. Apple’s entry to the adblocking world came as no surprise to many, as it still makes the majority of its profits from hardware sales, while Mozilla and its creators have always had a fairly egalitarian approach to the web. Unsurprisingly, Google, who rely on advertising for more than 90% of its revenue, has not released plans for its own built in adblocking software. As Mr. Bott notes at the bottom of his article: “It remains to be seen how the new ad-blocking features will work. But with new features expected to arrive in Windows 10 preview builds in the coming weeks, we probably will know soon.” Time will tell. The post Microsoft To Go To The Edge To Offer Adblocking appeared first on FileHippo News . One of the best innovations in the connected internet revolution has got to be the way that companies can tap into the greatest workforce possible, regardless of geography. Telecommuting is allowing even the smallest startup to reach team members literally anywhere around the planet, giving them a manpower edge that many new companies didn’t have even ten years ago. But whether a company’s team works together in the same office or is scattered across three continents and eight different time zones, there is a fundamental problem with any group effort: real-time, secure communication. That’s where the rise in popularity in collaborative software comes in, and one of the names at the forefront is Asana. Founded by two well-known names in digital engineering–one of them a co-founder of Facebook–Asana was named one of the top twenty collaborative software options by business software group Capterra, and has already grabbed some major name customers like Zappos, Facebook, Groupon, and more. How many more? Around 13,000 different paying subscribers, all connecting on projects ranging from the frivolous to the closely guarded game changer. In a recent blog post , the founders explained why their focus on a streamlined workflow product was so crucial: because there wasn’t anything reliably useful when they needed it in previous jobs: “Asana has been our attempt to solve the pain of work about work, letting organizations easily achieve their goals, or take on bigger ones. We call that solution ‘work tracking,’ software that manages who’s responsible for what by when, and generally serves as the source of truth for everything a team is working on. We—now a team of 186 people—have collectively invested so much love and hard work into this attempt, it’s hard to articulate how gratifying it feels to step back and see that it’s actually…working.” One goal for the new investment series is to work on creating a “bigger is better” version of the current application. While most people think of a narrowly focused team working through software like Asana, the company already has several large-base clients with very broad needs. Zappos uses the software across its entire company, not just within one group, like product development. An article on Asana’s recent Series C investment also cited city governments that are using Asana to replace the old inter-office email system, meaning the entire city workforce is connected through this software. The post Asana Raises $50M In Latest Investment Round appeared first on FileHippo News . From now on, the MIT Media Lab will release its software via FLOSS: (Free Libre Open-Source Software) The move was announced by Media Lab director, Joi Ho, in a blog post last weekend: “I’m proud to announce that we are changing our internal procedures to encourage more free and open-source software.” Ho hopes that by changing the way they they approach software, it will allow students to free up the code they write so there will be no need for approval from either internal or external administrative hurdles. In doing so, Ho argues that this will align MIT more closely with its core altruistic academic values, that in essence asserts that knowledge should be shared, tested, and externally validated by its peers. “Previously, software releases using free and open source licenses were approved by an internal committee. But since we’ve always allowed our developers to open-source their work, we’re eliminating the unnecessary hurdle: from now on any open source request will be viewed as the default and automatically approved….“We respect the autonomy of our community members and will continue to let them choose whether to release their software as proprietary or open. But removing the open source approval step will level the playing field.” MIT Media Lab’s announcement was met with a positive response from the online community, especially from supporters and advocates of free and open-source software in general, such as the free OS, Linux, and its variants. The post MIT Media Lab Goes Open Source, And Doesn’t Forget To FLOSS appeared first on FileHippo News . The move comes after Microsoft found not only are macro based attacks on the rise , but that a massive 98% of all malware attacks against Office, were macro based. Microsoft are quite keen to point out that that 98% figure applies to malware attempts as opposed to actual infections, but well, you get the picture. “The enduring appeal for macro-based malware appears to rely on a victim’s likelihood to enable macros.” The new feature allows IT administrators to easily block and prevent networked users from enabling macros in what they might consider to be ‘high risk’ scenarios. The result now, is that even when an employee attempts to leave Office protected view, they will be prevented from doing so, and then informed about the risks they potentially face. Of course, the term ‘high risk’ is subjective, and can often depend on the personal zeal level of the admin in question, but generally it could include docs downloaded directly from the internet or communal cloud storage lockers, or even documents attached to emails originating from outside a secure network. “For end-users, we always recommend that you don’t enable macros on documents you receive from a source you do not trust or know, and be careful even with macros in attachments from people you do trust – in case they’ve been hacked.” This was good advice before Office received its new macro protection, and its good advice now, as well. The post Microsoft Takes Macro Protection Action appeared first on FileHippo News . If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool for redesigning and sharing your digital photos–while still not requiring a degree in graphic design to work it…looking at you, expensive photo editing software–then look no further than FotoJet. This free tool gives you multiple options for creating collage, email headers, Instagram posts with professional-looking text, and more, while producing results that look like they were rendered in the studio. FotoJet offers more than 500 uniquely creative collage templates and over 80 different classic collage layouts. Of course, if you have a little more know-how and want to design something truly personal, you can build your own design from the ground up using the themed templates provided, like the Collage or Photo Card. There are even tools that are specifically intended for social media needs, like a Facebook cover image generator, a standard Facebook post template, a Twitter header, and a YouTube channel cover image creator. The tool even offers some fun options, like incorporating your images into a magazine cover, for example; your wedding photos can be introduced via a People magazine cover a’ la the latest royal or celebrity wedding spread. One particular favorite is the wide variety of customizeable holiday cards that put some of the expensive services to shame. Finally, the collage template options range from the light-hearted and silly to the studio-quality portrait work, all of which you can easily make your own by “choosing a template, adding your own photos, freely editing and customizing the template with text or clipart images, and then saving or sharing your work.” For those who have a little more expertise when it comes to creating a digital product, the Classic mode lets you choose from a variety of pre-formed drag-and-drop options, much like a newsletter layout. Select the number of boxes you want, fill the boxes with your content, text, or clip art, and create. One of the most attractive things about FotoJet is its fully browser-based workflow. There’s no software to download, no upgrades or updates to keep up with, just an easy to click and intuitive builder that let’s you produce an attractive, professional-looking end result in minutes. To sign up for FotoJet’s free service, check out the site by clicking HERE. The post FotoJet Makes Digital Photo Sharing Easy appeared first on FileHippo News . When hackers first stumbled upon the treasure trove of personal identifiable information that hospitals, medical centers, and doctors’ offices collected on their patients, the entire industry became a target for identity theft. With an afternoon’s worth of hacking, thieves could make off with hundreds of thousands of patients’ records; if the medical center complex was connected by a shared network, the number of affected victims in a single hacking event could even reach the millions. But hackers have a new tool at their disposal, thanks to the punishment that a medical center faces if they become the victims of a data breach (yes, if a hacker infiltrates their network, even in spite of strict security protocols, the hospital can be held responsible for the HIPAA violation associated with exposing patients’ confidential records). With the massive fines and penalties associated with a patient privacy violation, hackers have now learned that there’s serious money to be made from ransomware. In a ransomware attack, not only is the hospital facing punitive monetary damages, but with patient records under lock and key, there’s the very real threat of danger to human life (and then the resulting lawsuits associated with that); several hospitals have been reduced to the Stone Age paper-and-pen records systems just to continue providing care during a ransomware attack, and one California hospital so far this year has already paid the hackers in Bitcoin to unlock its network in order to continue helping its patients. At the same time, the medical industry can be hit hard by a single hacking event, which is why thieves are going after the industry in such a big way. UCLA Health, which had 4.5 million patient records breached in a single event, stated in its notification letter that it blocks “millions” of known hacking attempts every year. The next big thing in IT and software development? Creating an impenetrable medical records network that will allow hospitals to continue meeting the needs of the sick and injured while keeping hackers at bay. If even the FBI couldn’t get into an outdated iPhone, surely there’s a team who can write a code that will prevent this type of crime. The post Taking Hospitals Hostage With Ransomware appeared first on FileHippo News . The scientists found that the majority of participants reacted to the reminders and provided stimulus by suppressing their opinions and true feelings on topics that they considered to be either non-mainstream, or where they thought they would find themselves in the minority. In effect, it highlights the reasons why many governments would rather their citizens didn’t know that were under an umbrella of state surveillance. The study lends itself to the social-studies phenomenon known as the ‘spiral of silence.’ In the US, whistle-blower, Edward Snowden has been credited with helping create a ‘spiral of silence’ there after his revelations revealed to the American public just how ingrained the culture of surveillance had become entrenched in the years after 9/11. The study found subjects who were “primed of government surveillance significantly reduced the likelihood of speaking out in hostile opinion climates. These findings introduce important theoretical and normative consequences. Theoretically, it adds a new layer of chilling effects to the spiral of silence. This is the first study to provide empirical evidence that the government’s online surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion.” The idea behind the ‘spiral,’ is that people avoid stating a true opinion on a subject to fit in with ‘friends’ on social media, and also not to bring attention to themselves from listening government ears. Lead researcher of the study, Elizabeth Stoycheff, said she was concerned about what her team discovered when their experiment had concluded: “It concerns me that surveillance seems to be enabling a culture of self-censorship because it further disenfranchises minority groups. And it is difficult to protect and extend the rights of these vulnerable populations when their voices aren’t part of the discussion. Democracy thrives on a diversity of ideas, and self-censorship starves it…. Shifting this discussion so Americans understand that civil liberties are just as fundamental to the country’s long-term well-being as thwarting very rare terrorist attacks is a necessary move.” So much for democracy and the internet. The post Digital Mass Surveillance Silences Dissenters appeared first on FileHippo News . The apology comes after Tay’s first 24 hours of freedom online last week saw her at turns deny the holocaust and also suggest casual linkages between feminism, and cancer. Despite exhaustive testing and implementing contingency protocols in her design, Microsoft state that they had not anticipated the actions of a subset of Twitter users and had “made a critical oversight for this specific attack. As a result, Tay tweeted wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images.” Microsoft also took the opportunity to state that they would only revive Tay if its engineers could essentially prevent or undermine internet trolling from shaping the AI in a negative manner. This is the second apology Microsoft have issued. The first was short and to the point, pointing out as it did, that Tay was an experiment, and a ‘learning machine…[so]…some of its responses are inappropriate and indicative of the types of interactions some people are having with it.” The idea behind Tay was that the chatbot would become smarter with each passing human the AI conversed with. What the designers didn’t factor into her programming was the capacity for the internet to troll. “We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay,” said a spokesman for Microsoft. “ To do AI right, one needs to iterate with many people and often in public forums. We must enter each one with great caution and ultimately learn and improve, step by step, and to do this without offending people in the process. We will remain steadfast in our efforts to learn from this and other experiences as we work toward contributing to an Internet that represents the best, not the worst, of humanity.” In short, this was probably Microsoft’s way of saying: F***** internet trolls. The post Microsoft Formally Apologizes For Tay, It’s Offensive Teenage Chatbot appeared first on FileHippo News . 2016-04-05 16:43 feeds2.feedburner

49 Google Play logos get a new look Last September, Google ditched its familiar old logo , replacing it with a more modern interpretation featuring a sans serif logotype, having rejected some rather more outlandish ideas. The company has been gradually refreshing the rest of its corporate identity system, including the design of some of its key apps around the principles of its Material Design visual language, which it introduced in 2014. The latest changes to be unveiled are for Google Play, which is getting updated branding to fit in with the Material Design style. The Google Play logo has been given a lick of paint with much brighter colors than the previous version, while the Play Store 'shopping bag' has been flattened out. Each of the different content strands - Movies & TV, Music, Games, Books and Newsstand - have also been updated with new color-coded logos, featuring a relevant icon emerging from the Play arrow. The image below shows how these logos/icons have changed over the years: The company says that "you'll start to see the new Google Play icons across devices and online in the coming weeks". Source: Google via Android Police 2016-04-05 16:18 Andy Weir

50 IT pros have bad security habits Double standards, double standards everywhere. Our IT bosses might force us to change our passwords every so often, but they rarely change their own credentials, even though theirs offer administrative privileges. Those are the results of a new survey conducted by cyber security vendor Lieberman Software. The company had asked 200 IT professionals at RSA Conference 2016 about their password changing habits. More than half (55 percent) of IT pros force their users to change their passwords more often than they do, and 10 percent of them never change their administrative credentials at all. Seventy-four percent change admin passwords on a monthly or less frequent basis. "Administrative passwords are the most powerful credentials in an organization -- the keys to the IT kingdom", said Philip Lieberman, president and CEO of Lieberman Software. "The fact that 10 percent of IT professionals admitted that they never change these credentials is astounding. It’s almost like an open invitation to hackers to come in and stay a while. In the meantime, the intruders are nosing their way around the network. They can anonymously help themselves to information and remain undetected until it’s too late". But that’s not all -- in 36 percent of cases, passwords are shared among the IT staff, and 15 percent of IT pros said that if they are to leave their company now, they would still be able to remotely access it with the same credentials later on. "Given that insider threats are one of the biggest concerns for CISOs, knowing that more than a third of IT professionals share privileged passwords is ludicrous", Lieberman continued. "The same can be said about so many ex-employees who can still access administrative credentials. Automated privileged access management solutions can prevent these types of cyber threats related to unsecure credentials". Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Pixelbliss / Shutterstock 2016-04-05 15:50 By Sead

51 Get this "Windows 10 at Work for Dummies" ebook, for free The fast and easy way to get up and running with Windows 10 at work. Claim your "Windows 10 at Work for Dummies" free eBook (valued at $17.99) today. If you want to spend less time figuring out Windows and more time getting things accomplished, you've come to the right place. This guide breaks down the most common Windows tasks into easily digestible parts, providing you with illustrated, step-by-step instructions on everything you'll encounter in Windows 10. From setting up your desktop with your favorite apps to finding the files and applications you need and everything in between this hands-on, friendly guide takes the headache out of working with Windows. Learn to: Offered Free by: Wiley See All Resources from: Wiley Please ensure you read the terms and conditions to download the "Windows 10 at Work for Dummies" ebook. Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this free offer. If you have previously made use of these free offers , you will not need to re-register. Get this free eBook That's OK, there are other free eBooks on offer you can check out here , but be aware that these are all time limited offers. If you are uncomfortable sharing your details with a third-party sponsor, we understand. How can I disable these posts? Click here . Disclosure : A valid email address is required to fulfill your request. Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this offer. By submitting a request, your information is subject to TradePub.com's Privacy Policy . 2016-04-05 15:08 Steven Parker

52 Would you pay $3.99 a month for an Outlook.com Premium subscription? Outlook.com offers all the right features that most consumers expect in an email service these days. But, if you are power users, Microsoft believes you may be looking for more, which is why the software giant is now trialling a Premium subscription. Costing $3.99 a month, this is not the first and only Outlook.com subscription. There already is an Ad-free plan for users who want to get rid of advertisements, that goes for $19.95 a year, however the Premium tier is meant to unlock more extra, pro-level features. With the Premium subscription , the idea is to offer users a version of Outlook.com that supports up to five custom email accounts, that is also ad-free. The former feature had been offered for free, being embraced by users who own domains, before Microsoft decided to pull the plug -- only those who previously added accounts would get to keep it. Microsoft does not say if and when it plans to make this subscription available to the public, with a spokesperson saying that "Outlook.com Premium is currently a small pilot program. We’re always investigating new features based on the wants and needs of our customers, and we have nothing more to share at this time". The fact that there is no yearly price is clear evidence of that. Microsoft's landing page for the subscription does reveal that customers who sign up for it will only be charged after the first year, although this may change with a possible general availability. That said, a one-year trial would be a good play, as the users who Microsoft targets are unlikely to go through the hassle of setting things up again for a short free testing period. Obviously, because we are only talking about such a small number of custom email accounts, this subscription looks to be designed with a niche crowd in mind, like folks who need a few addresses up and running for their website. Those who purchase an Office 365 subscription may be able to take advantage of it for free, however, and invite up to five users to try it. The asking price does seem very reasonable considering the number of custom email addresses involved. With Google Apps, for instance, the cost is $5 per user per month, which is higher no matter how you plan on using that Premium subscription with Outlook.com. 2016-04-05 15:05 By Mihăiță

53 iPhone SE launch weekend sales "lackluster," but iPad Pro proves popular While the majority of reviews for Apple’s recent iPhone SE have been overwhelmingly positive, calling it the best 4-inch phone you can buy, the public reception has been slightly muted. Apple’s been pretty quite when it comes to early sales figures for the new device, and that’s probably because - in the words of mobile analytics firm Localytics - they’re pretty “lackluster.” The company’s research shows that the iPhone SE grabbed a mere 0.1 percent of the iPhone market over its first weekend of sales. This wasn't the only bad news for Apple. A recent CNBC report claimed that the new device was proving to be very popular in some overseas markets, and that orders for the phone had already topped 3.4 million units in China. However, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expressed doubt as to the accuracy of the claims. Although there exists a market survey that indicates iPhone SE preorders top 3.4mn units in China, we couldn’t find more evidence to support this. However, judging by the delivery time for iPhone SE preorders, we believe initial demand for the iPhone SE following the announcement has been significantly lower than that of past new models. We believe this is due in part to lackluster demand for smaller-size smartphones and, more importantly, that the product itself offers no significant upgrades to form factor or hardware specs. There are several possible reasons why the new iPhone may have suffered poor first-weekend sales compared to other iOS device launches. For a start, it was released on the same day that Tesla unveiled its Model 3 vehicle, which grabbed a lot of press attention. Also, the fact it is essentially a low-cost, four-inch, upgraded version of the iPhone 5s means it's targetted more toward emerging markets rather than the US. Finally, most Apple fans looking for a new smartphone will likely be waiting until September, when the iPhone 7 is due. The recent iPad Pro 9.7-inch , on the other hand, did fairly well during its opening weekend. According to Localytics, it performed slightly better over its first few days than its predecessor managed last fall. 2016-04-05 15:00 Rob Thubron

54 HP's new Spectre laptop is thinner and more powerful than Apple's MacBook When it isn't busy making powerful Windows phones and Surface clones for businesses, HP makes the occasional product that can be an attractive choice for consumers. Today, the company has announced its new Spectre laptop, which is a 13-incher (running Windows 10 ) that is an obvious response to Apple's Macbook in terms of design, with internals that rival those of the 13-inch MacBook Pro (Retina). As you can see from the image and video above, a lot of effort went into the design esthetic, with HP going for carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer and machined aluminum with a mix of matte, dark grey coating and glossy copper accents. In addition to looking more like a piece of jewelry rather than a PC, the company claims the new Spectre is the thinnest laptop yet, and sure enough it is only 10.4 mm thick - or just about as thick as a AAA battery. HP says that the copper accents are hand-made, and what's even more impressive is the "hidden piston hinge", which is what gives the Spectre laptop its thinness and premium look. However, owning the Spectre is not just about impressing your friends and family, and HP's Kevin Frost said that: This is an obvious jab at products such as Apple's Macbook and Asus's ZenBook UX305 , as both companies boasted about their thinness but forgot to mention that they're quite underpowered due to their use of Intel's lowly Core M processors. The HP Spectre features powerful internals, from a choice of "proper" Skylake Core i5-6200U or Core i7-6500U CPUs, and up to a decent 8GB of RAM and 512GB of PCIe SSD storage for the top configuration. While these are definitely good specs, the fact that it only comes with a 13.3-inch Full HD, non-touch IPS display will probably disappoint some people, although it's worth noting that it is bonded with 0.4 mm of Gorilla Glass. In terms of cooling, HP didn't make a system that pushes hot air out, and instead designed it to pull cold air in at all times, to keep the CPU (as well as the other components) operating at as low a temperature as possible and thus prevent thermal throttling. The Spectre features a backlit keyboard and a glass trackpad, and HP is boasting about the dual speakers, promising that they're custom-tuned in collaboration with experts at Bang & Olufsen so that you can enjoy great sound even without your headphones. In terms of connectivity, HP shows that it is not a big believer in Apple's vision of a future with just one port for everything, as the Spectre comes equipped with three USB Type-C ports on the back, and all of them can be used to charge the device, however only two of them support Thunderbolt 3 - which is good news if you plan on using 4K external monitors. If you're wondering about battery life, HP says you should be able to squeeze up to nine and a half hours of usage, and at 2.45 pounds (1.11 kg), the Spectre is a pretty lightweight device. The base model (Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD) will run you $1169 and will be available from HP's store starting April 25, as well as at Best Buy around May 22, although prices there will start at $1249, so keep that in mind. Source and Images: HP 2016-04-05 14:52 Adrian Potoroaca

55 HP introduces world's thinnest laptop, the Spectre 13.3 with sixth-gen Core i5 / i7 CPUs The next MacBook (Air) killer – it’s a cliché that’s way past its prime but when a company sets about designing a notebook for that specific purpose, how else can you describe it? Unveiled at the New York Times International Luxury Conference in Paris, the new HP Spectre 13.3 is a powerhouse of a machine in a footprint that earns it the title of world’s thinnest notebook. The Spectre 13.3 measures just 10.4 millimeters thick – roughly three millimeters thinner than Apple’s MacBook or for comparison, about as thick as a AAA battery. It tips the scales at 2.45 pounds which is light but not the lightest around. On the inside, you’ll find a sixth-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor (your choice) rather than the much slower Core M chip populating other thin machines in this segment. The CPU is joined by up to 8GB of RAM and a PCIe solid state drive offered in capacities up to 512GB. Surprisingly enough, the system comes equipped with three USB Type-C connectors, two of which support Thunderbolt. Perhaps the biggest disappointment some will find with the Spectre 13.3 is the 1080p display. That’s fine for most applications and users but those wanting the best available technology will certainly miss a higher resolution display (your battery will thank you). What’s more, this one is of the non-touch variety if that matters to you at all but it does come with a protective coat of Gorilla Glass 4. As for battery life, HP claims the Spectre 13.3 is good for 9.5 hours of movie playback or Office tasks thanks to its 38-watt-hour pack. The Spectre 13.3 will be made available for pre-order on April 25 starting at $1,169 and will ship next month. 2016-04-05 14:15 Shawn Knight

56 Open source database targets the big data analytics market Leader in open source databases MariaDB is announcing the release of its new big data analytics engine, MariaDB ColumnStore. It unifies transactional and massively parallelized analytic workloads on the same platform. This is made possible because of MariaDB's extensible architecture that allows the simultaneous use of purpose built storage engines for maximum performance, simplification, and cost savings. This approach sets it apart from competitors like Oracle, and removes the need to buy and deploy traditional columnar database appliances. "I've seen first-hand how traditional columnar appliances arose as reactions to the cost and complexity of Oracle," says Michael Howard, CEO of MariaDB, "But these reactions have only increased complexity and cost further, and most importantly, over-looked critical features. In contrast, MariaDB ColumnStore is ACID compliant, blazingly fast, massively parallelized, and uses a distributed storage engine. What's equally important is its front end -- MariaDB, which provides the same interface, same security, same SQL richness simplifying management, reducing operating costs". ColumnStore is a columnar storage engine for massively parallel distributed query execution and data loading. It supports a vast spectrum of use cases including real-time, batch, and algorithmic. It can perform complex aggregation, joins, and windowing functions at the data storage level to increase performance. MariaDB ColumnStore is an Open Source GPL2, a fork based on InfiniDB and open source community contributions. The company is also announcing new data streaming capability in MariaDB MaxScale that will simplify real-time data propagation to external data lakes or data warehouses. This feature allows transactions in MariaDB to be replicated in real time to Hadoop or any other data store. It enables MaxScale and MariaDB to handle replication in mission critical applications without impacting performance. At the same time it includes all necessary metadata so that any program can read it, with no per-value overhead. MariaDB ColumnStore will be available for beta testers next month, you can sign up for more information on the release on the company's website . Image Credit : Tashatuvango / Shutterstock 2016-04-05 14:12 By Ian

57 Reducing costs is a growing priority for IT departments IT departments in businesses across Europe are still focused on saving money, and not on adding value to the company, or innovating to support further growth. Those are the results of a new survey by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Claranet. Polling 900 European IT leaders, it was unveiled that despite growing IT budgets, these departments are still looking to cut costs and save money. Today, 46 percent said reducing cost was the top priority, compared to 34 percent a year before. For 29 percent, new revenue streams were their core activity, and for 25 percent, that was increasing customer loyalty. "European IT budgets are growing, which would suggest there’s a recognition within businesses of the importance of IT, however time and resources are still not being spent on more forward- thinking projects that can generate more revenue in the long-term", said Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director. It is clear from the data that the focus on cost reduction and ‘keeping the lights on’ we witnessed in last year’s report has been maintained and, for many, has actually increased. It goes without saying that costs are important, but it’s critical that IT departments can reposition themselves internally as enablers of business agility and innovation, rather than as cost centers", added Robert. "Any business looking to digitally transform their processes must have the right partners and suppliers in place to carry out those standard tasks universal to IT departments. By working with a managed service provider, CIOs can effectively outsource this work and spend more time working on strategy and revenue-generating activities", concluded Robert. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: tomertu / Shutterstock 2016-04-05 14:12 By Sead

58 Android Auto Rolls Into 18 New Countries Google Tuesday boosted the number of countries in which Android Auto is available, pushing the total to 28. Drivers in these countries can pair their device with their car's dashboard unit and access select features, such as maps, music, and search. Android Auto is already available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, the UK, and the US. Adding Russia and India makes the service available to more than one billion new people. Further, Android Auto is now available throughout much of South America. That is, if the car supports it. The selection of brands that have voiced support for Android Auto is decent. It includes Abarth, Acura, Alfa Romeo, Audi, Bentley, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Ford, Genesis, GMC, Holden, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Lamborghini, Land Rover, Mahindra, Maserati, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Skoda, Subaru, Suzuki, Vauxhall, Volkswagen, and Volvo. About half of these manufacturers have launched cars with Android Auto aboard. Are you prepared for a new world of enterprise mobility? Attend the Wireless & Mobility Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! For those who live in countries where Android Auto is available, but don't own one of the supported cars, another solution exists -- third-party head units. A decent selection of audio companies make receivers/CD players that support Android Auto. For example, Alpine, Boss, Kenwood, JBL, Pioneer, and Sony all make head units with Android Auto baked in. Pricing ranges from $80 to $1,400, but most cost about $600. Android Auto's core functions include Google Maps, music, communication (phone/messaging), and voice search. A wide number of third party apps, such as Spotify, have built in Android Auto. It is included on all Android devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop and up. 2016-04-05 14:06 Eric Zeman

59 This is what happens if you drop your Galaxy S7 Edge on the edge Should you get a case for your Galaxy S7 Edge? Well if you think you'll drop it on the edge, it's probably worth getting some protection for your $700 smartphone, as it's remarkably easy to shatter the curved glass. I've certainly learned my lesson, and if you take a look at the video above, this isn't just your normal broken screen. This isn't going to be a cheap or straightforward repair process. 2016-04-05 13:30 Tim Schiesser

60 Ashampoo releases Photo Optimizer 2016, Backup 2016

Berlin-based developer Ashampoo has released two free programs: Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2016 , and Ashampoo Backup 2016. Photo Optimizer 2016 is a stripped down version of the company’s commercial photo fixing tool, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 6. The program can automatically optimize a folder of photos with a click, or you can use manual tools to crop, resize, rotate, sharpen, blur or straighten an image, tweak brightness, contrast or colors, add watermarks and more. Ashampoo Backup 2016 is a simple tool which backs up your chosen partitions or hard drives. Options are kept to a minimum -- backup source, destination, frequency, number of backups to keep -- but that does mean it’s very simple to use. You’ll be running your first backup in seconds. Backups are stored as virtual disks (VMDK format), making them easily accessible in VirtualBox and other tools. You’re also able to mount the VMDKs to restore selected files or folders, or restore a full backup from Ashampoo Backup 2016 or its bootable recovery disc. Although the programs are free, you’ll be asked for a licence key during installation. Click "Get free activation key", follow the instructions -- give them your email address, essentially -- and the key is immediately displayed. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2016 is a free application for Windows 7 and later. Ashampoo Backup 2016 is a free application for Windows XP and later. 2016-04-05 13:28 By Mike

61 Tesla misses Q1 shipping target raising doubts over Model 3 production goals Over the weekend, Tesla announced that it had got 276,000 reservations for its upcoming Tesla Model 3. Tesla head Elon Musk also said he hopes that the company can produce 500,000 Model 3 vehicles per year when production is at full capacity. New figures put a dampener on this goal, Tesla reported it has shipped fewer cars than it forecasted for the first quarter. At the moment, Tesla sells and delivers two different cars, the Model S and the Model X. The company had predicted it would deliver 16,000 vehicles in Q1 2016, but instead only managed to deliver 14,820, just 1,180 off its target. Tesla said the reason it had missed the delivery target was due to parts shortages. The statement issued regarding the delivery target reads: "The root causes of the parts shortages were: Tesla's hubris in adding far too much new technology to the Model X in version 1, insufficient supplier capability validation, and not having broad enough internal capability to manufacture the parts in-house. " The supply shortages which stymied Tesla's ability to meet its targets has been resolved and the weekly production rate jumped to 750 by the end of March. Tesla is investigating the causes of the parts shortages to stave off a repeat of the incident during Model 3 production. Source: Tesla via Bloomberg | Image via Tesla 2016-04-05 13:20 Paul Hill

62 Behavior ID strengthens mobile and web security Whether it's down to stolen credentials, weak passwords or bot-based attacks, the threat of an account takeover is one of the major worries for most users. Mobile identity company TeleSign is launching Behavior ID, a new offering that enables web and mobile applications to measure and analyze a user's behavioral patterns to provide continuous authentication, even after the user has been verified with traditional security measures like passwords. It provides an additional, transparent layer of security for every type of online account or mobile application, ensuring they are protected them from fraud, without the need for user interaction. Behavior ID delivers a 'similarity score' based on a set of behavioral biometric traits that are collected, analyzed and rated as users go about their everyday tasks, from initial account creation through ongoing access and usage of an account. This profile is then used to calculate a similarity ratio between the user's current behavior and their historical, expected behavior. It can therefore streamline the user experience for known good users, while providing a basis for challenging potentially bad or fraudulent users by asking for re-verification, or two-factor authentication. No user interaction is required to enroll, enable, and start protecting an account from compromise. Users simply continue to use their web or mobile application as normal with no change to their workflow or behavior. "With Behavior ID, our customers can immediately increase the level of identity assurance for every user account they have, without adding friction," says Steve Jillings, CEO at TeleSign. "The power of Behavior ID is its ability to adapt to the user, transparently producing a digital fingerprint from a user's behavior to confirm their identity and develop an ongoing authentication without requiring the consumer to do anything. Best of all, these unique biometric patterns are extremely accurate, from the way we move our hand on a mobile device screen or with a mouse, it is virtually impossible to precisely imitate another person's behavior". Behavior ID SDKs for web and mobile applications are available from today for developers to embed into new or existing web and mobile app platforms. More information can be found on the TeleSign website. Image Credit : Kirill Wrigh t / Shutterstock 2016-04-05 13:09 By Ian

63 63 Save 89% off The Complete Computer Science Bundle via Deals Today on offer via our ELearning section of Neowin Deals, you can save 89% off The Complete Computer Science Bundle. Eight courses (78+ Hours) to get a quality tech education - from coding to design - without paying exorbitant tuition fees. For a full description of the above courses, terms and instructor info, click here . The Complete Computer Science Bundle normally represents an overall retail value of $367, but you can get this for just $39 for a limited time. In addition, if you refer this deal via social media (below the 'Add to cart' button) which results in a purchase, you'll get $10 credit added to your Neowin Deals store account. Get this deal or learn more about it | View more offers by Loonycorn That's OK. If this offer doesn't interest you, why not check out our giveaways on the Neowin Deals web site? There's also a bunch of freebies you can grab here , as well as other great tech-related deals. You could also try your luck on the The Lenovo & Turtle Beach Headset Gamer Giveaway , all you have to do is sign up here to enter for this $1,279 value giveaway! How can I disable these posts? Click here . Disclosure : This is a StackCommerce deal or giveaway in partnership with Neowin; an account at StackCommerce is required to participate in any deals or giveaways. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. 2016-04-05 13:04 Steven Parker

64 Artificial intelligence could be another tool for blind programmers Along with the tools out there for blind programmers to use, artificial intelligence might be something else that they can add to their tool belt. With recent developments at Microsoft, it could even help them see what is happening in the world around them. Saqib Shaikh is a London-based software developer who is working for Microsoft on the firm’s Bing search engine, according to Forbes. He has been personally involved in the development of an application for cognitive computing, image recognition, and mobile headset technologies. (Related: IBM Cloud used to find owners for guide dogs ) The intelligence comes from “Seeing AI,” a research project that helps people who are blind. It is designed to help them understand who and what is around them. The app itself is built using intelligence APIs from Microsoft Cognitive Services. The app runs on smartphones and on pivot-head smartglasses, wrote Forbes. Developers can take a snapshot of the world around them, and the image capture and analysis software that the glasses or smartphone uses is able to plug into cloud-based services that help determine what he or she is looking at, wrote Forbes. Other tools for blind programmers Artificial intelligence aside, what about the everyday tools that blind programmers need? A blind back-end programmer who enjoys writing code wrote a blog post about the tools he uses, along with a blog post titled “Autobiography of a Blind Programmer.” His name is Parham Doustdar, and he’s a programmer from Iran who wrote in his autobiography that he is asked often how he is able to program since he is blind. He said that blind and visually impaired users utilize screen readers. Different screen readers have different features, and they’re available for iOS, OS X and Windows. On Linux, there is a screen reader called Orca that comes with the Gnome desktop. For those who do not have a desktop environment, there is the Speakup project, while Android users have Google Talkback. 2016-04-05 12:58 Madison Moore

65 China's Huatai Securities vying to acquire AssetMark - sources April 5 (Reuters) - Huatai Securities Co Ltd is seeking to acquire U. S. asset management software maker AssetMark Inc for as much as $800 million, according to people familiar with the matter, in the latest example of a Chinese company taking an interest in U. S. businesses. A deal for AssetMark could be the biggest Chinese investment in the U. S. financial services sector since Anbang Insurance Group Co's $1.6 billion agreement in November to acquire Fidelity & Guaranty Life. Huatai is facing competition from private equity firms an auction for AssetMark, including a Chinese buyout firm, the people said this week. A winner in the bidding process is expected as early as this month, the people added. The sources asked not to be identified because the sale process is confidential. AssetMark declined to comment, while Huatai did not respond to a request for comment. AssetMark, based in Concord, California, provides asset management software to investment managers, broker dealers and investors, which collectively manage more than $28.5 billion on its platforms. Private equity firms Genstar Capital LLC and Aquiline Capital Partners acquired AssetMark in 2013 from J. C. Flowers & Co for an undisclosed amount. J. C. Flowers was part of the consortium that attempted to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc alongside Anbang last month for as much as $14 billion. Anbang's deal for insurance company Fidelity & Guaranty has won approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. (Reporting by Mike Stone in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky) 2016-04-05 12:11 Mike Stone

66 Next-Generation Databases Shift IT Priorities That big data is coming fast and furiously is an accepted trend. Many studies say so. But did you know that 89% of all data managers view backup and recovery as the most critical component of their big data efforts? That nuance is one of several findings from the Datos IO report on how organizations are deploying "next-generation databases," released today. Datos IO surveyed 204 IT professionals responsible for application and database deployment, operation, management, and architecture to produce the study. Those surveyed came from companies that ranged from 500 to more than 10,000 employees across industries including education, technology, financial services, healthcare, retail, nonprofit, and hospitality. It turns out that enterprise size matters when it comes to making plans about databases. Among companies with 1,000 employees or less, about 75% to 80% expect to see growth in their traditional databases ( Oracle , DB2 , etc.). By contrast, about 80% of the respondents hailing from larger firms expect to see growth with "next-generation databases," the survey said. That break point may be indicative of a lack of resources among the smaller firms that can be used to implement big data solutions, said Shalabh Goyal, product manager at Datos IO. The four most popular next-gen databases being considered are MongoDB (46%), Amazon RDS (28%), Amazon Aurora (20%), and Cassandra (20%). About three-quarters of the respondents said that next-generation databases will influence growth in their enterprises over the next two years, according to the survey. Four out of five IT pros expect big data to double in that same time period. Another 54% said they will be using their next-generation databases for analytics, followed by those using them for ERP/CRM (37%), SaaS-based solutions (35%), customer information (35%), and monitoring (28%). Learn to integrate the cloud into legacy systems and new initiatives. Attend the Cloud Connect Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! The need for backup and recovery, however, stood out, as 89% of the respondents viewed it as "critical" for their big data applications, the survey noted. A full 61% said poor backup was the primary reason hindering their adoption of big data. Some of this hails from past experience with relational databases, where IT managers have a fuller toolset to manage these systems. Applying that same thinking to big data, the same professionals have "a checklist that needs to be filled up," said Tarun Thakur , founder and CEO of Datos IO. IT professionals do not want their next-generation database solution to require a "media-heavy server architecture," Thakur pointed out. "They want native formats on secure storage. " They want a scalable system that can handle ever-increasing data loads, Thakur added. They want resiliency. "Given this highly distributed world, a node could go up or down fairly quickly. Customers want backup infrastructure that is highly available," Thakur said, which is preferable to doing the backup all over again should a node ever quit. But there is a trade-off. IT professionals can either have eventual data consistency on the next- generation platform, or strong consistency , which is the hallmark of the relational database, Thakur explained. "If you want scalability, you have to give up something," he said. IT professionals will give up strong consistency to gain the benefits of scalability that big data has to offer, he added. The biggest nontechnical barrier hindering adoption of big data is a lack of knowledge and experience in handling this technology, cited by 61% of the respondents. The talent pool is significantly lacking, Goyal concurred. But support is widely available. "Customers are able to get their way through. " Do not expect "next generation databases" to replace older, relational databases. "They are leaving the traditional infrastructure as is," Goyal said of IT professionals. Expect both technologies to coexist while those next-generation databases are being constructed, he added. 2016-04-05 12:05 William Terdoslavich

67 The Valve-Backed HTC Vive is Virtual Reality at its Best and Worst For the past five days, I’ve spent nearly as much time in virtual reality as real reality. My calves ache and my neck is sore, but all in all I’ve had a pretty good time. I’ve been using the Vive, an ambitious new virtual reality system created by HTC and Valve. With the Vive set up in my living room, I’ve been everywhere from outer space to Aperture Science’s stark white labs to a quiet beach where I just sat on the ground and listened to the waves. Like, I actually sat on the ground. With my own butt. Valve and HTC’s Vive is the most immediately impressive (and imposing) VR headset on the market. It comes with a price to match: $800. For comparison’s sake, the Oculus Rift is $600, though it will get touch controllers later this year that will probably bring it a lot closer to the Vive in terms of price and functionality. PlayStation VR will come in a $500 bundle when it launches later this year. And of course, the Vive’s $800 price tag doesn’t include the powerful gaming PC required to operate it—a pre-made system that meets the Vive’s specs will easily cost you over $1000. I tested the Vive on a PC with a GeForce GTX 980 graphics card, an Intel i7 processor clocked at 2.9 GHz, and 32GB of RAM. Once you’ve got the Vive headset, room sensors, and remote-shaped controllers synced and working, you can walk through a virtual space with your own legs and grab things with your own “hands.” That’s the key differentiator here: while the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR have so far been largely focused on seated experiences, Vive is more focused on standing, walking, grabbing, and bopping. There’s a bit of a naturalistic, Wii-like feeling to some of its games, in that respect–especially the ones about golf and tennis. The Vive can be fiddly as all hell. Its box is a cool sort of blue, conjuring warm feelings of afternoon skies and ice cream cloud wisps. I saw that box, and I was like, Man, I sure do feel calm right now. Maybe I’ll never be angry, upset, or frustrated again! Then I opened it. It was divided into multiple compartments: one for the headset, one for the sensor boxes, one for the controllers, and one for the little box that connects them all to your computer. Beneath those sections? Wires and more wires. The first thing I had to do was open my web browser and go to an HTC website. There, I downloaded a program that would guide me through the setup process. It estimated that the whole thing would take around 28 minutes. OK, I said to myself, this won’t be so bad. In hindsight, I find the 28-minute estimate hilarious for two reasons: 1) it is extremely specific, 2) in my experience, it was extremely inaccurate. Setting up the Vive took me two hours, and I was cursing like the son of a sailor and a warlock the entire time. In order to use the Vive, you’ve got to designate a room space. It has to be at least 1.5 x 2m (5 x 6.5 feet). In that space, you can walk around freely. If you get too close to its boundaries, the Vive’s “Chaperone” software will display a faint outline of a wall. I’m going into so much detail here because I really want to convey how many little annoying things can go wrong when setting up a Vive. Virtual reality is a daunting prospect with its high price point and, you know, the part where you have to wear a sweaty brick on your face. The barrier to entry is already prohibitively high. Setup needs to be as simple as possible for this thing to really catch on, and right now, the Vive simply isn’t there. In all likelihood, Valve and HTC will refine the process, but in the present year of two-thousand-and-sixteen, it’s a big, frustrating knock against an otherwise cool experience. I’ve found myself having to adjust and readjust the Vive headset. Weight-wise, it’s mostly fine (my neck only hurts because I’ve been marathoning VR games for multiple days in a row), but if I move my face too much by smiling, laughing, scrutinizing, or what have you, the front-heavy headset slides to a point where the lenses are out of focus. This becomes especially noticeable any time I’m trying to examine detailed in-game objects up close. Suddenly, it’s all a blur. To solve the problem, all I have to do is reach up and pull the headset back into place, but having to do that every 5-10 minutes can get kinda annoying, not to mention immersion-breaking. The Vive’s sensors can be, well, sensitive. If they lose track of a controller, you might find that your in-game “hand” is suddenly floating off into the sunset, leaving you without so much as something to wave goodbye with. If they lose track of your headset, everything can suddenly disappear, paving your vision over with a sea of gray. I also encountered a few moments where my in-game view started shuddering, which is the first time any sort of video game has ever made me feel nauseous. Sometimes, you just need to reposition your sensors a bit. Even with as close to an optimal setup as I’ve been able to get, I’ve still had to put up with a few moments of unexplained jankiness. In his impressions of the Oculus Rift last week , my colleague Kirk Hamilton praised the Rift’s built-in headphones and mic. The Vive, by contrast, doesn’t have built-in headphones (you’ve gotta wear your own on top of the headset). You might not think that’s a super huge deal, but it’s one of those convenience features that impacts your experience more than you’d think. It sounds like I’m talking through a tin can that’s duct-taped to a 56k dial-up modem and run through a puberty filter. Sometimes my voice cuts out almost entirely for no apparent reason. It’s basically unusable for recording videos or streaming games, and I wouldn’t really recommend it for communicating in multiplayer games or chat programs either. In order for the Vive to function, the headset must be plugged into a base station that plugs into your PC. This means that there’s always a cord trailing behind you. It’s plenty long, but it invariably gets in the way. Before long, I got used to stepping over it (so much so, in fact, that LOCATION OF CORD has become a weird sixth sense, a thing I’ve started subconsciously tracking), but it never stopped being… there. All that said… I swatted the baby asteroids with my “hands,” producing a satisfying rumble from my controller, and watched as they split and sunk into infinity. Briefly, nothing else really mattered. In that moment, I was lost in the immenseness of the cosmos. Then I stubbed my toe on my office chair and shouted, “FUCK!” just before I remembered it was 2 AM and my girlfriend was sleeping a few feet away. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The VR Experience. For real, though, I can’t remember the last time I said “wow” this many times in a week-long period. And it wasn’t just when I was getting pelted with virtual space rocks. The most astounding moment I’ve had with the Vive involved a tin of popcorn. Later, I encountered a note full of sensitive information. I picked it up and read it. “It would be bad if this fell into the wrong hands,” I thought to myself. Instinctively, I held it over a candle, and it burned to a crisp. The game never told me to do this, nor did it even imply it was possible. I just did it because, well, that’s probably what I would do if such a situation occurred in real life. In regular games, I wouldn’t really care about any of that. But in Vive games, I have hands, damn it. My brain expects them to be able to reach out and touch, not pass through stuff as though I’m Casper The Impotent Ghost. Not in the “seek help” sort of way, but like, OK: the other day I was talking with a friend about coffee cups. I had this really vivid recent memory of a bunch of coffee cups, and I couldn’t place where it was coming from. I remembered picking up a bunch of them, reading their logos, peering into them, seeing some gnarly stains, etc. Had I been to a ceramics shop? No, last time I did that was while Christmas shopping last year. Maybe I was remembering doing the dishes? No, I haven’t done that since Christmas last yea… I mean last week. Christmas last week. Despite my career choice of Guy Who Spends Most Of His Waking Hours Playing, Writing About, Or Discussing Video Games, I’m in pretty good shape. I exercise daily, and I’m consumed by guilt when I can’t make the time to do so. I say this because, well, I’m in a fair amount of pain right now. From playing video games. On their own, typical Vive activities–walking, reaching, standing, occasionally kneeling–are not particularly intense. If you do these things every day in continuous 3-5 hour chunks for a week, though, don’t be surprised if your neck, shoulders, knees, and calves start rebelling. See, people are great at walking and running, but with many Vive games, you actually spend most of your time standing still. The human body haaaaaaates that. OK, two hands. But I’m only using a very small portion of the second hand. There’s a lot in the pipe for VR that has nothing to do with video games. Some of it is already here. Kirk wrote about Virtual Desktop , which wraps your computer desktop around you in VR. I can confirm that it is, indeed, a super cool way to work, and also watch movies, TV, and uh, porn. Speaking of VR porn, that’s already here too , and a whole lot more is on the way. The Vive’s current game lineup prioritizes quantity over depth. Its coolest non-gaming applications remain largely theoretical, promises that will hopefully be fulfilled down the road. You’ll likely need to upend your home’s floorplan to use it, and the hardware can be finicky and tough to get working. While the Vive’s best moments are some of the coolest I’ve experienced in video games, I can’t recommend purchasing it right now. You’d be spending $800 on something that’s going to be much better after months’ worth of software (and maybe even hardware) revisions, and there currently aren’t enough great games to justify the investment. The Vive really is something you should see for yourself, but if you want to try it, go to a store that’s demoing it, or make friends with somebody who already ordered one. I’m excited about what the future holds for the Vive, but the future’s not here yet. 2016-04-05 12:00 Nathan Grayson

68 Salesforce acquires MetaMind, the Civil Infrastructure Project, and Appy Builder— news digest: April 5, 2016 Salesforce has acquired MetaMind, an AI startup company. With the two coming together, they will be able to offer customers AI solutions with capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing, and other business processes. Salesforce’s data science capabilities will be extended by embedding deep learning within its platform. Salesforce also plans to integrate MetaMind’s technology into Salesforce services. For users of the free Web version, MetaMind’s products will be discontinued on May 4. For monthly recurring users, MetaMind’s products will be discontinued on June 4. The company will delete any data it has stored for Web users and monthly recurring users after those dates. MetaMind plans to continue its AI research to advance the deep learning platform’s accuracy and capabilities, according to the company . Linux Foundation launches Civil Infrastructure Project The Linux Foundation wants to help ensure critical services, such as electric power, oil and gas, water, healthcare, communications, and transportation, have the proper software foundation to deliver solutions. The organization has announced the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP), an open-source framework designed to ensure civil infrastructures provide safety, security and reliability. “Linux and open-source software can accelerate innovation, enable interoperability, and transform technology and business economics for an industry. The Civil Infrastructure Platform is a great example of this opportunity,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “Through collaboration and open-source development, developers will be able to build the common framework that will support some of society’s most important functions for decades to come.” The CIP’s initial focus will include establishing a long-term maintenance infrastructure for select open-source components; ensuring secure and safe delivery of critical services; providing a robust software base; and providing an open framework that integrates existing standards. 2016-04-05 11:34 Madison Moore

69 Facebook's AI Technology Describes Photos To Visually Impaired Users Facebook is reaching out to the more than 280 million visually impaired people on the planet with a new technology called automatic alternative text, which promises to help the blind community experience the social network in the same way others enjoy it. Automatic alternative text, or automatic alt text, is a described by Facebook engineers as a new development that generates a description of a photo using advancements in object recognition technology. The company detailed the technology in an April 4 blog post written by Shaomei Wu, a Facebook software engineer; Hermes Pique, software engineer on iOS; and Jeffrey Wieland, Facebook's head of accessibility. The reason that an Apple engineer is involved is that automatic alt text will be first available on iOS screen readers set to English. However, the blog post notes that Facebook plans to add this functionality for other languages and platforms soon. People using screen readers on iOS devices will hear a list of items a photo may contain as they swipe past photos on Facebook. Previously, people using screen readers would only hear the name of the person who shared the photo, followed by the term "photo" when they came upon an image in their News Feed. Facebook used its own artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create automatic alt text. According to the post: This is possible because of Facebook's object recognition technology, which is based on a neural network that has billions of parameters and is trained with millions of examples. Each advancement in object recognition technology means that the Facebook Accessibility team will be able to make technology even more accessible for more people. When people are connected, they can achieve extraordinary things as individuals and as a community -- and when everyone is connected, we all benefit. While very much still in the experimental phase, the technology is also intensely personal for one of the engineers. Create a culture where technology advances truly empower your business. Attend the Leadership Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! Matt King, who is blind, helped work on the project along with Wieland , who leads the accessibility team, which is part of the user interface engineering group. The group's goal is to improve Facebook for people with disabilities, and ensure that the company's products cooperate with assistive technology. "The fact that you have somebody who has worked on accessibility who actually has the disability, is in a leadership position at probably the most pervasive application on the planet and is willing to put themselves out there like that," Rich Schwerdtfeger, CTO of accessibility at IBM and a former colleague of King, told Mashable. "That's a big deal. " Facebook's announcement follows a recent initiative by Twitter that aims to make it easier for visually impaired people to use that social media platform. People using Twitter's iOS and Android apps can add descriptions -- also known as alternative text (alt text) -- to images in Tweets. When a user adds an image to a Tweet, each thumbnail in the composer will have an "add description" button. Users can then tap it to add a description to the image. People who are visually impaired will have access to the description through assistive technology -- such as screen readers and braille displays. The descriptions can be up to 420 characters. While so much of today's information highway leans towards text and visually based technology, major corporations have been reaching out to the visually impaired in an effort to foster a community of inclusion. A company best known for affordable cars is branching out in an unexpected direction, as Toyota announces Project BLAID , a wearable device for the blind and visually impaired. Worn around the user's shoulders, the device is designed to help blind and visually impaired people better navigate indoor spaces, such as office buildings and shopping malls, by helping them identify everyday features, including restrooms, escalators, stairs, and doors. 2016-04-05 11:05 Nathan Eddy

70 SmartBear announces new developer-focused test automation tool SmartBear Software , the leader in software quality tools for the connected world, has announced a new developer focused test automation tool, TestLeft. The tool enables developers working in an Agile and continuous delivery environment to create robust tests within IDEs, which helps drastically reduce test creation and maintenance time. “We are very excited about opportunities SmartBear’s TestLeft will bring to our testing organization,” said Brian Schaffer , Director Automated Testing at Interactive Intelligence . “Combining the best UI object recognition in the industry with extremely fast intelli-sense, the power of. Net framework and benefits of a strongly typed object oriented language will give us an opportunity to make our functional UI tests faster and more maintainable than ever before.” Organizations are increasingly adopting an Agile development approach to shorten the product delivery cycle and release high quality applications in a predictable fashion to the marketplace. Testing in these short Agile iterations often necessitates a “shift left” model, an approach in which testing starts much earlier in the application lifecycle. In such an approach, developers with strong technical expertise are increasingly being held accountable for testing, and as a result, they often work alongside testers to create test automation frameworks. Ensuring developers contribute to these frameworks can only be possible if testing tools easily plug into integrated development ecosystems such as IDEs. Though, this may not always be enough. Developers building and contributing to such automated testing frameworks often face challenges while identifying right identifiers for objects on the applications under test. Not having the right object identifiers also creates challenges for test maintenance in the longer run as automated tests keep breaking when the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the application under test changes. Add to that, developers spend considerable time writing custom logic in order to interact with the recognized objects. Additionally, scaling Agile efforts often necessities practices that enable testers to leverage the work of developers. To achieve this successfully, flagship testing tools need to be tightly integrated with developer focused test automation tools. TestLeft is a powerful yet lean functional testing tool for developers who are testing in Agile teams. It fully embeds into standard development IDEs such as Visual Studio , which helps minimize context switching and allows developers to create test cases in their favorite IDEs. Additionally, TestLeft comes with visual tools, which assists developers to quickly and easily identify correct object properties for application under test. Using TestLeft, developers can easily generate test code simply by dragging and dropping identifiers over objects on the screen. Furthermore, access to built-in methods and classes is available for code completion and faster scripting. Tests created by TestLeft can even be brought within SmartBear’s TestComplete for consumption by testers. “Testing tools are moving right in the middle of the development cycle, which is increasingly becoming complicated,” said Chris Marsh , Research Director at 451 Research. “This in part led to TestLeft with SmartBear following the trend ‘to the left.’ In other words, the shift is towards developers in increasingly Agile workflows doing more testing, so that organizations don’t have to be reliant on the often attritional, sequential to-and-fro with test teams, which often elongates testing time and hence time to market. In this case, TestLeft enables robust object-level recognition on the UI, which developers can leverage from within Visual Studio. The tool will be a nice compliment for SmartBear’s Java and. NET customer base using TestComplete and TestExecute. The integration is done through a simple API call from Visual Studio to TestLeft’s testing engine, thereby making the integration easy to replicate with other IDEs and development platforms.” A sneak peek into TestLeft was very well received at the recently concluded Visual Studio Live conference in Las Vegas. TestComplete customers visiting the conference shared stories regarding how TestLeft’s integration with TestComplete can help bridge the gap between developers and other QA teams. For developers using Visual Studio, TestLeft’s ability to work within their IDE and built-in access to object and method library for faster test creation was particularly helpful. “With TestLeft, developers working in an Agile and continuous delivery environment can create robust tests within their favorite IDEs,” said Nikhil Kaul , Product Marketing Manager, Testing at SmartBear. “This removes the need to maintain and move to a different testing ecosystem to create and run automated tests. Particularly, the access to object properties and method library can be really useful for reducing test creation time and faster test scripting.” TestLeft is immediately available. For more information, visit: https://smartbear.com/product/testleft/overview/ . 2016-04-05 10:47 SD Times

71 Red Hat introduces new DevOps training and certifications Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced five new Training and Certification offerings focused on improving DevOps skills of IT professionals. The new training and certification curriculum is designed to help professionals to demonstrate expertise in technologies closely associated with DevOps such as containers, OpenShift, Ansible, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host and Puppet, and includes: Individuals previously certified as Red Hat ® Certified Engineers and Red Hat Certified JBoss ® Developers, and who have passed these five additional exams, will be given the credential of Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA ® ) with a concentration in DevOps. These new DevOps courses will also be offered through Red Hat Learning Subscription, an annual subscription featuring unlimited access to Red Hat’s full portfolio of training content designed to help customers accelerate the speed and ease of on-boarding new staff, the adoption of new technology releases, and cross-training across multiple products in an on- demand setting. In addition to Red Hat’s expanding global training and certification portfolio, Red Hat Consulting continues to offer full-stack DevOps strategy for streamlining software delivery and aligning IT with the business. 2016-04-05 10:45 SD Times

72 Toptal acquires business talent marketplace Skillbridge Toptal , the world’s leading network of elite freelance software engineers and designers, today announced the acquisition of Skillbridge , an innovative platform in the on-demand business talent space, for an undisclosed sum. The combined entity will leverage Toptal’s robust technology platform to quickly expand its network of talent and scale product offerings, while maintaining the white-glove matching service and high-level of support that clients of both companies have come to rely upon. With this acquisition, Toptal will represent the top 3% of freelance developers, designers, and business professionals, connecting them with companies around the globe. “Companies are increasingly looking for expertise within the rapidly-growing on-demand business talent segment, and Skillbridge gives us the experience and knowledge to win in the space alongside our technology,” said Taso Du Val , Co-Founder & CEO of Toptal. “After evaluating the landscape, they were clearly the most disruptive player — not only attracting and retaining the best talent from the likes of McKinsey, Wharton and Google — but also consistently delivering high success rates and repeat usage. Skillbridge’s expertise merged with Toptal’s extreme technological edge will allow us to continue our growth and dominance in the talent marketplace sector.” Skillbridge has grown rapidly over the past two years, successfully building their client base to include five of the top 10 largest Private Equity firms in the U. S., high-growth startups, and Fortune 500 clients. With more than 7,500 screened freelance professionals to-date, Skillbridge enables businesses to quickly hire top consultants, accountants, statisticians and other trusted specialists in areas such as Market Research, Financial Modeling, and Due Diligence when they need them. Their proprietary Talent Dynamics platform intelligently matches the right talent to best-fit projects to deliver what clients want: a fast, high-quality, and reliable way to engage high-level business talent. “Toptal has the most advanced platform for hiring the best freelance developers and designers – and rather than focusing blindly on volume, we are both relentless about delivering elite quality, reliability, and amazing service,” said Raj Jeyakumar , Co-Founder & CEO of Skillbridge. “Combining the two businesses, our learnings and resources allow us to bring a truly world-class offering in the talent marketplace,” added Saalim Chowdhury , Co-Founder & CTO of Skillbridge. “When I invested in Skillbridge, I knew it was a great team with a great product, in a market that needed to be disrupted. We’re delighted with the progress they’ve made. Toptal’s acquisition validates Raj and his team’s dedication. I look forward to seeing the combined firm’s even faster growth in the coming years.” Marvin Liao , Partner, 500 Startups. Over the past several years, Toptal has become the fastest-growing talent marketplace and has continued to increase its network of freelancers, expand product offerings, and build relationships with key partners. As a network, Toptal has developed a rigorous screening process to identify the best. Of the thousands of applications Toptal sees each month, typically fewer than 3% are accepted. 2016-04-05 10:44 SD Times

73 Microsoft squashes Xbox neXt rumors With reports stating that Sony is planning to announce a new version of the PlayStation 4 later this year - possibly before the arrival of the console’s VR headset in October - people are now wondering if Microsoft will follow in its competitor’s footsteps and release an updated version of the Xbox One. Rumors that we might see some form of Xbox 1.5 went into overdrive recently when a Microsoft employee, David Gardner, posted a listing for the “Xbox neXt” on his LinkedIn profile. After much speculation that this could be the company’s answer to the PlayStation 4.5/PS4K, Microsoft has now confirmed that this is nothing more than an old internal team name. "Xbox neXt was an old internal team name for a group that worked on releasing Xbox One and is not related to a future console," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "We have nothing further to share. " The statement backs up the recent comments made by Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer. Speaking at Microsoft's Build 2016 developer keynote last week, Spencer said he didn’t expect there to be a Xbox 1.5. “I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers,” Spencer told Gamespot. ”For us, our box is doing well. It performs, it’s reliable, the servers are doing well. If we’re going to go forward with anything, like I said, I want it to be a really substantial change for people–an upgrade.” Spencer’s obviously being a bit vague with the statement but he doesn't seem to be ruling anything out, and the fact he uses the term “upgrade” could be important. Ultimately, the chances of us seeing a refreshed version of the Xbox One (Xbox Two?) that features some vastly improved hardware components may depend on how successful Sony’s upcoming machine proves to be. We’re likely to learn more about the companies’ plans for their consoles at E3 in June. 2016-04-05 10:30 Rob Thubron

74 Mobile Revolution Will Kill Siloed Apps, Forrester Says Apps, the focus of the mobile revolution since Apple opened its App Store in 2008, will give way to experiences that extend across different channels and contexts, according to a report from research consultancy Forrester. In " The Future of Mobile: From App Silos to Open Ecosystems ," Forrester said businesses should look beyond serving customers in apps, toward a world in which boundaries between services break down to allow better experiences. "Today, most companies focus on which apps they need to build to solve a challenge," said Forrester analyst and report co-author Michael Facemire, in a phone interview with InformationWeek. "What consumers are going to want is for you to solve their problem. " Solving a problem may require going beyond an app. It may require data from different devices, cloud services, or environmental sensing. A prime example is the use of location data to make services more relevant to consumers. Target, Walgreens, and Walmart are among those with apps that can detect when a customer is in a retail store. Still, the low-hanging fruit of location data has yet to be broadly harvested in apps, according to Forrester. That sort of communication requires some degree of openness between apps, mobile platforms, and cloud services. Forrester expects the future will bring more openness, so that businesses can utilize real-time, multidirectional data sharing to deliver contextual experiences beyond specific apps. Openness isn't always appealing to app makers, platform companies, cloud service providers, or individuals. Facemire explained that tech companies can make data available through connectable components and APIs, or they can rely on middleware to mediate across service boundaries. "I'm not sure whether companies will be forced to be more open or whether we will have a new layer of middleware," said Facemire. But there are signs that companies are looking beyond basic device data to incorporate information from other services. Witness the variety of "glue" services, such as IFTTT and Zapier , which allow mobile devices and cloud services to work together in ways that lead to better user experiences. Companies may even go so far as to incorporate their apps into other apps. The report cited KLM and Uber, which make their services available through WeChat and Facebook Messenger, as examples of companies looking beyond siloed apps toward a seamless overall experience for customers. Are you prepared for a new world of enterprise mobility? Attend the Wireless & Mobility Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! Yet creating connections between services adds complexity that isn't easily dealt with by service providers. It may be a better experience to allow a smartphone to automatically enable a home security system when the homeowner leaves, but that breaks down when other variables enter the equation, like the possible presence of family members or guests. "This is going to usher in a new way to doing development," said Facemire, who said he believes traditional procedural programming will give way to functional programming , in order to easily accommodate environmentally driven events. He points to the emergence of services like AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions as developments that support this shift. For companies, the key is simplicity. Pointing to the days of Windows CE and the Palm Pilot, Facemire said the only people who used those devices were those who understood the technical work necessary to get some benefit out of them. Then Apple came along and made things simple with the iPhone, he said. As the focus shifts from apps to experiences that span different channels, vendors have to simplify the experiences they're offering to make them appealing enough to bother with. "It's all going to come down to simplicity," said Facemire, pointing to Google Now as an example of the kind of interaction we're likely to see in the years to come. "But, for vendors, their job becomes more difficult: taking complexity away. " 2016-04-05 10:06 Thomas Claburn

75 Watch as this master artisan meticulously sculpts a Deathclaw from Fallout 4 Sculpting has always been a fascination of mine. Regardless of the raw materials in play, it’s amazing to watch what a skilled artisan can do with some clay, metal wire and… aluminum foil? That’s exactly what YouTuber Sculpter_Geek used to create this stunning replica of a Deathclaw from Fallout 4. The master craftsman leans on a variety of specialized tools to bring out the fine details that make this such a compelling piece. If you're interested in learning more about how this sculpture came together, be sure to check out the artist's Twitch broadcast . Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web. 2016-04-05 09:45 Shawn Knight

76 Microsoft Outlook Premium Enters Beta Testing Microsoft has begun the trial period for Outlook Premium, an upgraded version of its Outlook email service that will bring new features to paid subscribers. The news that Microsoft was developing Outlook Premium was first reported in February by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley. The company confirmed it was piloting a premium version of Outlook and experimenting with the idea of offering custom domains. However, it was unclear whether customers would ever receive the service. "Outlook.com Premium is not an existing offering, it is an experiment that we are piloting," Redmond reported at the time. "We're always investigating new features based on the wants and needs of our users, and we have nothing more to share at this time. " [Microsoft claims Skype, Cortana, AI depict the future of communication.] Now recent updates, spotted on a landing page by Brad Sams at Thurrott.com , give greater insight into the pricing and features included in Outlook Premium. The service is currently only available via invitation, which can be requested (account login required). The Outlook.com Premium Preview enables users to set up to five custom email address domains (e.g. [email protected]). It also simplifies the process of sharing calendars, contacts, and documents with others who have email addresses on your domain, and does not have banner ads. Microsoft's decision to offer custom domains to Outlook users is significant. Back in April 2014, the company decided to stop allowing new users to register for its free custom domain service, effectively eliminating the option of creating custom domains on Outlook.com. The new service is slightly different from the custom domain offering. With the old service, users were required to obtain the domain themselves. As part of the Outlook Premium service trial, Microsoft will take over this process so subscribers don't have to. However, after the first year, users will have to do some legwork, as the personalized domain name does not renew with the subscription for Outlook Premium or Office 365. If users want to keep their custom email address active, they can annually renew the domain name with partner GoDaddy or the registrar of their choice, which may lead to additional fees. It's worth noting subscribers of Office 365 Small Business Essentials can add custom domains. The service's cost is $6 per month or $60 per year. That makes the Outlook Premium package a slightly less expensive option. It seems the arrival of Outlook Premium is a sign Microsoft is branching outside advertisements to find a different means of making money from its email service. While the company has a payment model in mind, it notes testers will not be charged for their first year using Outlook Premium. Right now, Microsoft is offering Outlook Premium for free for the first year and $4 per month after that. However, since the service is still in testing, it's possible that price point will change. Microsoft has not specified an official launch date for Outlook Premium. 2016-04-05 09:06 Kelly Sheridan

77 Perfecto expands its digital reach Enterprises are going through a massive transformation as to how they interact with an end user, since they are moving away from physical to digital interactions. Fundamentally, companies understand that the focus must change, but they need to determine how to create and deliver applications with the right experience. Today, Perfecto Mobile, a company built around the digital experience, announced the next version of its cloud-based Continuous Quality Lab (CQL), which aims to help enterprises engage its users in the right way. This version expands test coverage from mobile web and apps to include web browsers on desktops. This enhancement also provides enterprises with a complete quality lab, allowing the development teams to execute and analyze manual, automated and performance tests for digital channels side-by-side, on desktop browsers and real mobile devices under real end-user conditions. Enterprises are still trying to change the way they reach the end-customer to become a digital touchpoint rather than a physical touchpoint, according to Roi Carmel, senior vice president of product management and corporate strategy. An example he used was when a consumer goes to book a flight. They might start on their laptop, and on the way to the airport, they might check their app on their mobile device for status of the flight. Then, the customer might look at the updates on their wearable device or tablet. “These enterprises are starting to look at the user experience across these digital platforms, across all screen sizes, and they want to create a consistent user experience so they can keep engaging their users,” said Carmel. With the digital release of CQL, development teams will be able to use one test strategy with one single script on all devices, including desktop browsers. The CQL’s platform agnostic scripting of web apps across desktop browsers/OS combinations and real devices/OS combinations shortens test cycles by running mobile and web assessments at the same time. The CQL also provides side-by-side analytics of digital test results to allow teams to focus on specific challenges supported by visual logs with screenshots, video and device diagnostics. Teams will be able to see all the platforms and how they behave, including which platform might be giving a low digital experience and what the business impact of that experience might be, said Carmel. Since browsers update frequently, IT sometimes is unable to keep up with all of the browsers, even on desktop, said Carmel. With one single lab for 24/7 testing, it allows access to secure browser/OS combinations and real devices, including access to the most recent browser updates, new devices and both the latest and legacy operating systems. These new features helps expand Perfecto’s focus, as well as enterprises, from looking at mobile in a silo, to now looking at it digitally and expanding it across all screen sizes, merging both into one, said Carmel. This helps teams gain velocity by having the availability of the browsers they need immediately. “[Enterprises] need to deliver much faster than they did before,” said Carmel. “Because when consumer needs are changing, they expect their digital interfaces like apps or websites to reflect those needs.” 2016-04-05 08:00 Madison Moore

78 VMware goes after Outlook with Boxer email app for AirWatch It seems like every major tech company needs to have an email app these days, and VMware is no exception. The company launched a new version of the Boxer iOS app today for companies using VMware to manage their employees' mobile devices. The resulting app, appropriately called VMware Boxer, is now available for AirWatch and Workspace One customers. It's designed to replace Apple's built-in Mail app on the iPhone and iPad, in part because it's packing some key additional features. Boxer includes support for all kinds of customization including the ability to take different actions by swiping email messages, bulk edit messages and even change the sound the app makes when a new email arrives. It also includes calendar functionality, so users don't have to leave the app to see their schedule. Boxer was acquired by VMware last October, after a long history as a popular email app for people who want more than just the default application that comes with their smartphone or tablet. Consumers who continue to rely on Boxer for their emails will still get regular updates for the application, according to Andrew Eye, the former Boxer CEO who became vice president of strategy at VMware. In an interview, he said that consumers and most commercial users will get updates on a fairly rapid release cadence. For businesses that want more time between updates, VMware will also release a special build of the app that will let them move a bit more slowly. VMware Boxer competes against a bunch of other email apps, including those produced by Microsoft and Google. One of the key benefits VMware has in this regard is that Boxer will be available for free to every AirWatch user, and easy for them to deploy from their device management console. That may help AirWatch win additional clients, since email is often one of the most important work applications someone can have. Companies with other enterprise mobility management services will still be able to manage the consumer version of Boxer, which has supported that functionality for a while. 2016-04-05 06:17 Blair Hanley

79 This startup uses math to show whether your network is safe How do you know your network is safe from attacks and failures? Veriflow, a startup with backing from the U. S. Defense Department, says it can make sure. Veriflow applies a practice called formal verification, used in preparing Mars missions and military gear, to figure out ahead of time what could go wrong on a network. Using that information, it helps enterprises apply policies to prevent problems from starting or spreading. If this sounds more at home in a lab than in a data center, it may be because that's where it came from. Veriflow's CTO, CSO and principal engineer are all longtime academics who worked on the problem together at the University of Illinois, and the National Science Foundation is a funder. Veriflow says it's time for a new approach. Diagrams and network engineers' knowledge used to be enough to make sure the right packets would go through a network in the right way. Now infrastructure has become too complex, and changes too frequent, to rely on that approach, CTO and co-founder Brighten Godfrey said. "Enterprise networks have become like building a piece of software," Godfrey said. Every line of code added to an application can have wide-ranging effects on how the software works, and there are too many pieces in the puzzle to predict what those effects will be. What Veriflow can do with networks is a bit like what continuous integration does with software in a service like GitHub. Both examine the implications of a change, be it a new router configuration or a piece of code proposed as an addition to an application. But Veriflow does this mathematically, at a deep level: It identifies every possible data flow on the network, then helps users set policies to control those data flows. There's a challenge to doing that: The number of possible ways for a packet to behave on a network is an astronomical number, on the order of the number of atoms in the universe. Veriflow developed software to get around that hurdle. "We can't literally go through every possibility," Godfrey said. "So the magic is in the algorithms that determine everything that could happen in an efficient way. " Veriflow starts by using a virtual appliance, in the cloud or on the customer's premises, to survey the network and collect information. It examines routers, switches and other devices, both physical and virtual, and looks at things like routing and forwarding tables to determine all possible data flows. In IT shops that use policies to control their networks, the findings can show whether those policies work as intended. Armed with that data, customers can use Veriflow's policy recommendations, which are based on industry best practices, or use the Veriflow dashboard or APIs (application programming interfaces) to create new policies. Veriflow doesn't take the place of security tools like firewalls, it just shows whether the way they're implemented is the right way to protect the network against attacks, Godfrey said. Later, if an attack does occur, Veriflow can show a security response team what the network looks like and where the harmful packets could have gone. Veriflow is already in use in both lab trials and production networks and should be generally available in the second half of this year, the company said. Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Dan Conde wants to know more about those live implementations to gauge how Veriflow will work outside a lab. Real networks include devices and appliances from many vendors and both traditional hardware and software-defined components, Conde said. "It's a messy world out there. " As with any new product designed to make networks more secure, there's also a place for some caution, he said. Any team that's built a system like Veriflow's must have deep security knowledge, but there are always surprises in the real world. "Security is one of those things that it just takes time to harden," Conde said. 2016-04-05 04:28 Stephen Lawson

80 Windows Device Recovery Tool images for older devices will not be updated to Windows 10 After Windows 10 Mobile was released to select devices last month, many were wondering when updated recovery images would be available. As it turns out, they will not. Of course, Windows 10 Mobile might not be for everyone. It's beyond the scope of this article to discuss why someone might want to roll back, but it's clearly possible and Microsoft is providing users with the option. This wasn't always the plan. Originally, the firm had said that the new recovery images might come at a later date. Obviously, it has now been decided. With Microsoft taking more and more aggressive steps to keep PC users on Windows 10 , it's refreshing to see the firm give mobile users a choice that they didn't have to provide. Source: PocketNow 2016-04-05 03:34 Richard Woods

81 Microsoft clarifies potential changes to the Start Menu in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update During the Build 2016 developer conference, Microsoft created a Sway of potential Start Menu changes, asking Insiders to vote on what they think of them. Should users vote in favor of the changes, they would be implemented in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update. As we can see, the new Start Menu contains a hamburger menu. At the time, there was no way of knowing what the menu does, making it hard to make an informed vote. The users have spoken and the Sway has been updated with a GIF that shows what we've all been wondering. As you can see, the hamburger menu expands into a menu of customizable shortcuts that are represented by the icons along the left side of the menu. That's not all that's been edited in the Sway. There was also some initial confusion about changes being made to the Start Screen. Many were inclined to believe that the 'after' picture was all that a user would see in the Start Screen. The Sway has been updated to clarify that this change is only for when 'All Apps' are being shown. You can still vote on what you think of the changes to the Start Menu. Check out their Sway right here. What do you think of the changes to the Start Menu? Let us know in the comments! 2016-04-05 03:14 Richard Woods

82 Tickets to the 2016 The International Dota 2 Championships go on sale this week Valve recently revealed that tickets for this year’s The International Dota 2 Championships will go on sale later this week. Here’s everything you need to know about the year’s largest eSports event. The annual competition will once again take place at Seattle’s KeyArena, running from August 8 through August 13. This year, potential attendees can choose between two different ticket options (or one of each if you don't want to miss any of the action). A $75 mid-week ticket will grant admission to the first four days of the event which includes the opening ceremony and the All-Star match. A ticket to the finals, which will set buyers back $100, grants access to the last two days of the event. Valve notes that both ticket options can be purchased in a single order. Those in attendance will have the opportunity to score some unique in-game items. At First Blood in each individual game, 500 “Attendee Treasures” will drop, each containing visually- unique versions of this year’s Secret Shop Immortals. To be eligible for the drop, you’ll need to have a badge linked to a Steam account and be inside the arena when First Blood occurs. Fans that only spring for the mid-week ticket can watch the final two days of the event in an outdoor viewing area free of charge. Last year’s event generated a prize pool of more than $18 million , breaking the previous year’s record as the largest competitive gaming prize pool for a single tournament. Team Evil Geniuses from the US finished in first place, taking home over $6.6 million in prize money. Tickets go on sale April 7 at 10:00 am. 2016-04-05 00:15 Shawn Knight

Total 82 articles. Created at 2016-04-06 00:03