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64 articles, 2016-05-10 06:01 1 Opera VPN 1.0 offers secure, private browsing for iPhone and iPad Norwegian browser developer Opera Software has launched Opera VPN 1.0, a free VPN service for iPhone and iPad users. 2016-05-10 00:00 1KB www.pcauthority.com.au (3.15/4)
2 Here's a look at Microsoft's new OneDrive Universal app for Windows 10 Microsoft hasn't yet released a OneDrive UWP app for Windows 10, but now, we do know (2.05/4) what it will look like. There's no official launch date for the app, but Insiders are expecting it soon. 2016-05-09 19:45 1KB feedproxy.google.com 3 News
(1.02/4) News for the Open Source Professional 2016-05-10 06:01 480Bytes www.linux.com
4 FTC Orders Apple, Google, Microsoft, Others to Reveal Mobile Security Practices
(1.02/4) FTC starts investigation in regards to mobile security 2016-05-10 00:30 2KB news.softpedia.com 5 HTC Suffers Fourth Consecutive Quarterly Loss, 64% Drop in Revenues Financial results for the first quarter of 2016 are gloomy 2016-05-09 13:44 1KB (1.02/4) news.softpedia.com 6 AppFolio reports 1Q loss GOLETA, Calif. _ AppFolio Inc. on Monday reported a loss of $3.6 million in its first quarter. The Goleta, California- based company said it had a loss of 11 cents per share. (1.01/4) AppFolio shares have decreased 15 percent since the beginning of the year. 2016-05-09 19:22 1KB www.cnbc.com 7 Solus Linux OS to Offer Users a Brand-New and Modern Graphical Package Manager The distribution is now powered by Linux kernel 4.4.9 LTS 2016-05-09 23:57 2KB (1.00/4) news.softpedia.com 8 Microsoft announces quarterly earnings release date REDMOND, Wash. — April 8, 2016 — Microsoft Corp... 2016-05-09 20:55 1KB news.microsoft.com (1.00/4)
9 AMD's Polaris graphics cards rumored to launch in late May All the attention in the graphics card space has been focused on Nvidia recently, with the company announcing the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 a few days ago. However it won't be too long before Nvidia has some competition,… 2016-05-09 19:15 2KB (1.00/4) www.techspot.com 10 Samsung Galaxy C5 Images Leak Yet Again Photos of the new phone in the Galaxy C series leaked online 2016-05-09 18:27 1KB news.softpedia.com
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11 Microsoft Updates Office for iPhone with New Features Microsoft updates its productivity suite on iOS devices 2016-05-09 12:17 1KB www.softpedia.com
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12 gNewSense 4.0 Promises a Solid Debian-Based Linux OS with 100% Free Software Unfortunately, most of the applications have old versions 2016-05-09 22:27 2KB
(0.01/4) news.softpedia.com
13 Dataminr was in an unpaid pilot with intel agencies when Twitter ended the deal
(0.01/4) We're heading into summer, but the chilly relationship between government bodies and private tech businesses is growing frostier by the day. In the latest.. 2016-05-09 20:16 5KB feedproxy.google.com 14 UPDATE 1-Anti-virus software guru McAfee named CEO of tiny MGT May 9- Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee has been tapped as chief executive of tiny (0.01/4) MGT Capital Investments Inc, an investor in fantasy sports and mobile games. MGT Capital said on Monday it would change its name to John McAfee Global Technologies Inc and that it... 2016-05-09 09:37 1KB www.cnbc.com 15 Blockchain is useful for a lot more than just Bitcoin Blockchain technology is not just useful for creating digital currencies such as Bitcoin or developing new financial technologies. 2016-05-10 06:01 8KB www.computerworld.com.au 16 Security Think Tank: Identifying, attracting and keeping the right IT security talent What strategies can organisations use to ensure that they are able to hire the information security professionals they need and that good candidates are not being missed or overlooked? 2016-05-10 05:58 1KB www.computerweekly.com 17 Microsoft announces cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions for every developer SAN FRANCISCO — March 31, 2016 — Thursday at Build 2016, Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group... 2016-05-10 01:34 6KB news.microsoft.com 18 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner Cars and software go hand in hand, for better or for worse. On the one hand, software is powering autonomous vehicles and... 2016-05-09 20:52 19KB feeds2.feedburner.com 19 Neil Patrick Harris says 'Thank you' with Siri and iPhone Neil Patrick Harris is one cool dude. From playing a boy-doctor on the TV show, Doogie Howser MD, to becoming one of the premier hosts for fancy award shows, the man is undeniably awesome. There are even some rumors that the handsome actor could replace Michael... 2016-05-10 00:46 1KB feeds.betanews.com 20 Highly Dangerous Trojan Found in Apps on the Google Play Store Viking Horde malware found in five Google Play Store apps 2016-05-09 23:51 2KB news.softpedia.com 21 Major Kernel Update Released for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Patch 18 Vulnerabilities Users are urged to update as soon as possible 2016-05-09 23:10 1KB linux.softpedia.com
22 Microsoft opens up registration for its international Build Tour Developers outside of the United States that want a piece of the Build action can sign up today for events in their respective countries, but you need to sign up soon, as they only hold 400 people. 2016-05-09 22:12 1KB feedproxy.google.com 23 Security concerns keeping IT pros up at night Security is still the main reason IT professionals are up at night, new reports from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT say. Security is still the main reason IT professionals are up at night, new reports from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT say... 2016-05-09 22:10 2KB feeds.betanews.com 24 Tech leader to establish roots at uCity Square: Microsoft Innovation Center comes to Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA — (April 4, 2016) — A new Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) will open to the public at uCity Square... 2016-05-09 20:55 7KB news.microsoft.com 25 Linux AIO Lets You Have All the Debian 8.4 Live Editions on a Single ISO Image Includes Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, MATE and Xfce 2016-05-09 21:50 2KB news.softpedia.com 26 Microsoft confirms that the FM Radio app will be removed in the Anniversary Update Almost a month ago, Insiders found that Windows 10 Mobile build 14322 removed the FM Radio app. Microsoft has now confirmed that the app isn't coming back, and suggests you use a third party solution. 2016-05-09 21:12 1KB feedproxy.google.com 27 Linux Lite 3.0 to Be Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Adopt the Popular Arc GTK Theme UEFI support won't make it into final Linux Lite 3.0 release 2016-05-09 21:12 3KB news.softpedia.com 28 Laugh.ly aims to be the Pandora for stand-up comedy A company called Laugh.ly wants to make streaming sets from the best comedians as easy as streaming music on Pandora. Though not yet available to the public,.. 2016-05-09 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 29 Virtual reality will revolutionize media content but VR headsets need to evolve Virtual reality can deliver on its promise to bring new and immersive experiences to the masses, but the current iteration of hardware will need to evolve.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 30 Chinese tech giant Kuang-Chi harnesses Israeli tech to build smart cities in China Kuang-Chi, a Shenzhen-based technology conglomerate, recently launched a $300 million Israel fund in Tel Aviv to tap the country's smart-city know-how,.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 31 The Information Age is over; welcome to the Experience Age Twenty-five years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, the Information Age is coming to an end. Thanks to mobile screens and Internet everywhere,.. 2016-05-09 20:16 5KB feedproxy.google.com 32 OverNest launches GitZero with encrypted code searching at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield OverNest, a startup that was launched just over a year by several technology industry veterans, announced its first product called GitZero today at the.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 33 WaterO brings reverse osmosis drinking water to the kitchen table A month before Disrupt, Yu Zhou sent us an email titled, “We want to help solve the Flint water problem.” WaterO’s CEO wasn’t claiming to have the.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 34 With Lumenus smart cycling apparel, you can leave your boring cycling jacket at home As self-driving cars are not quite ready yet, bike accidents are still a thing, unfortunately. Sometimes, stupid monkey brains can’t see someone riding a.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 35 Beam wants to turn gaming streams wildly dynamic The gaming community is one of the most vibrant and powerful groups on the Internet. The power of platforms like Twitch to unite gamers interested in watching.. 2016-05-09 20:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com 36 Halo is building a wearable to make athletes better, stronger, faster Halo Neuroscience wants to build a new category of wearable. Not for passively tracking human activity, as so many existing wearables are, but for actively.. 2016-05-09 20:16 15KB feedproxy.google.com 37 Botify is an SEO crawler that helps your website optimize for Googlebot Most businesses live or die on Google search rankings. If you can't crack the top few results, it's almost impossible to consistently drive organic traffic to.. 2016-05-09 20:16 3KB feedproxy.google.com 38 Facebook responds to claims of biased Trends, says it has neutrality guidelines Facebook says it's against the company's curation policy to suppress or prioritize specific political views in its Trending topics, and that it has guidelines.. 2016-05-09 20:16 4KB feedproxy.google.com 39 Artveoli combines algae and microfluidics to generate fresh air indoors Artveoli is a biotech startup that's building an air purifying device that aims to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen in indoor environments by harnessing the.. 2016-05-09 20:16 14KB feedproxy.google.com 40 First look: Microsoft’s API mashup tool for the rest of us Microsoft Flow makes it easy for anyone to string together inputs, outputs, and actions into simple applications 2016-05-09 20:00 6KB www.computerworld.com.au 41 Microsoft invests in cloud company Pivotal It was reported on Friday morning that Microsoft has invested in Pivotal, a San Francisco- based cloud-computing company. Besides Microsoft, Ford was also announced as a major investor. It was reported on Friday morning that Microsoft has invested in Pivotal, a San Francisco-based... 2016-05-09 18:37 2KB feeds.betanews.com 42 Nintendo's Super Mario characters are invading the blocky world of Minecraft Nintendo’s Super Mario characters will soon be invading the blocky world of Minecraft… if you play on the Wii U, that is. 2016-05-09 18:15 2KB www.techspot.com
43 Periscope partners with DJI for live drone broadcasting While some people consider drones to be a public nuisance, the truth is the safety and responsibility falls on the owner. In other words, if an owner is responsible and obeys the law, everything should be fine. Ultimately, these flying cameras have a lot... 2016-05-09 17:23 2KB feeds.betanews.com 44 IT departments need to adapt faster to change The fast-changing IT environment of today is forcing companies to reconsider their approach to IT, as they believe that can help them stand out in the crowd of their competitors. The fast-changing IT environment of today is forcing companies to reconsider their approach to IT,... 2016-05-09 17:20 2KB feeds.betanews.com 45 Google experiment replaces blue links with black text - do you approve? Upon submitting a Google query, you’re presented a handful of results in which the site name is written in blue and the URL for said site is listed directly below in green… or at least, that’s what most people see. … 2016-05-09 17:15 2KB www.techspot.com 46 The next iPhone might actually remain traditional with a single lens camera According to a new leak, the next iPhone will not offer a dual camera setup, but will instead be more traditional and stick with a single lens. The new leak also shows a lens with more protrusion. 2016-05-09 16:54 1KB feedproxy.google.com 47 Lenovo fixes yet another major security vulnerability This past year hasn't been kind to Lenovo. The company has had quite a few security problems on its hands, most affecting its Windows software. The PC maker has issued patch after patch to address them, but it now looks like the saga is far... 2016-05-09 16:42 1KB feeds.betanews.com 48 Hyperloop researcher to forego maglev, use 'Inductrack' tech to power its transportation system Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) on Monday said it will use a technology called passive magnetic levitation as the foundation for its version of Elon Musk’s futuristic transportation system. 2016-05-09 15:30 2KB www.techspot.com 49 Avira Phantom VPN is fast and free(-ish) Avira Phantom VPN is a fast virtual private network for Windows and Android. Once running, the program encrypts all your internet traffic, keeping you safe even when using insecure wireless hotspots. Avira Phantom VPN is a fast virtual private network for Windows and Android. Once... 2016-05-09 15:09 1KB feeds.betanews.com 50 Cyber criminals love to attack hotel chains Hotels represent rich pickings for cyber criminals. There's the potential to steal information from large numbers of customers with consequent financial gains. Hotels represent rich pickings for cyber criminals. There’s the potential to steal information from large numbers of customers with consequent financial gains. Researchers at Panda Security h… 2016-05-09 14:27 2KB feeds.betanews.com 51 Lost Door Remote Access Trojan Distributed via Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot Brazen malware developer doesn't try to hide his activity 2016-05-09 14:20 2KB news.softpedia.com 52 HTC pinning its hopes on the Vive and HTC 10 as sales fall 64% during last quarter HTC may be making plenty of positive headlines with its Vive virtual reality headset, but the company’s latest earnings report shows that it’s still struggling to compete with Apple and Android devices in the smartphone market, as the Taiwanese firm… 2016-05-09 13:45 2KB www.techspot.com 53 Save 91% off a lifetime subscription to Celo VPN via Deals With today's highlighted deal, you can save over $300 off a lifetime subscription to Celo VPN with Neowin Deals. Keep all your online activity 100% secure at home and on public Wi-Fi. 2016-05-09 13:04 2KB feedproxy.google.com 54 Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Explained: Usage, Video and Download Learn how to use this powerful virus removal application 2016-05-09 11:23 1KB www.softpedia.com 55 Winja is a feature-packed VirusTotal uploader Phrozen Software has released Winja, a one-stop VirusTotal uploader and system investigator. A simple opening menu allows scanning of individual files, downloads or running processes with VirusTotal. Phrozen Software has released Winja, a one-stop VirusTotal uploader and system investigator. A simple opening... 2016-05-09 10:38 2KB feeds.betanews.com 56 Researcher Arrested After Finding and Reporting SQL Injection on Elections Site Security expert might have gone overboard with his research 2016-05-09 09:50 3KB news.softpedia.com 57 Leaked Screenshots Reveal Improved Windows 10 Mobile Store Design The new interface will make its debut in the Redstone update 2016-05-09 09:33 2KB news.softpedia.com 58 HTC 10 review: the HTC redemption After a series of sub-par handsets, HTC has produced its latest Android range-topper, the 10. But does the device have what it takes to be a success, or has HTC delivered another forgettable flagship? 2016-05-09 09:32 15KB feedproxy.google.com 59 Uber and Lyft consider sharing a ride out of Austin following legal defeat Texans will soon struggle to get home, as Uber and Lyft have terminated their operations in Austin. The ride-sharing services lost a legal battle to repeal a law which will see increased checks. 2016-05-09 09:06 2KB feedproxy.google.com 60 Wercker Workflows available for managing container pipelines for distributed apps Wercker Workflows is a new solution for developers looking to manage their container pipelines for their distributed apps 2016-05-09 09:00 2KB sdtimes.com 61 Microsoft: 'AI is the most important technology on the planet... it will change everything' Microsoft's Dave Coplin says that AI "will change how we relate to technology. It will change how we relate to each other... It will even change how we perceive what it means to be human. " 2016-05-09 08:52 3KB feedproxy.google.com 62 Rare win for a US firm as Chinese court rules that company can't sell "face book" food and drinks Just as Apple loses the exclusive right to sell goods under the “iPhone” brand name in China, Facebook has just won a major trademark victory in the country. After a Beijing court ruled in the US company’s favor, Chinese citizens… 2016-05-09 08:30 2KB www.techspot.com
63 Data Products: 9 Best Practices To Minimize Risk Data generation, collection, and analysis are making their way into more types of products and services. The trend is creating new opportunities for innovation, some of which are so impactful, they're causing some companies to revisit their business models. The path to success... 2016-05-09 07:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 64 Facebook is testing a new 'Discover' feature that will help you find better groups to join Facebook Groups is one of the social network’s best elements, but many people don’t use it beyond joining a handful of groups they’ve been invited into by friends. Now, Facebook is looking to improve Groups by testing a feature that… 2016-05-09 06:15 2KB www.techspot.com Articles
64 articles, 2016-05-10 06:01
1 Opera VPN 1.0 offers secure, private browsing for iPhone and iPad (3.15/4) Beware: fake emails are becoming more realistic 9 May 2016 A security vendor reports that fake emails are getting harder to spot, as cyber criminals become... Security experts warn: get back to basics 29 Apr 2016 There's more evidence that many businesses' security practices are not good enough. In response,... Have you uninstalled QuickTime for Windows? 29 Apr 2016 Apple has discontinued support for the Windows version of its QuickTime multimedia software. ... Take care before you share 22 Apr 2016 How to prevent the potential privacy and security issues caused by passing on or following web ... How cybercriminals are targeting small businesses 19 Apr 2016 A security expert explains how to combat the new types of attacks threatening small businesses. 2016-05-10 00:00 Nick Peers
2 Here's a look at Microsoft's new OneDrive Universal app for Windows 10 (2.05/4) Last week, we found out that Microsoft will be launching a OneDrive UWP app for Windows 10 sometime this quarter. Today, we're finding out more about the new app, thanks to a report from WindowsBlogItalia. In fact, the Italian blog didn't just provide screenshots of the new app this time. It provided an APPXBUNDLE file and instructions for you to install it on your own device. Of course, to install the OneDrive UWP app, you'll need to be on one of the latest Insider Preview builds from the Redstone Development Branch. Because of this, it's likely that the public won't see this app until the Anniversary Update is released in July. If you do wish to side-load the app, here's what to do: Source: WindowsBlogItalia | ' Mille grazie' to @adoroifollowers for the heads-up! 2016-05-09 19:45 Rich Woods
3 News (1.02/4) Brought to you by The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortium enabling collaboration and innovation through an open source development model. Learn More © 2016 The Linux Foundation 2016-05-10 06:01 www.linux
4 FTC Orders Apple, Google, Microsoft, Others to Reveal Mobile Security Practices (1.02/4) The FTC sent a ten-page letter to companies such as Apple, Blackberry, Google, HTC American, LG Electronics USA, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung Electronics America. The letter informs companies that they must provide a series of answers to questions the FTC is asking about how the companies plan and carry out security operations for their mobile divisions. In layman's terms, the FTC is asking what are these companies doing about the mobile OS patching process that's currently leaving millions of devices exposed to hacking. While Apple, Google, Microsoft, LG, and Samsung may feel at ease because they already use OTA (over-the-air) update systems to deliver security patches, the other companies are not. Additionally, the FTC is not only making inquiries about how these updates take place but also on other security-related procedures. These other procedures include "the factors that they consider in deciding whether to patch a vulnerability on a particular mobile device," "detailed data on the specific mobile devices they have offered for sale to consumers since August 2013," "the vulnerabilities that have affected those devices," and "whether and when the company patched such vulnerabilities. " The Commission says it's only trying to understand the current mobile security landscape, from the point of view of mobile manufacturers. The FTC also said it's carrying out a parallel inquiry targeting mobile carriers, which many users have accused of beeing the real source of the security problem, especially in the Android ecosystem where carriers often delay security patches for months at a time. 2016-05-10 00:30 Catalin Cimpanu
5 HTC Suffers Fourth Consecutive Quarterly Loss, 64% Drop in Revenues (1.02/4) According to the report released by HTC , the company lost $148 million (about €129 million) in the first quarter of the year, between January 1 and March 31. Low sales seem to have caused revenue to collapse by $456.4 million (€400.6 million) for Q1/2016, compared to $1.28 billion (€1.12 billion) during the same quarter last year. The corresponding quarter last year didn’t include sales of the HTC One M9, but that model fell below expectations as well and didn’t manage to boost company results by much. In the report, the company doesn’t seem too worried about the drop in sales, as it praises awards won at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Mobile World Congress (MWC) for the HTC Vive virtual reality system and a series of smartphones. HTC anticipates ‘good momentum over the year,’ in part due to the launch of HTC Vive virtual reality system, as pre-orders started in February and deliveries were scheduled starting April 5. 2016-05-09 13:44 Alexandra Vaidos
6 AppFolio reports 1Q loss (1.01/4) GOLETA, Calif. (AP) _ AppFolio Inc. (APPF) on Monday reported a loss of $3.6 million in its first quarter. The Goleta, California-based company said it had a loss of 11 cents per share. Losses, adjusted for stock option expense, were 9 cents per share. The property management software maker posted revenue of $23.2 million in the period. AppFolio shares have decreased 15 percent since the beginning of the year. This story was generated by Automated Insights ( http://automatedinsights.com/ap ) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on APPF at http://www.zacks.com/ap/APPF Keywords: AppFolio, Earnings Report 2016-05-09 19:22 CNBC
7 Solus Linux OS to Offer Users a Brand-New and Modern Graphical Package Manager (1.00/4) Yes, we're talking about a new installation of the "This Week in Solus" newsletter, the 28th edition , where Josh Strobl talks about why the entire Solus Project needs to establish a consistent branding, the improvements that project leader Ikey Doherty did on the Budgie Desktop extension development front, and a new Software Center. Yes, that's right, a new Software Center is coming to Solus soon, one that promises to offer a modern package management experience to users of this independent, desktop-oriented operating system. And no, the new Software Center won't be based on GNOME Software, as the devs will build it from scratch. "There is no getting around the fact that the Software Center in Solus 1.1 sucks," said Josh Strobl. "Software discoverability and ease-of-use for installation of software is incredibly important to us and we want to tackle it with urgency. So we’re doing something about it now, this cycle, and it is going to be amazing. " In the last week, there were many package updates released in the Solus repositories, among which we can mention darktable 2.0.4, Node.js 5.11.1, OpenSSL 1.0.2h, r 3.3.0, Subversion 1.9.4, WeeChat 1.5, HexChat 2.12.1, KeePass 2.33, Conky 1.10.2, lollypop 0.9.104, VLC Media Player 2.2.3, as well as Peerunity 0.2.2. The RetroArch 1.3.4, N1 0.4.33, Erlang 18.3.3, and Adapta GTK theme 3.21.1.100 packages are also available in the stable Solus repos, along with an updated version of the MPV video player with enabled OpenGL support, and the latest Nvidia 340.xx series graphics driver with mtrr disabled. Lastly, Solus is now powered by the latest long-term supported Linux 4.4.9 kernel, and includes three new packages, namely FontForge 20160404, MenuLibre 2.1.3, and woff-tools 1.0. As usual, it is recommended that you update your Solus installation as soon as possible to receive all the goodies mentiond above. 2016-05-09 23:57 Marius Nestor
8 Microsoft announces quarterly earnings release date (1.00/4) REDMOND, Wash. — April 8, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. will publish fiscal year 2016 third-quarter financial results after the close of the market on Thursday, April 21, 2016, on the Microsoft Investor Relations website at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/. A live webcast of the earnings conference call will be made available at 2:30 p.m. PDT. Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information is available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/ . 2016-05-09 20:55 By Microsoft
9 AMD's Polaris graphics cards rumored to launch in late May (1.00/4) All the attention in the graphics card space has been focused on Nvidia recently, with the company announcing the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 a few days ago. However it won't be too long before Nvidia has some competition, as AMD is expected to launch their new Polaris-based graphics cards at the end of May. According to a report from Zolkorn , AMD is gearing up for a Polaris launch event in Macau sometime in the last few days of May. The event would occur before Computex 2016 begins on May 31st in Taipei, where board partners will be exhibiting their custom versions of AMD's new graphics cards. Both Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 products are rumored to be shown off at AMD's launch event, although actual availability of the cards won't come until a few weeks later. This is a fairly typical launch pattern for a new graphics card, as AMD will want to drum up as much public interest in their products ahead of their in-store launch. Judging by various leaks, AMD will be focusing on mid-range graphics cards with their Polaris 10 GPU, and energy efficient notebook graphics with Polaris 11. The top-end Polaris 10 graphics cards are expected to be successors to the Radeon R9 390 and R9 390X, bringing better efficiency and performance similar to an R9 Fury X (or GeForce GTX 980 Ti) down to lower price points. Considering Nvidia's GTX 1070 launched at $379 with better performance than their last- generation flagship card, the Titan X, AMD's Polaris 10 cards will have to undercut this price by a decent margin if performance doesn't stack up. Some rumors have suggested Polaris 10 will launch around $300, which could certainly be competitive. Gamers wanting a true AMD competitor to the GTX 1080 may have to wait until early 2017, when AMD is expected to launch a minor update to Polaris called 'Vega', bringing HBM2 and high-performance GPUs. 2016-05-09 19:15 Tim Schiesser
10 Samsung Galaxy C5 Images Leak Yet Again (1.00/4) Samsung seems to prefer using metallic bodies on its mid-range series, as the design is also present in A series phones as well and we can expect to see it throughout the whole C series models. Images clearly show that the Galaxy C5 will come with a dual LED flash camera. Rumors on the specs suggest that the Galaxy C5 will be carrying a Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor with 4GB RAM. The display might be 5.2 inch Full HD with 1080p resolution, either LCD or AMOLED. The resolution will be higher than that of the Galaxy J2 released last year. Regarding the storage memory, it is rumored that the C7 will come with 32GB internal memory, but there are no details on the storage available on the Galaxy C5. Still, the two devices will most likely come with Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 out of the box. 2016-05-09 18:27 Alexandra Vaidos
11 Microsoft Updates Office for iPhone with New Features (1.00/4) First and foremost, all included apps now come with support for Egnyte and Learnium, which are both file sharing services, but with different purposes. For instance, Egnyte is mostly aimed at enterprises, whereas Learnium is specifically targeting students who simply want to share documents online. In addition to these sharing improvements, PowerPoint has also received a new feature to better handle multimedia content on the iPhone. Starting with this update, iPhone users can play videos with closed captions in a slide, but also multiple audio tracks in a slideshow. Microsoft is continuously improving its productivity suite, not only on the iPhone, but also on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile, with new features, improvements, and bug fixes released every once in a while. This isn’t at all surprising though, given the fact that Office is one of the company’s main cash cows, so expect the same strategy to continue in the coming months with more Office updates. In the meantime, users on iPhone can proceed with downloading these new updates on their devices from the App Store and everyone is recommended to do so because in addition to those mentioned above, bug fixes and other improvements are also likely to be part of the package. 2016-05-09 12:17 Bogdan Popa
12 gNewSense 4.0 Promises a Solid Debian- Based Linux OS with 100% Free Software (0.01/4) First and foremost, we would like to inform our readers that gNewSense is a rock-solid Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution that respects the Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) and aims to be a one hundred percent free computer operating system. To achieve these goals, gNewSense uses only software projects that are truly free, libre, which means that it doesn't include any non-free or proprietary components. Furthermore, the gNewSense operating system does not include restricted kernel modules or Debian logos. As mentioned, gNewSense 4.0 was announced at the beginning of the month, but there weren't any details about the new features included. This major new release has been in development for the past one and a half years and comes as an upgrade to gNewSense 3.1, which was released more than two years ago. gNewSense 4.0 has been dubbed "Ucclia," and includes the GNOME 3.4.2 desktop environment, the long-term supported Linux 3.2.57 kernel, GIMP 2.8.2 image editor, Inkscape 0.48.3.1 vector graphics editor, Shotwell 0.12.3 image viewer and organizer, Transmission 2.52 BitTorrent client, and Iceweasel 31.5.0 web browser. Additionally, the LibreOffice 3.5 office suite, Rhythmbox 2.97 music player and organizer, Synaptic Package Manager 0.75.13 graphical package manager, and some of the core apps and utilities from the GNOME 3.4 stack are also present in the gNewSense 4.0 operating system. Download gNewSense 4.0 right now via our website. The Live ISO images are available for 64- bit, 32-bit, and MIPSel architectures. We also recommend visiting the project's website, which doesn't appear to have been updated recently, to find out more about this 100% free computer operating system. 2016-05-09 22:27 Marius Nestor
13 Dataminr was in an unpaid pilot with intel agencies when Twitter ended the deal (0.01/4) We’re heading into summer, but the chilly relationship between government bodies and private tech businesses is growing frostier by the day. In the latest development, it has emerged that Twitter requested one of its key B2B partners, Dataminr — a service that offers advanced social media analytics and early detection of major events like terrorist attacks or natural disasters — stop providing U. S. intelligence agencies with their tools and content. But Dataminr isn’t ending its relationship with the government altogether: Dataminir still counts In- Q-Tel, the non-profit investment arm of the CIA, as an investor. Dataminr has taken investment from Twitter, too, highlighting some of the conflicts that remain as tech companies fight for more transparency and autonomy from government control. Interestingly, the agencies who are at the center of today’s news were using Dataminr in an unpaid pilot, TechCrunch understands. That pilot, which was coming to an end, could not be continued as a paid deal because of pre-existing Twitter policies that forbid selling data for use in government surveillance. The news of Dataminr cutting off intelligence groups was first reported by the WSJ , and we have confirmed the details directly with sources. What exactly is Dataminr? The company uses Twitter firehose data — the unfiltered, full stream of Tweets from Twitter’s 300m+ users — along with other primary sources, to surface signals for big events as they are happening. The company has a number of customers in the finance industry, and it works with government organizations like the Department of Homeland Security, which has a $255,000 contract with the startup. “We have never authorized Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch. “This is a longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development.” Dataminr is not without a wider financial relationship with the intelligence agency: In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment arm, has a strategic stake in Dataminr, as highlighted in April in an article published in the Intercept . Twitter is also an investor in Dataminr — with a 5% stake in the big data startup. Dataminr has raised nearly $180 million to date , with its most recent round at a $700 million valuation. Other investors include Credit Suisse, Fidelity, IVP, Venrock, among others. Government agencies have been gathering intelligence about individuals and large-scale events from social networks more frequently as part of their efforts to keep surveillance up to speed with technology. But in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance, tech companies are not always comfortable playing a role in government intelligence-gathering, and are becoming more proactive about defining their boundaries. Twitter is in the midst of a lawsuit against the U. S. Government in which it is fighting to disclose information about the requests it receives for user data from the government. (The suit has been partly dismissed but is still in progress.) Twitter has been celebrated in part for its role as a platform for free speech — a key virtual “town square” where people can speak their mind and organize with others in a spirit of activism. But there is also a pragmatic reason for companies like Twitter to push back against intelligence authorities using tools to monitor Twitter activity. Twitter relies heavily on consumer trust to operate: if users think that it’s a hotbed for CIA snooping, this could turn them off from tweeting. Ironically, Dataminr may be one of the more innocuous of the social media big-data analytics firms: it uses public information from Twitter to track big events, rather than collecting and organizing personal information about people. Twitter itself pointed this out. “Dataminr uses public Tweets to sell breaking news alerts to media organizations such as Dow Jones and government agencies such as the World Health Organization, for non-surveillance purposes,” Twitter said in a statement to TechCrunch. Still, as the WSJ noted, it’s the optics of having any kind of relationship with intelligence agencies that motivated Twitter to end the pilot program. “American technology companies can continue to thrive only if people around the world trust them,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer told TechCrunch. “It’s completely understandable that a social media company like Twitter doesn’t want to be seen as an arm of American intelligence agencies.” And in the end, it seems like cutting off Dataminr activity is not necessarily the final word. Twitter told the Wall Street Journal that the data in question is “largely public and the U. S. government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could.” Jaffer agreed that the government could still easily observe action on Twitter. “It’s doubtful that this move by Twitter will have any significant effect on the U. S. government’s ability to access or analyze information,” he added. 2016-05-09 20:16 Kate Conger
14 UPDATE 1-Anti-virus software guru McAfee named CEO of tiny MGT (0.01/4) (Adds details, shares) May 9 (Reuters) - Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee has been tapped as chief executive of tiny MGT Capital Investments Inc, an investor in fantasy sports and mobile games. MGT Capital said on Monday it would change its name to John McAfee Global Technologies Inc and that it would buy some assets of McAfee's anti-spy software company, D-Vasive Inc. Shares of MGT, which had a market value of about $5 million on Friday, soared 85 percent to 66 cents in early trading. McAfee, an online celebrity who sold his eponymous anti-virus company to Intel Corp in 2011 for $7.6 billion, is also a presidential candidate for the November 2016 election. McAfee fled his home in Belize in 2012 after police sought to question him about the murder of a neighbor. They later said he was not a suspect. MGT, which is run out of Harrison, New York, said it would buy the D-Vasive assets for $300,000 in cash and 23.8 million restricted shares of MGT. MGT and its subsidiaries primarily acquire and develop intellectual property assets, including social casino and gaming platforms. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Ted Kerr) 2016-05-09 09:37 CNBC
15 Blockchain is useful for a lot more than just Bitcoin Blockchain technology is not just useful for creating digital currencies such as Bitcoin or developing new financial technologies. Blockchains can be used for a wide variety of applications, such as tracking ownership or the provenance of documents, digital assets, physical assets or voting rights. Blockchain technology was popularised by the Bitcoin digital currency system. But, essentially, a blockchain is just a special kind of database. The Bitcoin blockchain stores cryptographically signed records of financial transfers, but blockchain systems can store any kind of data. Blockchains can also store and run computer code called “smart contracts”. What makes a blockchain system special is that it doesn’t run on just one computer like a regular database. Rather, many distributed processing nodes collaborate to run it. There can be a full copy of the database on every node, and the system encourages all those nodes to establish a consensus about its contents. This boosts our confidence in the database and its contents. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to meddle with the database without others finding out and correcting it. The global consensus among the nodes about the integrity and contents of the distributed database is why it’s often called a “distributed ledger”. In our society, we normally rely on trusted third parties, such as lawyers, courts, banks and governments to process and keep authoritative records about commercial transactions. These transactions aren’t just about financial transfers, but also include the creation or transfer of physical assets, shareholdings, certifications, digital rights, intellectual property or even votes. These third parties are trusted because we rely on them. If they fail or lie, we suffer. We tend to trust the third parties for reasons that are external to the database; lawyers are accredited; votes are counted by independent monitors; and courts run to established laws for matters such as oversight and the possibility of appeal. Blockchains are interesting because the integrity of the contents of the distributed ledger does not rely on any specific individual or organisation. So, rather than relying on trusted third-party organisations to facilitate these commercial transactions, we might instead rely on a trusted blockchain system. This means blockchains give us new opportunities to rethink how parts of our society work. Innovation here might reduce friction in the economy, or create new kinds of services and ways of doing business with each other. Whether or not blockchain systems are trustworthy is an interesting question. The reasons for believing that blockchain systems won’t fail or lie would be based on our understanding of the underlying software technologies. It also depends on our understanding of market incentives that influence behaviour of the many distributed processing nodes that run blockchains. However, blockchain technologies are still new in the scheme of things, and the community is still discovering their risks, limitations and potential economic and social impact . Because blockchain technology is so new, it’s difficult to predict exactly how they will end up being used. This is why we at Data61 in CSIRO are exploring new ways blockchains can be used across industries. To understand the economic and societal opportunities presented by blockchain technology, we also need to understand its technological risks and limitations. At Data61, we plan to identify, develop and evaluate some “proof of concept” systems using blockchains to investigate them. A recent UK government report on blockchain technologies provides a good overview and examples of the use of blockchain. One of these is Everledger , a company founded by Australian woman Leanne Kemp. Everledger uses a blockchain to record information about the provenance and ownership of individual diamonds and other valuables. Here, rather than the blockchain recording transfers of digital currency, it records transfers of ownership of identified physical assets. This globally accessible provenance trail could reduce fraud and theft, and enable new or improved kinds of insurance and finance services. The same general idea could be used for any supply chain, such as in retail, agriculture or pharmaceuticals. The drivers for improving assurance of supply chain quality vary in different industries. It could be brand reputation in retail, or safety in pharmaceuticals, or a combination in agriculture. It is worth observing that blockchains don’t totally do away with the need for trusted third parties. A blockchain is only a digital record, but we need others to determine if those records actually match the corresponding physical assets in the real world. Everledger relies on major diamond certification companies to measure identifying information about individual diamonds. These measurements can be independently cross-checked. But in some sense, companies such as these become trusted third parties for this blockchain-based system. One can imagine the adoption of blockchain technologies creating opportunities for new kinds of trusted third-party organisations. Underlying all of these applications is the need for data integrity, which is the key security property for commercial systems, and the primary property for blockchain technologies. For financial transactions, data integrity means you can’t spend money you don’t have, and you can’t spend money twice. For physical supply chains, this means you can’t fraudulently acquire record of ownership for an asset. However, other security properties, such as privacy and confidentiality, are also important in many application areas. To achieve confidentiality, other mechanisms such as cryptography must be used in conjunction with the blockchain. Part of our software architecture research at Data61 is to seek to understand how design choices for software-based systems affect tradeoffs for qualities including security (integrity, confidentiality, privacy), performance (latency, throughput and scalability), and others. Good design choices can control risks to achieving these qualities, and this is part of what is evaluated in our research using proof-of-concept systems. Computer programs are a special kind of data and so can be stored in a database. That means we can store programs in the distributed ledger of a blockchain system, and execute those programs while later transactions are being processed. In the Ethereum blockchain, these programs can be highly complex. These programs are normally called “smart contracts”. Smart contracts can carry value, and can conditionally transfer that value according to complex business conditions based on the latest state of the distributed ledger. This means blockchain systems can do more than store information about commercial transactions; they can also process commercial transactions too. This greatly expands the opportunities for using blockchain systems. Although smart contracts are often thought of as standing for self-executing legal contracts, they are written in a general purpose programming language and can be used to implement a wide range of business logic. Can smart contracts actually stand as legal contracts? This is an interesting question. For legal contracts to be enforceable, they need to be understandable by reasonable persons. Can the bytecode of a program stored on a blockchain really be understood by any human? Perhaps only obsessive hobbyists might be able to develop that skill! Another thread of research in Data61 is investigating new ways of representing and analysing smart contracts, using recent results from legal informatics . Blockchain technology is still in its infancy. There are a wide range of plausible future scenarios for their future impact, ranging from efficiency improvements for commercial transactions through to a complete reinvention of the economy. As with any disruptive technology, understanding the plausible, possible and probable impacts – the opportunities and risks – will be vital for wise policy, strategy, and design choices by Australian governments and companies. Mark Staples is principal researcher in software systems at Data61 This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Tags Blockchain Bitcoin More about CSIRO Smart Staples 2016-05-10 06:01 www.computerworld
16 Security Think Tank: Identifying, attracting and keeping the right IT security talent There has been much talk of a cyber security skills gap in recent years. There has also been talk of skills gaps in other professional services – law, finance, engineering and medicine. Even the teaching profession bemoans the lack of mathematics and science teachers. The gap is multi-disciplinary and nationwide. Do not be fooled by the industry-specific media. As a country we are emerging from a recession. We are growing. Unemployment is falling. We are all busy. Skilled professionals do not have a shortage of work, so why should they jump ship and help fill your own company’s cyber security gap? We are in a candidate-driven market, which may come as some surprise to companies that think they are the best thing since sliced bread. Companies might feel they are in a comfortable position, having been able to employ everyone else in their IT Departments at bargain bucket salaries. Perhaps incorrectly, they are seeing cyber security resource as an IT function, whereas really these are resources you should be employing to secure every inch of your organisation – the board included. 2016-05-10 05:58 Tim Holman
17 Microsoft announces cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions for every developer SAN FRANCISCO — March 31, 2016 — Thursday at Build 2016, Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, and Qi Lu, executive vice president of the Applications and Services Group, demonstrated how Microsoft Azure services and the Office platform can empower developers to more easily leverage advanced analytics, machine learning, emerging cloud development models and the Internet of Things (IoT) to build their intelligent apps. Microsoft also announced new free development tools to help every developer more easily scale their apps for every platform and reach the largest possible number of customers. Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Developer eXperience, delivered the final Build keynote address to showcase how partners are innovating using Azure, Office and Windows. “Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that supports the diverse needs of every organization and developer — from core infrastructure services to platform services and tools to software-as-a- service — for any language, across any platform,” Guthrie said. “With 30 regions worldwide — more than every major cloud provider combined — Azure’s massive scale means developers and businesses alike can focus on creating the next generation of amazing applications, not their underlying cloud infrastructure. This makes our cloud the de facto choice for enterprises of today and tomorrow — and today, more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 agree.” “In terms of reach, Office is one of the few platforms in the world that provides developers with access to over a billion users across a variety of devices,” Lu said. “The opportunity to build on the Office platform has never been greater. With new extensions and new connections to the Microsoft Graph — an intelligent fabric that applies machine learning to map the connections between people, content and interactions across Office 365 — developers are empowered to build intelligent apps that can transform the landscape of work.” The intelligent cloud to help developers build their next intelligent app Guthrie announced on Thursday that Microsoft is helping developers more easily build native cross-platform mobile applications by including Xamarin’s capabilities in Visual Studio Community and also making Xamarin Studio for OS X free as a community edition. In addition, Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers will now have access to Xamarin’s advanced enterprise capabilities at no additional cost. The company also announced a commitment to open source the Xamarin SDK, including its runtime, libraries and command line tools, as part of the. NET Foundation in the coming months. With these announcements, Microsoft extends its commitment to offering choice and flexibility to every customer across every platform and device — merging the. NET and Xamarin ecosystems together to provide an unmatched mobile development and DevOps experience. Now developers can deliver fully native cross-platform mobile app experiences to all major devices, including iOS, Android and Windows. Guthrie also announced several new Azure services designed to help developers address today’s operational realities and take advantage of tomorrow’s emerging trends, such as the Internet of Things and microservices. These new capabilities are designed to make Azure the best platform to build the next intelligent app — on Linux or Windows using any language: The Office developer opportunity: unprecedented users, data and intelligence Microsoft’s Lu, along with Office partners Starbucks Corp., MDLIVE Inc. and Zendesk Inc., showcased how developers can use the Office platform to create new business opportunity and closer customer connections. Starbucks CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger showed how Starbucks is developing an Outlook add-in that allows people to send gift cards within Outlook and schedule meetings at nearby Starbucks locations. “We’re always looking for new ways to engage with our customers outside our stores,” said Martin-Flickinger. “Our work with Office is opening up new opportunities for us to connect with our customers and save them time when they want to combine coffee with meetings. Building on the Office platform is reaching our customers right on their desktop or device and extending the Starbucks Experience to them in new and compelling ways.” The Microsoft Graph, made generally available last fall, offers developers unified access to insights about how workers can be more productive. Microsoft previewed six new APIs for the Microsoft Graph that let developers link Office 365 data to third-party solutions. For example, one extension automatically compiles and exposes a list of times a group of people are available to meet, making it easier to work across organizations. Lu also shared how conversational interaction will evolve in the future and how developers can immediately start building apps that engage users in meaningful conversations. The new Skype for Business App SDK and Skype Web SDK announced Thursday allow companies to integrate Skype calls directly within their Web or device offering, greatly enhancing the service and connection they can provide to their customers. The company also showed off new functionality that lets developers build apps and place them directly into Word, Excel and PowerPoint ribbons. Finally, the developer portal for Office 365 Connectors is now available for developers to write and publish their own connectors. Connectors deliver relevant content, such as updates on financial records or helpdesk logs, from popular apps and services directly into Office 365 Groups conversations. The developer portal is launching with connectors such as Asana, Salesforce, Trello, Twitter, UserVoice, Zendesk and many more. Developers and partners innovate on Windows, Azure and Office Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-05-10 01:34 By Microsoft
18 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner Cars and software go hand in hand, for better or for worse. On the one hand, software is powering autonomous vehicles and safer infrastructure; at the same time, software is enabling vehicles to purposely pollute the planet to dangerous levels and allowing hackers to take over vehicles in motion. Finally, the high-tech computer systems that are powering today’s cars are something of a sore point with individuals who once repaired their own vehicles, only to find now that the gadgets under the hood aren’t a DIY project. But Ford’s announcement that it has invested in software company Pivotal will hopefully turn the tide of negative impressions aimed at the tricky world of tech-and-automotive collaboration. In addition to the $182 million the automaker just poured into the Palo Alto-based company, Ford’s Chief Information Officer will join its board. Pivotal already has a working relationship with Ford, and has created the software that has powered a few key Ford innovations, including the FordPass smartphone app. As Ford’s CEO explained in a pointed analogy to the Detroit News , this new, stronger partnership is like moving from just dating to actually getting married. How solid is this marriage? Ford and Pivotal are opening new facilities to develop automotive software, and once new software is created Ford will have a streamlined process for integrating it into their vehicle design without all the hassle of purchasing, licensing, working around copyright, and more. As part of the Pivotal team, the speed with which Ford can upload new software to its vehicles will be dramatically reduced. Given the recent software glitches and hacking vulnerabilities in automotive software, let’s hope this speedy approach pays off for both parties involved. One unfortunate result of this new partnership could be an even bigger stall in Ford’s work with Google on autonomous cars, which hit a wall earlier this year. The post Ford Makes Major Investment In Software appeared first on FileHippo News . The company has announced that every blogspot domain will now use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) by default. The great news for bloggers here is that they shouldn’t have to do very much themselves to reap the benefits of the move, as the transition has taken place automatically and shouldn’t affect their blogs. Moving all its Blogspot domains is part of Google’s mission to have HTTPS everywhere on the internet. The company began making HTTPS available to bloggers back in September when it began to trial HTTPS for its bloggers. “HTTPS is fundamental to internet security; it protects the integrity and confidentiality of data sent between websites and visitors’ browsers. Last September, we began rolling out HTTPS support for blogspot domain blogs so you could try it out. Today, we’re launching another milestone: an HTTPS version for every blogspot domain blog. With this change, visitors can access any blogspot domain blog over an encrypted channel.” HTTPS will now be turned on by default which will make it harder for hackers to gain access to blogs, steal data and trash peoples blogs. However, Google are leaving an option for bloggers to turn it off if they wish, and all visitors to blogspot blogs will be given the option to acces non HTTPS versions of blogs if they choose. Not quite. Google have had to leverage the move with the caveat that HTTPS could cause some issues on some blogs, showing mixed content warnings, and this could be especially prevalent on the blogs that are dependent on resources from other websites that don’t use HTTPS. Google hopes that these issues will be fixed quickly when they occur, and will hopefully only cause minor glitches and frustrations for users. “While we’re proactively fixing most of these errors, some of them can only be fixed by you, the blog authors. To help spot and fix these errors, we recently released a mixed content warning tool that alerts you to possible mixed content issues in your posts, and gives you the option to fix them automatically before saving.” The post Google Changes Every Blogspot Domain to HTTPS appeared first on FileHippo News . It’s frustrating enough for any IT pro or tech support guru to find out that consumers aren’t safeguarding their computers with strong antimalware protection, but a new study from Concordia University has uncovered some very troubling findings. The antivirus and parental control software that a lot of consumers have finally learned to rely on may actually be exposing their computers to hackers. Researchers analyzed fourteen different popular and commonly available antivirus titles and found vulnerabilities, mainly based in the way the software coordinates the security certificate of each website. The software was found to be granting its own certificate to the browser, an error in the way the software functions. Unfortunately, some of the compromised software was in the ad-blocking genre, a very popular add-on for internet users who despise pop-ups and flashing sidebar ads. As for parental control software, the same issue is at the heart of the problem. By attempting to verify the certificate, the software makes the computer think it has the authority to give the go- ahead, even though it’s not a certification authority. So what are consumers and concerned parents supposed to do? It’s been drilled into their heads that antivirus software is important for protecting both their hardware and their identities, and of course no one wants to leave kids unattended on the Wild West that is the internet. First, while antivirus software is still important, it’s also crucial to keep your browser up-to-date and install any patches or updates that come along. That does far more good than a security certificate, and browsers themselves are already built to seek out authentication. And if parents are concerned about their kids’ internet activity, there are two major steps that can help: the first is almost too obvious, and that’s to stop letting your kids connect online when there’s no one around who can see what they’re viewing, but the other, more technical solution is to use apps and software that allow parents to block specific domains instead of keywords. The post Security Software Exposing Your Tech…And Your Kids? appeared first on FileHippo News . Probably. Over the last few years, quite a few tech analytics firms have crowned Chrome as the market leader. April however has been the first time that everyone is in agreement that Microsoft is no longer number 1. The news was released by Netmarketshare , another statistics firm, that reported that Chrome is now responsible for 41.7% of the total number of daily desktop users. Internet Explorer was reported to have dropped to 41.3%. Probably not. In real terms, the news is something of a paper tiger. Microsoft pulled support for several older versions of Internet explorer back in January, and is now concentrating its browser offering through Windows 10, and its new default browser, Edge. Before Internet Explorer, the Empire, and the dark times, the most popular browser was Netscape. But crucially, Internet Explorer quickly gained market share when it started coming bundled with Windows Operating systems. It became the most popular choice in 1998, and stayed that way, up until now. But Internet Explorer has been losing ground to its rivals for several years, with many users deriding it for being inferior to competitors such as Chrome, Firefox, and even Apple’s Safari. Firefox and Chrome which were released in 2002 and 2008 respectively, were seen as fresher, faster, easier to use, and importantly used a search engine called ‘Google,’ (Whatever that was) that actually showed search results that were useful to users. Internet Explorer was once so dominant in its field that in 2009, Microsoft settled a European Union complaint about its monopoly of the browser market by offering consumers a choice of browser. The post Google’s Chrome Browser Overtakes Internet Explorer For The First Time appeared first on FileHippo News . According to an official from the ministry of telecommunications, Apple will not be allowed to import or sell refurbished iPhones in India for the foreseeable future, due in the main, to fears that the used iphones would further exacerbate India’s growing e-waste problems. The move has been seen as a major setback for the US tech giant as they see expansion into India as offering the potential for huge rewards. Apple’s aims to have a bigger impact on the Indian market were dealt a similar blow last year when a similar bid was also rejected for the same reasons. Apple had hoped for a different outcome when it made this year’s offer to sell pre-owned iPhones, especially due to the fact that sales of its hardware seems to have reached a saturation point in other markets. Apple currently accounts for around 2% of the Indian market and has been l obbying the Indian government hard for permission to open up an Apple retail network in the country. However, other smartphone makers have been lobbying hard in the other direction as well, citing the fact that second hand iPhones would have a negative effect on demand for locally made cellular devices, and would also directly contradict the governments ‘Made in India’ strategy which favourably promotes the manufacturing of products from within India itself. While the government’s environmentally minded thinking in regard to selling near end of life hardware has been lauded by some groups, critics have speculated that it is the opposition from these other tech manufacturers that has the real weight behind the decision. India presents a problem for Apple in terms of trying to penetrate the market. Apple is generally reluctant to lower its premium price point offerings for its hardware, especially as it is the mark- up on the hardware where the company makes most of its profits. Being allowed to sell refurbished phones would have allowed Apple to attract new loyal users but at a more affordable rate. It is unknown whether Apple will follow through on its request to open up an Apple Store network without the option to sell its refurbished line of iPhones. The post Apple Banned From Selling 2nd Hand iPhones in India appeared first on FileHippo News . Social media is awesome…except when it’s not, as Tinder users discovered by mistake. The purpose of social media is to help you connect with other people; depending on the platform, those may be people you know in real life, or people you have yet to know but would like to. Unfortunately, a new feature on the dating platform Tinder has dragged people kicking and screaming into connecting. It’s worse than parents who decide to throw you a surprise party and invite your entire school class–filled with kids you absolutely loathe and really don’t want at your house. Tinder Social is intentionally designed to go less the way of the “find a potential date” and more of the friendship route. Its default setting, though, highlighted for users all of their Facebook friends who are on Tinder. That could be really awkward if your married pastor or married boss suddenly appears in your Tinder connections, since it indicates he has an account…and so do you. It gets better. Tinder Social not only displays your Facebook friends for you, it shows you their dating profiles and their preferences. It wasn’t awkward enough to find out that your married boss is on Tinder, now you know what he’s into. It’s not unheard of to find out that there are people within your circle of friends that are looking for romance, and on the surface, what better way to forge an actual lasting relationship than to be connected by a love-mediator to someone you actually might know? But Tinder’s real problem is in the way this was rolled out. As Microsoft learned the hard way last year, tech users don’t like waking up to surprises (like Windows 10 installed on their computers); instead, they much prefer opting into a new offer instead of clawing their way out of it before anyone finds out they were ever there. This will hopefully serve as a wakeup call to the entire tech industry: innovation is awesome, unless it costs us our jobs or our relationships…or our operating systems. The post Tinder’s New Feature Outs Its Users appeared first on FileHippo News . “Most of today’s quantum computing research in academia and industry is focused on building a universal quantum computer. The major challenges include creating qubits of high quality and packaging them together in a scalable way, so they can perform complex calculations in a controllable way.” Instead, the cloud based quantum computing platform, named the “ IBM Quantum Experience ,” is hoping to attract the type of user who is most likely to have practical applications that will make the most of the quantum computing system. IBM only has one quantum processor available for the public to play with. And by public, what they really mean, is scientists. IBM also expect demand for access to their quantum processor to outstrip supply, so in anticipation, IBM have designed a scheduling system — that way, tests run sequentially. After a job is performed, the service will send out the results of the experiment in an email. Quantum computing processors work on a fundamentally different level from normal computer processors. Traditional computers make use of bits to process information, where each bit represents either a one or a zero. Quantum computing however uses quantum bits -qubits – to process data. The major difference is that a qubit can represent a one, a zero, or both at once, in a technique commonly known as superposition. In basic terms, using qubits allows quantum computers to perform certain calculations at an almost exponentially faster pace than with normal everyday computers. While Google and NASA showed off their own jointly designed and built Quantum super computer back in December 2015, the IBM Quantum Experience, is the first quantum computer that anyone theoretically can have access to. The post IBM Quantum Cloud Computing Free For Everyone (Kind Of) appeared first on FileHippo News . It’s hard enough to convince consumers to invest in (and update) antivirus protection for their computers, but a hard look by TechCrunch at the potential for harm when it comes to malware infecting your car might make drivers think twice. As innovations in the auto industry come about–no, not the innovations from Volkwagen…the good kind of innovations–cars are more connected than ever before. And it’s gone way past simply connecting the driver’s phone to the vehicle for safer operation, or connecting the vehicle back to the manufacturer for maintenance updates to the onboard software. Both of those cyberrelationships are important, despite being vulnerable to attack. Even the aftermarket plug- ins from insurance companies that help drivers consider their speed and maneuvering can be left wide open to intrusion. But the new wave in connected cars is cars that can talk to each other, or to stop signs or road hazard indicators, for example. Of course, the car itself isn’t connecting to the sign or to the Toyota that went whizzing past; it’s connecting to the cloud and communicating through anything else that’s connected. Like a virus. Where the Internet of Things has already had its share of worrywarts who predict our gloom and doom (or at the very least, highly inconvenient bodily harm), it’s bad enough when a virus takes over your Nest thermostat and runs up your electric bill. Imagine that same jerk infecting your car with a virus and slamming it through an elementary school playground while you sit helplessly in the driver’s seat. There are companies hard at work on creating antivirus protection for automobiles, but for now they’re aimed at working with the manufacturers to provide constant monitoring. But the days of dropping a cardboard activation package into your shopping cart from your discount store’s electronics department don’t seem too far-fetched. However, just as with desktop PC and mobile device protection, the real trick will be convincing consumers to use it. The post AntiVirus Protection For Your Smartcar appeared first on FileHippo News . FileHippo.com was started by two software enthusiasts in 2004. We’re really proud of what we have achieved over the past 12 years. Our aim was to create a site that was trusted by software enthusiasts and to have a reputation for offering software updates, expert reviews, and news of the best freeware and shareware apps in the market for Windows and Mac OS. We’d like to thank all our users for their continuing support! FileHippo continues to hand-pick all software listed on the site so that users can be sure they are downloading the best programs available! In order to keep providing safe and clean downloads, we have teamed up with Avira to give each program a safety guarantee so that our users can download with confidence. Of course, we couldn’t have come this far without our valued users, so we want to say a huge thank you to everyone for their support – here’s to the next billion downloads! We’re working on some exciting new features so stay tuned! The post FileHippo Smashes The 3,000,000,000 Download Barrier appeared first on FileHippo News. Turn it on…turn it off…turn it back on again… It’s nice when simply restarting your tech makes it recycle and behave itself. It’s not so nice when the procedure reboots a $1.5 trillion airplane. The Air Force has reportedly sunk more money into this one program than any other military innovation, but there’s a pesky problem with the shiny new toy. More specifically, the problem is with the software that powers it, called Block 3iR6.21: it requires rebooting in order to actually take off. The software literally requires turning it off and turning it back on, which is fairly problematic considering the intended purpose of this pricey aircraft is to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Hold off on the deployment, guys, we gotta reboot our plane. In a recent “scramble test” of six of the aircraft–a simulation in which the planes are sitting ready to go, having already conducted preflight checks and are just awaiting the go-ahead–only one plane actually made it off the ground. The other five suffered from the software issue that has plagued this project from day one, and had to be powered down and restarted in order to continue. It gets worse. According to a report on the current abysmal state of this project by Michael Gilmore, DOD Director of Operational Test and Evaluation,”During the first 30 flights with Block 3iR6.21, which accumulated 75.6 hours of flight time, no less than 27 power cycles were required to get all systems functioning between initial startup and takeoff. These power cycles varied in degree – from ‘cold iron’ resets, where the aircraft had to be shut down and then restarted, to component or battery power recycling.” Now, the project is anticipated to be complete bu 2019, although senior military officials stand by the current state of the F-35, claiming that the recent results are still better than what they had to work with before. The post F-35 Fighter Jet Fails Over Software Issues appeared first on FileHippo News . 2016-05-09 20:52 feeds2.feedburner
19 Neil Patrick Harris says 'Thank you' with Siri and iPhone Neil Patrick Harris is one cool dude. From playing a boy-doctor on the TV show, Doogie Howser MD , to becoming one of the premier hosts for fancy award shows, the man is undeniably awesome. There are even some rumors that the handsome actor could replace Michael Strahan on Live! with Kelly Ripa, but I digress. Today, NPH becomes the latest Apple advertisement star. In a video titled "Thank You Speech," the actor shows off the hands-free capabilities of the iPhone 6s. The advertisement is about Neil Patrick Harris pretending to accept an award while standing in the mirror. Rather than read his speech from an old-school index card, Mr. Harris instead summons Apple's voice assistant, with the command "Hey, Siri". Siri reads Harris' speech from a "note" that he recorded earlier. He then lip-syncs to the female computer voice. The video is both cute and fun, but more importantly, it highlights the hands-free aspect of the iPhone 6s. What do you think of the advertisement? Watch it below, and tell me in the comments. Photo Credit: vagueonthehow 2016-05-10 00:46 By Brian
20 Highly Dangerous Trojan Found in Apps on the Google Play Store Discovered by security experts from Check Point, Viking Horde was found in five apps uploaded to the Play Store, named Viking Jump, Parrot Copter, WiFi Plus, Memory Booster, and Simple 2048. Google has removed these apps in the meantime, but Check Point researchers are claiming that the same methods used to upload these malicious apps past Google's app review process may be used again in the future to upload new apps. Check Point says that Viking Horde is particularly dangerous because it can target both rooted and non-rooted devices, being extremely dangerous on rooted devices where an update component allows the crook to constantly send new packages to the malware that contain new attack features. The malware works around a C&C server, from where the crook is sending instructions to all infected devices (called bots). Communication between the server and the bot always takes place via an anonymous proxy. For each infected device, the C&C server sets up a separate proxy. By utilizing this method, the Viking Horde operator can rest assured that nobody can track the botnet's activity back to his main server. As for the malware's main mode of operation, Check Point says that in the vast majority of cases, Viking Horde was used to deliver ads to infected devices, and simulate user taps on those ads, helping the crook gain fees from affiliate advertising programs. Here is also the place where the anonymous proxy comes in hand since it delays the moment at which these bots get blacklisted by advertisers. Check Point says it discovered only one user complaining about SMS fraud, and that it only detected the technical capabilities to launch DDoS attacks and send spam, not actually seeing the botnet perform this types of attacks. Researchers say that most of the infected users that downloaded Viking Horde-infected apps are from Russia, Spain, Lebanon, Mexico, and the US. Last week, Russian antivirus maker Dr. Web discovered over 190 malware-infested apps on the Play Store, which it reported to Google and had them removed. 2016-05-09 23:51 Catalin Cimpanu
21 Major Kernel Update Released for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Patch 18 Vulnerabilities Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2967-1 has been published today, May 9, 2016, and includes information about eighteen kernel vulnerabilities that have been patched in the Linux kernel packages of the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating system. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is supported with critical security patches and software updates until April 2017, so those who still use this Ubuntu version need to upgrade their systems as soon as possible to patch the vulnerabilities mentioned in today's security notice. Make sure that you reboot your operating system after the update has been successfully applied, in order for the new kernel version of be activated. It's a pretty important kernel update, so please update immediately! 2016-05-09 23:10 Marius Nestor
22 Microsoft opens up registration for its international Build Tour Microsoft's Build 2016 developer conference has been over for some time now, but the fun doesn't stop there. Microsoft today is opening up registration for its international Build Tour. Originally announced at Build , each one-day event will be completely free. Here are the dates and locations of the seven cities where these events will be held: You can click any of the above links to register for its respective city, or you can head over to the Build 2016 web site where you can find out more about all of the events, including those in Moscow, Russia and Tokyo, Japan. Here's what Microsoft says you should expect from the events: If you're interested in the event, Microsoft warns that each one will only fit about 400 people, so you should sign up as soon as possible. Source: Windows Blog 2016-05-09 22:12 Rich Woods
23 Security concerns keeping IT pros up at night Security is still the main reason IT professionals are up at night, new reports from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT say. BCS has asked 444 IT experts about their thoughts and fears revolving their company in 2016. The results, released in the 2016 Digital Leaders survey, show a mix of "predictable" and "thoughtful" ideas, as the BCS puts it. Security is still the number one issue, though, with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices just adding to the existing cyber-risks. "This is the fifth year that we have conducted the research helping us to build a picture that is showing that some issues remain key in the concerns of a digital leader. It also demonstrates the waxing and waning of terms that tend to populate Gartner’s hype cycle picture", says Adam Thilthorpe, BCS Director for Professionalism. Besides security, IT experts also say widespread incorrect understanding of governance, the dearth of good engineers coming through the ranks, and losing development and delivery capability in the UK due to the lack of investment or belief, are some of the core problems they’re faced with today. "What is clear is that year on year, we’re seeing that organizations feel they do not have the necessary skills in their organizations to help them face the IT trends that they know they need to address to help their organizations remain competitive", he added. "This continues to be a serious issue not just for individual organizations but also for the UK as a whole. The predicted skills gap is a very real thing and many, many organizations are experiencing it already" In the next 12 months, information security (59 percent), cloud computing (48 percent) and mobile computing (34 percent), will be top priorities for many. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Jirsak / Shutterstock 2016-05-09 22:10 By Sead
24 Tech leader to establish roots at uCity Square: Microsoft Innovation Center comes to Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA — (April 4, 2016) — A new Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) will open to the public at uCity Square in Philadelphia this summer. The MIC, which is the result of a collaboration between Microsoft Corp., SeventySix Capital, the University City Science Center and Wexford Science & Technology, will be the first in the region and the third in the U. S., with other locations in Atlanta and Miami. The Innovation Center complements and enhances Microsoft’s regional presence, which includes an office in Malvern and a Microsoft Store at King of Prussia Mall. Currently there are over 350 Microsoft employees in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Located on the ground floor of the Science Center’s corporate headquarters at 3711 Market Street, the MIC will be equipped with the latest Microsoft technology. Through a combination of programming and outreach activities, Microsoft – working closely with the Science Center and SeventySix Capital – will seek to spur economic development and create new opportunities for the local tech startup community. Further, the MIC will host activities that will bring underrepresented groups to greater awareness of and involvement with STEM activities and careers. “Bringing Microsoft to Philadelphia and uCity Square is a game changer on many levels,” said Science Center President & CEO Stephen S. Tang, Ph. D., MBA. “Not only have we attracted a large tech company to our city, but the MIC also offers a means to engage our neighborhood, innovation, and entrepreneurial communities and give them access to Microsoft technology and training. It took a true collaboration between SeventySix Capital, Microsoft, Wexford and the Science Center to make this happen.” “We are thrilled to work with SeventySix Capital, the University City Science Center, and Wexford Science & Technology to bring technology and resources to the great city of Philadelphia,” said Jeff Friedman, director of Modern Government in Microsoft’s State and Local Government Solutions Group. “MICs are part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to empower developers and entrepreneurs, extending into local metro markets to help startups grow their business with technology and services such as cloud computing, developer tools, software and open source technologies.” The MIC will open in time for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in July and will serve as a hotbed of Microsoft activity during the convention, with a number of programs and events that explore the intersection of technology and civic engagement. After the DNC, Microsoft, the Science Center and SeventySix Capital will develop and deliver a suite of ongoing technology and innovation focused programming that will offer the startup, entrepreneurial, academic and neighborhood communities access to Microsoft resources and expertise. “Microsoft’s presence in uCity Square will enhance our community of ingenuity and become a catalyst to continue innovation and economic growth in our city,” said Joe Reagan, Vice President at Wexford Science & Technology. “With this opportunity, Philadelphia’s flourishing premier innovation district, uCity Square, will work in tandem with Microsoft to attract talent and companies that will bring businesses of all sizes together to advance technology and collaboration. We’re excited to see what the future holds for uCity Square.” “This is an amazing win for Philadelphia! Jon Powell, our team at SeventySix Capital and I are thrilled to see our hard work pay off to attract Microsoft, a Fortune 50 tech company, to our city,” said Wayne Kimmel, Managing Partner of SeventySix Capital. “Our shared vision with Jeff Friedman at Microsoft to build an open and accessible venue to inspire all people to explore and learn about the latest technological innovations will become a reality this summer during the DNC and beyond because of our collaboration with the Science Center. The MIC will be the legacy of the DNC and will spur future entrepreneurs to create businesses and technologies to change the world!” About the Science Center The University City Science Center is a dynamic hub for innovation, and entrepreneurship and technology development in the Greater Philadelphia region. It provides business incubation, programming, lab and office facilities, and support services for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and growing and established companies. Since it was founded in 1963, graduate organizations and current residents of the University City Science Center’s Port business incubators have created more than 15,000 jobs that remain in the Greater Philadelphia region today and contribute more than $9 billion to the regional economy annually. The Science Center is leveraging its history as the nation’s oldest and largest urban research park as it joins forces with Wexford Science + Technology, a BioMed Realty company, to expand its footprint and rebrand its physical campus as uCity Square — a true mixed-use community of ingenuity. For more information about the Science Center, go to ucscreview.org . About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. About SeventySix Capital SeventySix Capital invests in passionate, smart and nice entrepreneurs who are launching game-changing companies in the e-commerce, retail and healthcare industries. Wayne Kimmel founded SeventySix Capital, the Philadelphia area based venture capital fund, in 1999. Recently, Jon Powell joined Kimmel as a Managing Partner at SeventySix Capital. Powell is also the CEO of Kravco, a leading private real estate developer and property management company that developed the King of Prussia Mall. SeventySix Capital’s top exits include, SeamlessWeb – acquired by ARAMARK, now public as GrubHub (NYSE: GRUB), Take Care Health Systems – acquired by Walgreens (NYSE: WAG) and NutriSystem (NASDAQ: NTRI) – top performing stock in the U. S. for 5 consecutive years. Intel, IBM and Yahoo! have also acquired SeventySix Capital portfolio companies. Some of SeventySix Capital’s current portfolio companies include: Adwerx, CareCam Health Systems, Dwolla, Indiegogo, ReverbNation, StartUp Health, and Whistle Sports. SeventySix Capital’s partners are extremely active in the entrepreneurial and non-profit communities around the world. For more information on SeventySix Capital, please visit seventysixcapital.com or at @76capital on Twitter. About Wexford Science & Technology Wexford Science & Technology, a subsidiary of BioMed Realty, is a real estate investment and development company specializing in facilities for for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, especially universities, university-related research parks and healthcare systems. Wexford brings a unique approach of collaborating with clients to build knowledge communities which are vibrant, mixed-use, amenity-rich environments that foster innovation. About uCity Square Powered by the University City Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology, uCity Square will be the center of Philadelphia’s economic growth in University City by creating a dynamic environment for innovation and collaboration between the private sector and top-tier research institutions such as University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. 2016-05-09 20:55 By Microsoft
25 Linux AIO Lets You Have All the Debian 8.4 Live Editions on a Single ISO Image In this article, we will try to explain to you why the brand-new Linux AIO Debian Live 8.4.0 ISO image will change the way you interact with and use any of the Debian GNU/Linux Live editions. Yes, that's right, you can now have all the essential Debian Live CDs under a single roof. Linux AIO Debian Live 8.4.0 is here to offer you a single, bootable, live ISO image that contains the Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 Cinnamon, Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 KDE, Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 GNOME, Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 MATE, Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 Xfce, and Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 LXDE Live flavors. The Linux AIO Debian Live 8.4.0 ISO image is available for 64-bit and 32-bit computers, and you can carry it with you anywhere you go, on a simple USB flash drive or a DVD disc, that if you still use one of those. Unfortunately, support for UEFI systems is not yet available on any of the Linux AIO Live ISOs. The wait is finally over, you can download the Linux AIO Debian Live 8.4.0 ISO images today for either 64-bit or 32-bit architectures, which are distributed as two .7z archives that you need to extract to obtain a usable ISO, which can be deployed on a USB stick of 8GB or higher capacity. Linux AIO is an amazing project backed by a group of skillful developers who are doing an excellent job at building homes in the form of Live ISO images for all the important Live editions of some of the most popular GNU/Linux operating systems, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, and many others. 2016-05-09 21:50 Marius Nestor
26 Microsoft confirms that the FM Radio app will be removed in the Anniversary Update If you're a fan of the FM Radio app that came pre- installed on Windows phones for years, you were most likely disturbed to find that it had been removed upon upgrading to Windows 10 Mobile build 14322. While it was unclear why it was removed at the time, Microsoft has now confirmed that FM Radio will be cut from the platform. Users of Production ring Windows 10 Mobile builds can still use it, but once the Anniversary Update rolls out , it will be gone forever. Luckily, there is a third party FM Radio app in the Store that you can get your hands on right here. The app is free and ad-supported, but at least you'll still be able to listen to the radio on- the-go without digging up your Walkman from the '90s. Source: Windows Central 2016-05-09 21:12 Rich Woods
27 Linux Lite 3.0 to Be Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Adopt the Popular Arc GTK Theme From the announcement, it looks like Linux Lite 3.0 is preparing a whole lot of new features and improvements across the entire system, and it is great to see such involvement in a GNU/Linux distribution, especially that Linux Lite 2.8 was just announced two months ago. "This release marks the start of the Series 3 release cycle. We are mindful of keeping that 'Linux Lite familiarity' in terms of look and feel. There have been a lot of changes, but we have remained loyal to our core - Simple, Fast and Free. Once again, the community is instrumental in our direction," reads today's announcement. Linux Lite 3.0 Beta is the proof that the final release will be awesome as it revamps the Lite Software package manager with support for installing multiple applications at once by holding down either the Ctrl or Shift keys, along with support for the well-known Audacity audio editor, Calibre eBook reader and manager, and Pinta image editor. While trying to remain loyal to its initial vision of being a simple, fast and free desktop-oriented operating system, Linux Lite is also trying to keep up with the times and the Beta release of Linux Lite 3.0 ships with the widely used and light Arc GTK theme by default. Users will be able to choose between Arc, Arc-Dark and Arc-Darker styles, and there are also a bunch of new wallpapers. The Applications Menu received support for accessing folders, the tray area was a bit redesigned too, in the way that Indicator Plugin was removed, and there's now a separate volume control called Volti. Moreover, there are fewer PPAs installed by default, system upgrades will be pushed to users automatically, and it looks like there won't by any Google software available in Lite Software for this series. Lastly, Linux Lite 3.0 will let users upload screenshots to the Imgur free image hosting service, UEFI support won't make it into final Linux Lite 3.0 release, the Games menu entry has been dropped, there are brand-new boot and login screen themes, as well as a new package called Lite Themes which includes themes, icon sets, mouse themes, and wallpapers. Updated applications in Linux Lite 3.0 Beta include Mozilla Firefox 46.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 38.7.2, LibreOffice 5.1.2.2, VLC Media Player 2.2.2, and GIMP 2.8.16. The Linux Lite 3.0 operating system will be based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). You can download Linux Lite 3.0 Beta for 64-bit and 32-bit computers right now via our website and check the gallery below if you want to see it in action. 2016-05-09 21:12 Marius Nestor
28 Laugh.ly aims to be the Pandora for stand-up comedy A company called Laugh.ly wants to make streaming sets from the best comedians as easy as streaming music on Pandora. Though not yet available to the public, Laugh.ly’s iOS application will allow users to follow both big-name comedians like Louis C. K., Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari and Amy Schumer, among others, as well as emerging stand-up comics looking for a way to grow and monetize their fan base. The company has lined up more than 400 comedians whose content will stream on its app, and a total of 20,000 individual tracks. These content deals were often made with comedians directly, explains Laugh.ly’s founder Dave Scott. “It’s different from musicians,” he says. “[Comedians often] own their own rights, or they’re owned by mom-and-pop shops.” However, several of the bigger names on the platform came in via the larger record label deals, he notes. In addition, the company is working with brands like Uproar, Shout, Laughing Stock and other big names in comedy (think TV), to license content. Scott is a third-time founder, having previously started an e-commerce site for entertainment merchandise, nextplanetover.com , as well as a marketing automation company, Marketfish , that worked with Disney, Direct TV, Norwegian Cruise Lines and others. While both of these allowed for some cross-over with the entertainment industry, that wasn’t what prompted the idea for Laugh.ly. Instead, Scott was inspired to work in this space because he became a stand-up comedian himself. After the sale of his last company, he began taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade and doing open mic nights. He later moved to San Francisco and attended San Francisco Comedy College. (He even once had Tracy Morgan chase him outside after a bad set to remind him that “hey man, everybody bombs.”) The business model for Laugh.ly is similar to Pandora’s, as comedians will participate in a revenue share with the company, while the service itself is ad-supported to remain free for consumers. Also like Pandora, users can choose to upgrade to an ad-free experience. For $7.99 per month, Laugh.ly’s premium customers can ditch the commercials, save content for offline access and stream exclusive content the company is developing in partnership with the comedians participating on the platform. However, Scott points out that Laugh.ly isn’t just another content play — the company has developed legitimate tech IP, too. For the past several years, Laugh.ly’s developers have been working on technology that’s a lot like Pandora’s Music Genome Project , but for the spoken word. That is, the company’s platform transcribes every joke it processes, so it knows what the jokes are about as well as their larger context. This allows consumers to create smart playlists using the app. For example, they could create a playlist (aka a “station”) that just contained Trump jokes. Another nice feature that having transcriptions allows for is the ability to quickly toggle on or off the profanity in a stand up’s routine — helpful for when you’re listening around kids, perhaps. Laugh.ly will launch into public beta this summer, but interested users can sign up now on the company’s website to be first in line. //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js 2016-05-09 20:16 Sarah Perez
29 Virtual reality will revolutionize media content but VR headsets need to evolve Virtual reality can deliver on its promise to bring new and immersive experiences to the masses, but the current iteration of hardware will need to evolve first. That’s the view shared by NextVR co- founder Dave Cole and Shanna Tellerman, co- founder and CEO of Modsy , two VR industry veterans who took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt New York to dig into the development of this much-hyped but potentially transformative medium. Tellerman’s company, which raised $8 million in February , enables users to create a fully virtual version of their home for the purpose of testing out interior design styles or decor. That’s quite unlike the typical content associated with VR — such as games, sports or even pornography — and Tellerman believes it will take some time for VR to permeate beyond the typically white male users who own early versions of the hardware right now. “The reality is that most consumers who [could benefit the most] don’t have VR in their living room yet. We have incredible technology in the background, and we’re designing every home so that, when VR hits, we can take advantage of it,” she said. NextVR, which recently closed a $30.5 million Series A round , has struck deals with LiveNation and already covers a range of sports, including the Kentucky Derby and select NBA matches. Plenty of new features are in the pipeline, including positional tracking and movement, but Cole admitted he wants to expand his company’s range of programming. “Content for a broader audience is a tricky issue, [we’re focused on] very pronounced silos right now. It takes critical mass, you have to hang that [content push] on [VR reaching a] critical mass,” he explained. But, for those that experience it, there will be no turning back. “Once you’ve had that experience, anything else will feel like watching video in a fish bowl,” Cole added. So what will it take for virtual reality to reach critical mass? Aside from time, Tellerman and Cole both believe a new kind of hardware experience is needed. Fixed-home VR is showing the potential for the virtual reality and augmented reality content experience, but it is costly, unwieldy and uncomfortable. That’s kept it to a limited early demographic. “We’re all very hesitant to put things on our face. The trend needs to start with trendy people… starting it in Silicon Valley… maybe sometimes works,” Tellerman joked. “Form factor needs to be something that hits the mark.” “Form factors will need to change before it becomes mainstream,” Cole said in agreement. The NextVR founder shared his belief that LG’s lightweight VR headset, LG 360 VR ( a prototype of which was announced earlier this year ), is the type of device that can move virtual reality into new kinds of audiences beyond early adopters. He also mentioned Microsoft’s HoloLens , which has shown early promise and has more than 1,000 engineers working on its development. “I think there’s a step beyond [headsets], whether it’s in our phone or our eyes, it won’t be a set of goggles sitting in our home,” Tellerman mused. Both executives believe that VR is poised to be a genuine breakthrough, and not fall dead on its hype like 3D TV did. “3D TV was a very small value add to the television experience,” said Cole, whose company was involved in TV, he explained. “VR engages your entire visual system in a way that 3D never did, [it is] immersive beyond anything that was possible… even an iMax theater.” “3D goggles might [fail], but VR content creates a different level of immersion, it feels like we’re creating amazing businesses,” Tellerman said in agreement. 2016-05-09 20:16 Jon Russell
30 Chinese tech giant Kuang-Chi harnesses Israeli tech to build smart cities in China Kuang-Chi , a Shenzhen-based technology conglomerate, recently launched a $300 million Israel fund in Tel Aviv to tap the country’s smart- city know-how, according to the company’s founder Ruopeng Liu. “Kuang-Chi is the first Chinese corporate VC and incubator that leverages the capabilities of the Israeli market together with the distribution, sales and marketing and technology development in China,” said Dorian Barak, managing partner of Indigo Global , Kuang-Chi’s partner in Israel. With a valuation of over $10 billion Kuang-Chi is no stranger to early-stage investments, with a portfolio that already includes Solar Ship Inc ., Martin Aircraft Company (ASX:MJP), biometrics pioneer Zwipe and communications group HyalRoute In Israel, the company’s Kuang-Chi GCI Fund & Incubator has already made its first investment: A $20 million commitment to eyesight Technologies , a machine vision company. “Israeli entrepreneurs tend to have very big ideas, but there are limitations in the local market; we can help these companies to take big leaps,” said Liu. Like many of his peers in China, Liu is looking to take Israeli tech to a global audience. And the first stop will be China. The country’s smog-choked, populous metropolises are a perfect testing ground for Israeli technologies aimed at “smart cities,” which is a main area of focus for Liu’s fund. With the rapid expansion of its urban population, Chinese cities suffer from environmental pollution and a shortage of resources, like potable water. Considering the difficulty of sustaining the country’s megacities, it makes sense for China to cozy up to Israel to adapt to the changing landscape. For example, Israeli water tech should be a shoo-in for China’s growing needs. “With the future city, we emphasize two points: environment and safety. We know the severity of the problem in China and desperately need technology to monitor and track the real data of environmental change,” Liu says. “And the other part is safety, for example against natural disaster and disaster relief… 3.5% of Chinese GDP is lost because of disasters. Chinese cities are crowded and if something happens, many people will die.” The launch of the fund is the fruit of nearly a year of negotiations with local Israeli players, and is potentially the first step of a multi-pronged approach to Kuang-Chi’s involvement in the technology scene. The company’s new fund also is indicative of the flood of technology investments coming from China into Israel. Chinese investment into the country is growing by 50 percent annually and is expected to increase. Despite China’s reputation as a copycat nation, the country’s economy is evolving as it gains more exposure to technology startups internationally while investing heavily in research and development efforts at home. According to Liu, Kuang-Chi works with municipalities who have a keen interest to see their cities avoid natural disasters and overcrowding, operating with the support of the Chinese government. And in terms of investment, the firm intends to be stage-agnostic. “We are not financial investors. We don’t care about the stage, we only care about what they are doing. It could be a one person company or a 100 person company,” said Liu. Based on Liu’s vision, there are a number of Israeli companies that might fit the bill. “We are looking at robotics, aviation and at anything that makes machines behave and understand human behavior, “ Liu says. Kuang-Chi is also on the lookout for virtual reality investment opportunities. 2016-05-09 20:16 Dennis Mitzner
31 The Information Age is over; welcome to the Experience Age Twenty-five years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, the Information Age is coming to an end. Thanks to mobile screens and Internet everywhere, we’re now entering what I call the “Experience Age.” When was the last time you updated your Facebook status? Maybe you no longer do? It’s been reported that original status updates by Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are down 21 percent. The status box is an icon of the Information Age, a period dominated by desktop computers and a company’s mission to organize all the world’s information. The icons of the Experience Age look much different, and are born from micro-computers, mobile sensors and high-speed connectivity. The death of the status box is a small part of a larger shift away from information moving toward experience. What’s driving this shift? In short, the changing context of our online interactions, shaped by our connected devices. To illustrate how this is playing out, think of Facebook and Snapchat . Facebook is an Information Age native. Along with other social networks of its generation, Facebook was built on a principle of the desktop era — accumulation. Accumulation manifests in a digital profile where my identity is the sum of all the information I’ve saved — text, photos, videos, web pages. (Evan Spiegel explored this first in a 2015 YouTube video titled What is Snapchat? ). In the Information Age we represented ourselves with this digital profile. But mobile has changed how we view digital identity. With a connected camera televising our life in-the-moment, accumulated information takes a back seat to continual self-expression. The “virtual self” is becoming less evident. I may be the result of everything I’ve done, but I’m not the accumulation of it. Snapchat is native to this new reality. Many people think Snapchat is all about secrecy, but the real innovation of Snapchat’s ephemeral messages isn’t that they self-destruct. It’s that they force us to break the accumulation habit we brought over from desktop computing. The result is that the profile is no longer the center of the social universe. In the Experience Age you are not a profile. You are simply you. The central idea of the Experience Age is this — I’ll show you my point of view, you give me your attention. I hear you yelling, “That’s always been the story of social!” And it has. But what’s changed is that the stories we tell each other now begin and end visually, making the narrative more literal than ever. In the Information Age, the start of communication was information. On Facebook you type into a status box, add metadata such as your location and select from a hierarchy of emotions for how you feel. This information-first approach is also visible in Facebook’s feedback mechanisms — six pre-selected reactions with threaded commenting. By contrast, Snapchat always starts with the camera. Feedback is sent passively — swiping up on your story reveals which friends watched your snaps. In the Experience Age, the primary input is visual and the dominant feedback is attention. Today the feedback loop connecting sharing and attention starts and ends on mobile; in the future, it could start with contact lenses and end in VR, for example. This reality frames Facebook’s recent investments, which bring live video, 360-degree cameras and VR as products all into a single portfolio. But Facebook isn’t the only tech giant looking ahead and seeing how all these technologies might line up. By now you’ve likely heard of Magic Leap , the super stealth AR startup with a $4.5 billion valuation funded by the likes of Google and Alibaba . A global arms race is underway, and is beginning to create a layering of technologies I like to call the experience stack. At the bottom is Layer 0, the real world. The full stack is in service of capturing and communicating real-world moments. Reality is its foundation. As you move up, the layers transition from physical to logical. At the top is the application layer made up of products like Snapchat Live and Periscope. Tomorrow’s products will be even more immersive. Take for example the relaunch of Sean Parker’s Airtime and Magic Leap’s A New Morning. The experience stack will drive new products to market faster as each layer can grow independently, while at the same time benefiting from advancements in the layers below. An example of this phenomenon is high-speed 3G enabling Apple’s App Store, which together advanced mobile as a whole. The best products of the Experience Age will be timely new applications that leverage step-change advancements in bottom layers. Given that some layers are still nascent, tremendous opportunity is ahead. Our online and offline identities are converging, the stories we tell each other now start and end visually and investments at every layer of a new stack are accelerating the development of experience-driven products. Taken together, these trends have cracked open the door for a new golden age of technology. It’s an exciting time to be building. 2016-05-09 20:16 Mike Wadhera
32 OverNest launches GitZero with encrypted code searching at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield OverNest , a startup that was launched just over a year by several technology industry veterans, announced its first product called GitZero today at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield competition in Brooklyn, NY — and it’s a pretty exciting product that makes encrypted code searchable. It’s widely known that you should be encrypting your data. It prevents prying eyes from seeing your valuable intellectual property as it moves on the internet, but it comes with its own set of problems, especially for developers who can’t really work on their code once it’s been encrypted. That’s where GitZero comes in. It lets developers encrypt their code and still be able to search across it, solving a huge technical problem. When you look at the largest data breaches over the last couple of years — Sony, Target, JP Morgan or any high profile hack — the data would have been entirely useless to the hackers if it had been encrypted, OverNest founder and CEO Ed Yu told TechCrunch. “Encryption solves most of the problems associated with hacking, but then you lose the ability to work with data,” he said. Essentially, encryption works to stop the hackers, but also makes it impossible for the people who want legitimate access to work with the content because up until now you couldn’t work on or search across it in an encrypted state. OverNest has solved this conundrum by making encrypted data searchable. The trick here is you need a search key in the same manner you need an encryption key to encrypt and unencrypt the data. That keeps the data safe and secure in its encrypted state, but gives authorized users a way in to search across the data set. While OverNest should get big points for solving an enormous technological problem that has persisted for years, they needed to wrap that solution around a product and hence GitZero was born. It works in the same fashion that developers expect when adding code to a Git repository, but it enables them to create an encrypted, searchable repository, thereby keeping it secure, but accessible. The GitZero repository acts like a layer on top of Git, giving users that searchable encryption, while still using a standard Git command line interface to move the content into the newly created repository. When a user uploads source to Gitzero, it encrypts the files and builds a searchable index. You enter your search key and you can see the encrypted files and search them. What’s more you can share search keys, using familiar encryption key managers, or for those organizations that don’t want to take the responsibility of managing their own keys, GitZero will manage the encryption and search keys for you. It’s not easy for a technical solution like this to get the attention of venture capitalists (or contests like Battlefield) because the people in charge don’t always understand the nuances of this type of solution. In fact, Yu joked, if someone didn’t question the viability of his solution, he would wonder if they truly understood the magnitude of what they are doing here. “One thing that’s pretty interesting is that as we move to the age of AI, the source code is going to contain even more intellectual property as the code now will be the “brain” of that AI. It’s amazing people think a private [repository] from all existing source code cloud hosting will protect their code,” Yu said. In fact, if it’s not encrypted, it’s not protected, but now with GitZero, developers can have the best of all worlds. The company launched in March, 2015 with Yu and co-founders Paul Lung and Michael Lai. It has received a million dollars in seed funding. 2016-05-09 20:16 Ron Miller
33 WaterO brings reverse osmosis drinking water to the kitchen table A month before Disrupt, Yu Zhou sent us an email titled, “We want to help solve the Flint water problem.” WaterO’s CEO wasn’t claiming to have the catchall solution to the lead problem plaguing the Michigan city, but his company was in a unique position to lend a hand. Since then, the Los Angeles-based startup announced that it has teamed up with the charity Water is Life to send 5,000 of the company’s water filtration systems to help give Flint residents access to clean drinking water. The WaterO is a tabletop device roughly the size of a bread maker that utilizes reverse osmosis, a higher and more exacting technology than the carbon filters found on your everyday, run of the mill pitchers from the likes of Brita or PUR. The system uses pressure to push water through a membrane, leaving particles larger than H2O behind in the process. It’s effective in removing heavy metals like lead and mercury, along with chlorine and bacteria. It’s a process that has existed for some time but WaterO has applied it to a self-contained system with a small footprint, while managing to increase its efficiency. Before the water reaches the fourth filter, it enters a recycling mode, helping reduce the water waste. In the company’s process, 80 percent of the water is made drinkable. The rest stays behind in a pitcher that can be used to, say, water the plants. The system was five years in the making. Zhou says it came about, in part, due to his own hydration habits. “I drink a lot of water,” he explained in an interview ahead of Disrupt. “I don’t drink it from the tap, because I don’t like the smell. I bought a lot of bottled water from the grocery store. It’s annoying because I need to go every three days to get more water. I did some research into installing a reverse osmosis system, but I couldn’t do it in my rented apartment.” The company took to Indiegogo to help fund the project and gauge consumer interest, ultimately selling between 300 to 400 units in the process. Those are set to start shipping next month, at which point the WaterO system will also open up for online retail at $300 a piece. The user fills up a pitcher from the tap and then places it in the machine. The system goes to work running it through four separate filters, a whole process that takes around ten or so minutes. Once finished, a screen displays the starting TDS (Total Dissolved Solids), a measurement of non-H2O particles dissolved in the water, followed by the post-filtration numbers. The New York City tap water that we used with it registered around 180 – drinkable, but not great. By the time the machine was done with it, we were at a far more acceptable five. The company also brought a jug of lead contaminated water from Flint (along with another filled full of salt water) to today’s Disrupt presentation. The machine was able to reduce the contaminated water from 147 TDS down to five, which our guinea pigs judges then proceeded to taste. The TDS, it should be pointed out, is simply the number of non-water particles. It could be dust or it could be something far more harmful like lead. Zhou says the company is hoping to develop a more precise measurement. The system is, naturally, connected to an app that also displays this information, along with the health of the four filters in the rear and keeps track of the amount of water the user has consumed in a day. More compelling to Zhou however, is a feature that measures water quality across different machines in the same area, monitoring overall quality for neighborhoods. “We want to build a healthy drinking community with the app,” he explains. “Imagine if you have this machine in 10 different homes in the same area. You can know the TDS in the area. If it goes up too high, you can sound the emergency alarm.” 2016-05-09 20:16 Brian Heater
34 34 With Lumenus smart cycling apparel, you can leave your boring cycling jacket at home As self-driving cars are not quite ready yet, bike accidents are still a thing unfortunately. Sometimes, stupid monkey brains can’t see someone riding a bike. Lumenus wants to fix that with smart clothes and accessories for runners, cyclists and motorcyclists. The company is taking part in our Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Lumenus integrates LEDs into clothes. For now, the company is working on two jackets, a vest and a backpack. During daytime, they look like regular clothes and accessories. At night, you can turn on the LEDs for safety and take advantage of the smart features. “All the system is completely embedded — you’re not going to see wires and LED bulbs,” Lumenus co-founder and CEO Jeremy Wall told me before Disrupt. “You’re easily able to switch out your bike jacket for this upgraded version because you’re not losing, comfort, fit and size.” The battery is a small circular cell with a male USB on it so you can plug it to any USB charger. On average, you can expect 7.5 hours of continuous light usage, or 24 hours of flashing mode. And the best part is that these lights are waterproof. When Wall was in college, he started riding his bike a lot to commute. At night, he was a little bit scared when the sun would go down. “I almost got hit by a car at one point,” Wall told me. That’s how he came up with the idea behind Lumenus. If you’ve been following Kickstarter campaigns, you already know about Lumenus as the company already did a successful crowdfunding campaign late last year. Lumenus plans to ship the backpacks in July with other items following shortly after. Items range from $150 to $450. And yet, these clothes and accessories are just the first step. The startup has bigger plans with a software element, a licensing business and potential new markets. Let’s start with the software part. Lumenus isn’t just about safety. For instance, you could connect your jacket to your phone using Bluetooth and input turn by turn directions. Putting aside the question whether it makes sense to connect your jacket to your phone, the handcuff LEDs will tell you when you should turn left or right so you don’t have to look at your phone. Your jacket could also alert you when someone is calling you, or if you’re not running fast enough compared to your target pace. Wall calls this a Zero UI design. The LEDs can give you bits of information without requiring you to tap on your phone’s screen. And your phone acts like the brain for your jacket. And then, there’s the licensing business. Lumenus wants to partner with other clothing brands to add LEDs and smart features. The startup is announcing on stage that Bollé is the first partner and is working on a Lumenus-enabled bike helmet. The startup doesn’t act as a white label company as you still need to install the Lumenus app to take advantage of all the features. In other words, Lumenus wants to become the standard of smart clothing for cyclists and runners. Finally, Lumenus sees a future for smart clothes beyond cyclists and runners. “We see a huge opportunity in the industrial safety space,” Wall said. If Lumenus technology doesn’t get commoditized, the startup could make clothes for highway construction workers, miners or delivery people. Obviously, this is a long shot but could also turn this nifty product into a successful business. Judges: Ajay Agarwal, Charlie O’Donnell, David Pakman, Ellie Wheeler, Joanne Wilson Q: Do you have any data yet that shows that these devices improve safety? A: In general, 21 percent of deaths happen during just three hours of the day — night time. And the primary reason is lack of visibility. Q: Are you going through offline retail? A: For the offline channels, we really want to do an engaging experience in store. When it comes to licensing, we want to follow the Gortex model. Q: What about wearing it at a rave? A: We’re looking at ways to make it react to music. Q: How many people on your team right now? A: Right now, we’re four. Q: So you want to license your technology with four people? A: We want to expand the team. We already have the relationships with retailers, etc. 2016-05-09 20:16 Romain Dillet
35 Beam wants to turn gaming streams wildly dynamic The gaming community is one of the most vibrant and powerful groups on the Internet. The power of platforms like Twitch to unite gamers interested in watching streams of other people playing video games seems intensely foreign to those outside the community, but has quickly become a pretty dynamic arena for gamers to chitchat online. Beam Interactive , launching a public beta today out of TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield, is aiming to turn game streaming into a more exciting experience for both viewers and those broadcasting their gameplay. Beam hopes that their emphasis on social interactivity can make them the go-to spot for gamers looking to get social on the interwebs. The service allows gamers to contribute directly to onscreen gameplay through crowdsourced controls. Broadcasters can have viewers pick the weapon they use before heading into battle. The service also supports fully group-autonomous gameplay, where the viewers are the only ones controlling a character. This seemed a bit dizzying for adventure games, but certain genres certainly work better. A key to keeping the action entertaining is not bringing everyone’s experience to a crawl. While platforms like Twitch can have a 15 to 20-second delay, Beam’s delay stands at around two- tenths of a second, according to Salsamendi. The service launched a beta just 90 days ago and is already gathering major traffic. Last month more than 100,000 users logged on to the site to check out streams. What’s perhaps crazier (and scarier) is that these users are on the site for an average of 3 hours each session. That is truly frightening, but also clearly shows the demand for a product like this in the gaming community. Gamers are desperate for some sort of second-hand social network, and have shown their willingness to flock to platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming that appear very different from traditional social networks but meet the needs of gamers. 2016-05-09 20:16 Lucas Matney
36 Halo is building a wearable to make athletes better, stronger, faster Halo Neuroscience wants to build a new category of wearable. Not for passively tracking human activity, as so many existing wearables do, but for actively and positively influencing physical abilities — or that’s the claim — using an existing neurostimulation technique called transcranial direct current stimulation. The team demoed their wearable onstage today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. So what exactly is transcranial direct current stimulation? It refers to a long-standing brain stimulation technique that involves applying a very small level of electric current to the wearer’s brain via electrodes placed in contact with their scalp — with a wide range of experimented applications over the years, such as treating depression, chronic pain or brain injury. Typically, it’s fair to say that the technique has mostly been focused on specific medical use- cases up to now, rather than being applied as a wider consumer proposition. But it’s that broader potential market Halo Neuroscience is hoping to open up — if their tech can live up to their claims. Their first wearable, the Halo Sport, is designed to influence a region of the brain they say is involved in sports and fitness learning — thanks to the specific positioning of the electrodes over the motor cortex. The device is being targeted at elite athletes to use as a training aid to improve their performance. At first glance it looks rather like a pair of Beats headphones, but you also must attach two neuroprimers (as they’re calling their electrodes) to the inside of the headband, then spray your head with water to allow for good conductivity before the battery-operated device is good to go. A companion app allows for control and tracking of usage. The headset does not need to be worn during every training session, but rather should be used when athletes are doing a training session involving “a high volume of quality repetitions,” according to the co-founders — albeit predicting your training performance ahead of time isn’t exactly an exact science. Their core claim is that neurostimulation of the brain via their device will accelerate an athlete’s learning process when applied during an intense training session — including, they say, positively influencing the rate at which particular sports skills are honed, as well as helping athletes make general strength gains and improve performance explosiveness. They claim they can “reproduceably” show they can generate gains above a control group, noting specifically when it comes to skill acquisition that the learning rate is “about 2x” better with their device (they say they have tested it in controlled lab conditions with around 1,000 subjects). “When athletes train, much of the benefit in strength as well as skill comes from the brain learning to use the body better… That’s neuroplasticity. And what Halo Sport is doing is it’s increasing neuroplasticity during that training period so that the brain, which is already getting better during that, gets better a little bit faster during that period of training,” explains co-founder Dan Chao. “There’s a very extensive body of research worldwide… showing that this technology, transcranial direct current stimulation, can increase the rate of motor learning when it’s applied to these points over motor cortex. It’s been shown by multiple groups in peer-reviewed studies in healthy people, in stroke patients, and we’ve confirmed that with our own [sham-controlled, randomized controlled trials] data. Now what we’re doing is we’re applying this specifically to athletic training.” “When paired with athletic training our claim is that you can stand to benefit from accelerated neurologic gains in your athletic training,” he adds. “Almost 100 percent of athletic training is just based on repetition. It’s repeating a skill over and over and over again, or even in the gym for strength — strength training is based almost entirely on repetition, just do it over and over and over again. “Certainly part of that is for the sake of our muscles, to make them stronger. But a big part of that — and I think this is under-appreciated in the field — is to literally make your brain stronger and more skilled. That’s where we want to come in.” The co-founders reckon a wide range of athletic disciplines potentially stand to benefit from their wearable, but say they are seeing early interest from baseball, having ceded some beta units to athletes to test the tech ahead of a commercial launch later this year. “Baseball has been an interesting place for us,” says Chao. “A very systematic and science- based approach has crept its way into player development. Especially smaller market teams — they don’t have the luxury of just buying players, they need to build players. It’s cheaper for them to do this. “We’re seeing in the sport a lot of these smaller market teams have developed a competitive advantage in player development — to use sports science to accelerate the development of young players so that they can have them on their team before they hit free agency. So that’s been a great place for us so far. There’s been a lot of interest from Major League Baseball.” Prior to founding Halo Neuroscience , back in 2013, the two co-founders had worked for most of their careers at another neurostimulation company, NeuroPace , which makes an implanted medical device for epilepsy sufferers that uses neurostimulation to try to stop seizures at the point they are about to start. “As we worked on this [NeuroPace device] for more than a decade, one thing that really became apparent was that there’s this enormous potential in technologies that interact with the brain. It’s this really powerful way to help people reach their potential, to improve the lot of humans, basically,” says Chao. “The problem is so many of the technologies that are so powerful on the medical side of things — it’s very invasive. It’s expensive, it’s invasive… That’s appropriate for some patients, but in and of itself it’s not a technology that’s really changing the world.” At the same time he says the pair had been tracking research developments in non-invasive neurostimulation — and became convinced there was enough of a body of evidence that the technique could be used to influence the rate of learning “non-invasively, safely and effectively with an external device” to launch their own startup. “Now we’re at the point where there’s hundreds of articles every year about this in peer-reviewed journals. And this whole world of science working on this technology,” he adds. They’ve been working on the startup for almost three years at this point, and have raised some $9 million in funding, coming out of stealth to launch pre-orders for the Halo Sport this February. Investors in the business include some very well known names — Andreessen Horowitz , Lux Capital , SoftTech , Xfund — along with a newer, neuroscience-specific firm, Jazz . The lengthy (and stealthy) development process was down to the team needing to build up their own body of data. The entire first year was spent looking purely at data generated by their core tech, with no thought of finished products or target markets, says Chao. “Our goal for the first year was to build our own device and to test the heck out of it,” he says. “We tested a thousand people before we made any decisions on product. It was really the data, specifically the data that came out of our motor cortex stimulation program that led us to sports. “Brett and I didn’t found a sports science company. We founded a neurostimulation company.” They’re aiming to ship the Halo Sport in the fall of this year, with the discounted pre-order pricing set at $550 and RRP of $750. (It’s worth noting the primers are also “semi-disposable” so will need to be replaced around every three months (based on “average use,” they say). How much demand is there for this sport-focused wearable? They won’t specify how many units have been pre-ordered at this point, but couch the early demand as “good.” They’re not currently taking any more pre-orders, but say they plan to open up a second wave in “about two months.” In terms of additional revenue streams, beyond the cost of the hardware, the basic companion app will be freemium, should individuals want to buy the product, but certain more pro features will be unlockable via in-app purchases. There’s also a SaaS component to their business model at the elite athlete level — with different levels of service bringing in different rates of subscription revenue. Are there any downsides to using the device? Does it perhaps cause headaches with prolonged use? The founders concede it’s unlikely to feel exactly pleasant to use. They describe the sensation as “very tolerable,” rather than pleasing, with Chao adding that: “Most people don’t like it but almost everybody — they don’t mind it.” He says they have also monitored usage for specific “obvious problems” — such as headaches and scalp pains, as well as testing for impairments to cognitive and motor skills — and say they haven’t found “any real changes.” So the claim is no major negatives, beyond perhaps feeling a little buzzy. The ultimate goal of Halo Neuroscience is to end up with “a fleet of these products,” says Chao, addressing all sorts of consumer market use-cases — if they can convince people to don a headset to speed up their learning. “We’re starting with the motor cortex but why couldn’t we develop a neurostimulator to hit that part of the brain that’s responsible for memory? And instead of doing memory games on its own if you paired it with neurostimulation that could be a much more powerful combination,” he says. Another interesting potential use-case is back in the medical space, with Chao flagging up what he says is promising data on rehabilitation of motor skills for stroke victims using the neurostimulation technique. The startup is sponsoring a clinical trial to investigate this use-case. “The scientific data looking at neuro-rehabilitation for motor stroke victims is really good with this technology. You can really raise the ceiling of recovery of what is possible. And also accelerate the rate at which you obtain this new ceiling,” he says. “About a million people in the U. S. suffer from a stroke every year, and about half of them suffer from some sort of motor symptoms — they can’t move a leg or an arm or something like that. And their opportunity for improvement is very poor. Physical therapy doesn’t work very well, especially in the chronic phase.” Judges Q&A Q: What was he demonstrating there? A: That was just an example of pairing neurostimulation with athletics training — and in this case a strength-based training session. But you can imagine doing more skill-based work or endurance work. Q: Do you wear it before you exercise, during, after? A: Ideally during and after. If it’s not conducive to during then if you do it just before that’s fine – for example working with Olympics swimmers and you obviously can’t wear this in the pool. So in that case you would wear it before, when you’re warming up. Take it off. There’s an afterglow of an hour. So you would still have that hour of benefit from the neuropriming. Q: The results that you showed, were people actually wearing it? And will those last over time if they stop using the device? A: Yes the results are durable. They are maintained at the same extent. The difference between the control group is maintained over time. Q: It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, a very consumer-facing name. Is that a part of the strategy here. Because you not only have to get these distributed, you have to educate the market as to what this is, what shocking… the brain will do to you, things like that. So you’re an education company as well as a hardware sales company? A: That’s exactly right. Our goal for this year is really to educate and inspire the market. Q: How do you do that?… Having Olympic teams is a big marketing push, but what’s going to be able to educate the mass market that this is a viable thing to do? A: Our strategy is top down. We want to use our elite customers as our mouthpiece, generate PR with these individual athletes and teams… Top down is a very viable way to do it. Q: This is something that you think over time as a performance enhancer gets regulated, or this is what every single athlete in the world has to do to keep up? A: Regulation really starts around safety and we’ve gone to great lengths to demonstrate safety, and so has the scientific community. There’s scientific published literature published on over 60,000 sessions. Everything that we’ve seen so far suggests that it’s safe, so… There’s plenty of techniques and products that are performance enhancing that are legal — in fact most are. Where the clear line is is around safety. Q: What could go wrong? I’m putting electric spikes on my head. What could go wrong? A: Very little could go wrong. We stack those odds in our favor. There’s hardware and software safety features that we don’t really talk about we just want our users to take for granted. So, for example, overuse could be a concern. We would lock people out after 30 mins per day. There are current limiters so that the device checks itself 1,000 times per second so that if it were over-delivering stimulation it would gracefully shut itself off. So there’s features and functions built in. Q: How does it work with wet hair? A: It works great with wet hair. In fact it works better. Q: Aren’t there lots of physical activities that take longer than 30 mins? A: You still benefit from the afterglow of an hour, so that would buy you about 90 minutes of neuropriming. Q: What is the consumer price point? And what margins do you expect? A: $750 is the price point. And I shouldn’t disclose the margins but they will be good. Q: Are you ready to produce at scale? Does your team have experience doing that? A: Yeah we do. We built the implantable neurostimulator which was a very complicated piece of hardware to build. This device we’ve already cut steel in China. We’ve already picked our vendors, our final assembler, our injection molder, so we’re well on our way. We should be able to deliver it in the fall. Q: Do you have data for the rehabilitation portion of the application? A: Yes, that takes time. We should have data at the end of the year. We’ll expect 24 subjects completed by the end of the year. But there’s been multiple trials looking at a stroke model. And perhaps the best data in all the scientific literature comes from the stroke model. Q: Do you reshape the electrodes or the electrical patterns for different use cases? A: You do slightly, and you’re able to do that through the app. So you could target the hands and arms. You could target legs… We would allow you to do that through the app. 2016-05-09 20:16 Natasha Lomas
37 Botify is an SEO crawler that helps your website optimize for Googlebot Most businesses live or die on Google search rankings. If you can’t crack the top few results, it’s almost impossible to consistently drive organic traffic to your site. But how does Google decide which sites appear at the top of the results list? It uses Googlebot , a proprietary automated software script to “crawl” every website on the Internet and create an index that becomes the basis for search results. The problem is that this script is vague and mysterious, making it impossible for website creators to truly optimize for Googlebot and other search engine’s crawlers. Enter Botify , a cloud-based crawler that will examine your website and create a detailed SEO analysis with actionable feedback. The French-based company, which launched today onstage at Disrupt NY, has already raised $7.2 million and on-boarded big-name customers like eBay, BlaBlaCar and Expedia. But a few things make Botify stand out from the hundreds of other SEO companies out there? First, the crawler is strong. The startup jokes that it holds the “world record” for most URLs crawled from a single website – 150,000,000. Botify also will let site administrators specify the crawl speed – anywhere from 10 to over 200 pages per second. Why would a site want its content crawled slower? Because Botify can crawl so fast that it sometimes stresses a site’s servers. Besides a strong crawler overall, Botify can also detect which pages on a site have been crawled by Google. When Google crawls a site, it leaves traces in a site’s server logs. Once the site provides these logs to Botify, they can compare it with their own crawl to see if Google had visited a certain page. Adrien Menard, co-founder and CEO of the company, explained that when “a page is not crawled by Google, it can’t drive any traffic and therefore any revenue. Pages ignored by Google represent a huge potential of traffic and revenue.” So, Botify takes its crawl data and creates a unique recommendation report for websites. But unlike most SEO consultants, Botify won’t tell sites to add more content. Instead, the startup tells sites how to “organize site content to make it more efficient.” Specifically, this includes how to organize internal links, how to direct Google to crawl specific pages over others, and how to optimize pages to decrease load times. This level of intense SEO work is probably better suited for larger websites, which Botify’s pricing structure alludes to. The least expensive plan is over $500 a month for a bot to crawl 5,000,000 URLS, and enterprise plans can run over $10,000 per year. 2016-05-09 20:16 Fitz Tepper
38 Facebook responds to claims of biased Trends, says it has neutrality guidelines Facebook says it’s against the company’s curation policy to suppress or prioritize specific political views in its Trending topics, and that it has guidelines in place to preserve consistency and neutrality there. This would imply that blame for any deviation from these guidelines would belong to the contractors paid to curate the trends it shows, though there might not have been sufficient enforcement of the rules. In a statement to TechCrunch in response to Gizmodo’s report that conservative trends were suppressed in Facebook’s Trending section, Facebook wrote: Former Facebook “news curators” told Gizmodo they were instructed to “inject” certain stories to make them appear to be Trending news topics on the platform’s homepage and search results, even if they weren’t that popular. That’s a somewhat understandable practice as Facebook sought to improve its trends algorithm. If something was important but not yet generating loads of discussion on Facebook, or wasn’t getting picked up by the algorithm, Facebook’s editors may have added the trend in artificially. Facebook was also said to have discouraged inclusion of trends about Facebook itself. That could have been done to avoid self-promotion or to offset the propensity for Facebook users to talk about Facebook. But it also could have suppressed negative stories about Facebook. Most damning were the accusations by former workers that some trending stories were suppressed if they didn’t agree with the political views of the contracted curators controlling the trending topics feed – especially if the stories were conservative. Though Gizmodo didn’t claim that this bias was mandated from higher-ups, Facebook’s neutrality guidelines should have prevented this from happening. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz,” one former employee who wished to remain anonymous told Gizmodo . The news outlet published an earlier piece about these same “curators” and their harsh working conditions last week, calling the company out on degrading conditions – stuck in a conference room for months, forced to speed write quick hits to fill out the trending portion found on the upper right side of Facebook’s site. What we have from the report is anecdotal and it’s tough to know what’s going on. Facebook’s biggest problem may have been not realizing humans have biases – including political ones. Though it may have had neutrality guidelines in place about how to curate the trends, it’s possible that contractors with inherent biases were placed on the team, and then went on to bend or break the rules. A more rigorous oversight system may be necessary to ensure that the neutrality guidelines are strictly adhered to. The issue is alarming because Facebook has grown to become a core way people discover news. It drives so much traffic that news outlets are pressured into publishing on the platform. Bias on the part of the platform itself could impact the minds of its 1.65 billion users. The fact is that the employees of Facebook itself do lean liberal. At a 2011 town hall talk where Mark Zuckerberg interviewed Barack Obama at Facebook headquarters, employees could be heard loudly cheering for pro-Democrat statements and anti-Republican jabs from the President. With the 2016 Presidential election coming up, Facebook has enormous power to sway the populace. It will need to convince the public it can remain neutral, or it opens itself up to stern criticism, lost political ad dollars, and increasing skepticism about its stronghold on the distribution of information. 2016-05-09 20:16 Josh Constine
39 Artveoli combines algae and microfluidics to generate fresh air indoors Live in any major city, be it London, Paris, Los Angeles or Shanghai, and you’ll be all too aware that air pollution is a huge and growing problem. At the same time indoor air quality can suffer because of attempts to reduce buildings’ energy consumption to make them less pollutive to the outdoor environment — by, for example, applying high grade insulation and recirculating indoor air to reduce heat loss/lower air conditioning systems’ energy needs. Very well sealed buildings can lead to elevated CO2 levels as more people gather indoors. So how to square this circle? Step forward Artveoli , a biotech startup that’s building an air purifying device that aims to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen in indoor environments, such as offices and homes, by harnessing the photosynthetic properties of algae. ‘It’s like having trees inside buildings’, is Artveoli’s elevator pitch. The startup is officially launching on stage here at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, opening registrations for people to sign up for updates. The aim is to start manufacturing its first air purifying product this year, says co-founder Alina Adams — with a view to shipping the device sometime in 2017. Adams has a background in microfluidics, the core technology which it’s applying to increase the efficiency of the algae to enable a single unit to have an impact on the room where it is placed — having worked at the Stanford Microfluidics Foundry , along with her co-founder. Microfluidics refers to a field of research that looks at how fluids behave differently at the microscale and how those differences can be exploited for particular use-cases. “It’s a new type of technology that makes biochemical processes much easier, faster, it’s easier to control and work with the different, complex biological systems,” explains Adams. “I was thinking, we have plants that make fresh air so how can we put lots and lots of plants inside buildings?” she adds, discussing how the idea for the business was born. “This was an ah-ha moment — ok nobody is actually using microfluidics devices to grow photosynthetic type of cells to make fresh air.” An existing technology — photobioreactors — uses a light source to cultivate phototropic microorganisms, such as algae, generating biomass from light and carbon dioxide. But these units tend to need to be very large in order to generate a large amount of biomass. Artveoli’s founders’ mental leap was to wonder whether they could grow the same type of phototropic cells on the micro-scale — so very, very densely packed, and thus able to pump out more oxygen. “We’re working with small channels and small volumes, so we’re working with chips that are easier to manipulate small volume type of liquids. High density means we’re using cell concentrations inside our system that are much, much more significant than those that you’d find even in traditional bioreactors. “So we have these nature-type of systems inside that metabolically produces oxygen and removes carbon dioxide… Light powers the system. And because we have this large surface area and high density that’s how we’re able to achieve significantly higher outputs for carbon dioxide absorption and oxygen production than traditional trees.” Adams says NASA has already looked at using the same type of algae it is putting inside its microfluidic high-density photobioreactors to power closed, self-sustaining systems to produce oxygen for astronauts on long space missions. However the problem they ran into was making those systems efficient enough. “They’re not able to get this efficiency because they’re using larger volumes. That’s where microfluidic technology eliminates that problem. With microfluidic technology we have more control and we have the higher efficiency so they can work with higher densities,” she adds. “We’re actually talking to Darpa — they are interested in potential future applications for this technology — because we are able to produce oxygen and remove carbon dioxide in closed spaces. Which is essential if you’re limited on the air supply from outside.” Artveoli’s device is also a closed system (which lowers the risk of contamination), with the algae contained inside transparent, microfluidic plastic chips and the necessary nutrients (plus light, via an LED backlit panel) fed to them via a built-in control system. This allows for control of cell density (and therefore unit efficiency), including by controlling the rate of introduction of new algae, based on the growth rates of the existing population. The particular microalgae being used by Artveoli has been selected because it has a high photosynthetic efficiency, says Adams. “We introduce the right proportions of media — that’s part of the control that we have, so we can have a very stable system.” The algae won’t live forever of course, even given ideal conditions provided for them in a closed system, so there is a need to remove waste (i.e. dead) algae from the units by replacing filters in the units and also replenish with fresh microalgae over time. But the aim is to make this process very simple — similar to putting a new ink cartridge in a printer, says Adams. “We remove the excess biomass, or bioproduct waste, which is basically dead algae,” she says. “And introducing — similar to printer cartridge models — you put in new media. “There’s no periods whenever there’s no algae in the system so it’s continuously recirculating and introducing new media and removing the excess and dead cells/debris out with the cartridges.” These (biodegradable) cartridges will need to be replaced three to four times per year, providing for a recurring revenue stream for the business. The cost of the cartridges will be similar to the price of new filters for existing air purifying machines, according to Adams. The units themselves will be custom built and installed for commercial customers, so will vary in size and price — although Adams says again pricing will be in the ballpark of existing air purifier devices, so “from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand”. Selling to the commercial market is the startup’s first push, with the clearest use-case being offices where lots of people gather for long periods of time, reckons Adams. But the team also intends to build a product for the consumer market down the line, although decisions about form factor and how to design these units are yet to be made. The number of units that a buyer might need will depend on building occupancy but Adams says the goal is to build systems that can create enough oxygen for one person, so in a house with four-occupants you’d need four systems. (Albeit, the more custom configurations it’s envisaging creating for commercial buyers might change those ratios, depending on the size of individual units.) On the design front, Artveoli is partnering with designers to be able to offer buyers a printed cover for the units, in addition to potentially offering other cover options — even such as a touchscreen or a whiteboard, which would obviously be useful in an office environment. The units will also contain embedded wi-fi sensors so gas exchange levels can be monitored. The units themselves resemble flat-screen TV panels in terms of form factor at this point, according to Adams, but she says the team is also researching alternative multi-layered configurations to be able to build devices with other form factors in future — such as the box- shaped units typical of existing air purifier products, so it could potentially be portable. Why the name Artveoli? Alveoli is the name of the tiny air sacs clustered in bunches inside the lungs where the gas exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place. The density of alveoli in the lungs provides a very large surface area, allowing for the body to get enough oxygen into the blood to sustain life. It’s a similar density principle behind Artveoli’s microfluidics technology which maximizes the surface to volume ratio. Artveoli is also, of course, a play on words — with the ‘Art’ in the title referring to the idea of incorporating designers’ works onto the front of the panel so the unit can be a feature in and of itself, if buyers so wish. Artveoli incorporated last September, after starting out doing tests and building prototypes in a garage. They have been bootstrapping the first stage of development — including building their first system — but are now looking to raise funding to pay for manufacturing units to take to market. Adams says the amount they’re aiming to raise will depend on how much interest they see via sign-ups but their initial aim is to raise between $3M and $5M at this stage of the business. The long term vision is not carbon dioxide consuming devices that are hung on walls or even moved around different rooms, but rather walls that are themselves breathing out oxygen — with the technology embedded directly into buildings. However that’s going to require a lot more work to bring to market, looping in architects and mechanical engineers, and needing to comply with standards/buildings regulations. Hence Artveoli taking a device based (and modular/custom) approach with their first line of hardware. “On the functionality level it will be more efficient to have it embedded, because that way we can have it more controlled and for the replacement of cartridges and filters there’s more opportunities to make it a bit more efficient, as part of the building. But to be honest, it’s at least five years til we get to something because it’ll have a bunch of product iterations. It also depends on working with architects and designers.” Another future hope is to integrate the technology with Nest smart home devices so they could be used to control the units. “Our system is smart in itself but it would be good to integrate it with an existing network of appliances and devices so they could control that as well,” adds Adams. If you’re wondering if microalgae-based oxygen production air purifiers have an off switch, the answer is yes — kind of. Switching the LED lights off will ‘power’ the unit down, however you can’t keep the lights off indefinitely or the algae will die. Adams says the microorganisms would probably manage for a few weeks without light — so just enough time for a family vacation. Judges Q&A Q: This machine behind you, you put art on top of it but behind it here’s an air filter? A: It’s not actually a filter — it’s a biological entity Q: So how many square feet does one of those do? And what are you selling that for and who are you selling it to? A: The typical example of a conference room, 12 x 12, we need about one system. If occupancy is higher — let’s say 4 to 6 people — you need two units Q: What does it sell for? A: Initially a couple of thousands but with large scale manufacturing we’ll bring the cost down Q: Initially you are selling to who? A: To commercial segments. We’re selling it directly as well as partnering with HVACs because they already have sales channels Q: This takes in CO2 and emits oxygen but it doesn’t do particle removing of contaminants? A: At this point it doesn’t but we can probably do that later. But nothing in the market does this Q: Can you tell us a bit about what the demand is for this? A: There’s a huge new trend of making buildings healthier, not just green. Green means saving energy, healthy means providing a healthy environment… The new trend is not only making buildings efficient but making them healthy. By reducing the air that you bring in from outside you are keeping air in – and all this ties in with the demand control ventilation. Because installing our systems locally you don’t have to bring the air so much over all the building, you can take care of where the CO2 levels get elevated Q: But these buildings are already being built… they are doing it without these machines, it has to do with the way the building is built. They’re bringing in fresh air. It’s completely internal. They’re doing it just in terms of the actual building of the building… A: In addition to providing fresh air we’re actually saving energy because our system doesn’t use so much energy to bring ait from outside. Judge: Neither do these buildings Q: Is it just all about the balance of oxygen to CO2?… I’ve heard in different environments of people pushing oxygen into different environments and I don’t know if that produces a comparable effect? A: There are two things. CO2 concentrations high is worse than lack of oxygen because we don’t need as much oxygen as is in the room. So oxygenators – that’s the machines that inject the oxygen… they might inject some oxygen to keep people awake and alert but the core problem is actually CO2. That’s what makes us sick, that’s what makes us feeling tired Q: As you think about trying to create demand, educating the public and these commercial folks… how are you going to overcome that challenge? Because it’s sounds like an awesome technology, I’m sure it’s highly defensible… but you’ve got to convince people that the CO2 is the problem. How do you execute that campaign? A: It’s a great point. Awareness is number one thing. Not everyone’s aware, oh I feel sick and the air’s feeling stuffy – but that means CO2 is elevated. So dealing with buildings the great point is that we have a support from a lot of research that other companies do so we don’t have to educate so much to say ok CO2 is bad for you. We can refer to the studies. For example Harvard study that recently just published this paper on CO2 and cognitive performance – so relying on the knowledge and the foundation that industry has, working with them, partnering, we can show the benefits and the value of providing our product to the customer. 2016-05-09 20:16 Natasha Lomas
40 First look: Microsoft’s API mashup tool for the rest of us Not all cloud applications need to be cloud-scale. They’re often simple routing and switching apps that take information from one source, process it minimally, then pass it on. That’s where tools like IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes came into play, allowing you to quickly build and share information flows that linked one service to another. Sadly, Yahoo Pipes has been shut down, and IFTTT has concentrated on simple links to the Internet of things. That means there’s space in the market for a new tool -- one focused on working with applications and services, and capable of handling more complex chains of operations than IFTTT’s basic one input to one output mapping. You could build microservices on Node.js to automate these sorts of connections between applications and between APIs, but that would be overkill. So would Azure Logic Apps or AWS Lambda. Alongside the launch of its new visual development tool, PowerApps, Microsoft recently unveiled its new connection-based development tool, Flow. Like IFTTT and Pipes, Flow is designed to help you quickly hook together outputs and inputs to build applications that are triggered by an event on an input, and deliver responses to one or more services. Where IFTTT could scan a stream of tweets and save specific content to a file, Flow can take an input and use it as the basis for a more complex flow of information, querying multiple information sources and handling multiple actions as a result. With initial support for 12 services (and many more APIs), Microsoft Flow is clearly designed to automate what would otherwise be tedious tasks. Supported services include Twitter, GitHub, Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Office 365, giving you access to much of the Office Graph. Using these services, you could, for example, scan Twitter looking for mentions of a product and deliver them into a Slack channel for the product team, allowing the team to see what their users are saying about their product. Microsoft provides a set of 63 initial templates that handle a variety of tasks, all of which are also ready for customization. The range of templates spans customer relationship management, devops notifications, and ways to manage your online life, bridging the gaps between storage, social media, email, and other cloud services. I started by customizing one of the basic templates, taking tweets I sent and archiving them in a CSV file on my personal OneDrive. Editing a Flow is relatively easy. You’re presented with the key elements of a template in your browser as a basic flow diagram, inputs at the top of a screen, outputs at the bottom. You can click on a block to open up its properties. For example, in a Twitter block, you’ll find a standard Twitter query. One key difference between Flow and IFTTT is support for conditionals. For example, if a file you need isn’t present, your flow can create it and place an initial set of data. Once it’s in place, an alternative path will add new data to the file. Flow offers a very basic set of conditional operators, but it’s enough to let you build relatively complex applications. You can chain inputs, queries, and conditionals, helping you control the flow of your flow, from input to your choice of outputs. There’s a lot of flexibility in Flow. When you drill down into building your own flows rather than using the provided templates, you’ll find that you’re able to use Swagger API definitions to quickly hook arbitrary REST APIs into a flow. You’re also able to connect to an HTTP action, an option that would allow you to connect to a Web hook in an application like Slack, or to work with data sent over a Web form or via JSON That’s an important feature, as it means that you’re not limited to the default set of controls. You’re also able to build a flow into a PowerApps app, giving it its own UI. Debugging is easy, with reports for each operation that let you drill down into each block, so you can see what went wrong -- and equally as important, what went right. The result is a powerful little tool that can quickly scratch an itch. The ability to reach out into any API is significant, as is the support for a range of different input types. Microsoft has provided enough routes into Flow that you should be able to find one that will work with your choice of inputs -- even if they’re not among the specific triggers that Flow defines. Outputs are perhaps a little more limited at this stage. I would have liked to see better support for the Office Graph and its various entities, including more document types than Excel. Some aspects of the Flow development process are still a little buggy, especially around its OneDrive integration. I found it nearly impossible to scroll through a long list of folders, for example, and I had to manually input the folder I was intending to use. Despite these teething problems, Flow is shaping up nicely as a replacement for the sadly lost Yahoo Pipes, albeit one designed for the API world we have today, rather than merely HTTP, RSS, and XML. Flow is a service that makes sense quickly, even to nonprogrammers. It’s easy enough to get started by customizing a template, but once you build your own flows, the graphical layout of flow and program blocks quickly makes sense. If you want to go beyond the templates and default actions, then you’ll need to become familiar with the syntax of RESTful APIs. Flow’s support for the Swagger API description language should simplify things, at least where sites and services offer Swagger definitions. With tools like Flow and PowerApps, Microsoft is finally serving a developer audience composed of information workers who want to solve small problems. Flow is not a general- purpose programming tool, but it is nonetheless both powerful and flexible. Flow is an on-ramp into a new style of application development, and it’s one that anyone can use. More about AWS Dropbox Excel Microsoft Twitter Yahoo 2016-05-09 20:00 www.computerworld
41 Microsoft invests in cloud company Pivotal It was reported on Friday morning that Microsoft has invested in Pivotal, a San Francisco-based cloud-computing company. Besides Microsoft, Ford was also announced as a major investor. The media reported that Pivotal’s Series C funding round hit $253 million, with Ford contributing with $182.2 million. It is not known exactly how much money Microsoft poured into the company. We do know, however, that the company’s value now sits at $2.8 billion. Other investors include General Electric, EMC, and VMWare. "This relationship builds off what was already a strong relationship", Forbes quotes Pivotal CIO Marcy Klevorn saying. "We are re-positioning the company into a software world". Pivotal is a company formed out of EMC and VMWare back in 2013. It is a software and services company based in San Francisco, with subsidiaries Pivotal Labs, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Pivotal Big Data Suite and Pivotal Data Science. The company was at first lead by Paul Maritz, who was a Microsoft executive prior to joining the new start-up. At one point, he was also considered as a successor to Steve Ballmer. Since last year, he is no longer Pivotal's CEO, but remains as an executive chairman of the board of directors. EMC was later acquired by Dell for $67 billion, which is now known as the largest deal in tech history. Dell is currently billions in minus thanks to the acquisition, which is why it’s selling off a couple of non-essential business units. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Andy Dean Photography / Shutterstock 2016-05-09 18:37 By Sead
42 Nintendo's Super Mario characters are invading the blocky world of Minecraft Nintendo’s Super Mario characters will soon be invading the blocky world of Minecraft… if you play on the Wii U, that is. The update, dubbed Super Mario Mash Up Pack, will feature 40 new character skins, allowing gamers to replace standard Minecraft characters with those from Nintendo’s popular franchise. Expect to see favorites like Mario, Luigi, Toad, Diddy Kong, Yoshi and Princess Peach as well as familiar villains such as Wario, Bowser and Waluigi, among others. The free update also includes new world textures that replicate many of the classic settings from select Mario games, various item skins and 16 pieces of theme music from Super Mario 64. The collaboration marks the first time Nintendo has licensed its IP for use in Minecraft and further serves as a testament to Minecraft’s mainstream appeal. When Microsoft announced its acquisition of Minecraft in September 2014 for a whopping $2.5 billion , many felt the company overpaid for the property. Microsoft has since proven us wrong , however, as it has positioned the game for success in the education sector , converted it to the virtual world and proved that it will make a killer HoloLens app. The Super Mario Mash Up Pack will be available to download beginning May 17. Nintendo is also working on a retail version of Minecraft for the Wii U that’s scheduled to hit stores on June 17 (the Mario DLC will be included on the retail game disc). If you’ve yet to grab Minecraft on the Wii U, expect to pay $29.99 for the opportunity. 2016-05-09 18:15 Shawn Knight
43 Periscope partners with DJI for live drone broadcasting While some people consider drones to be a public nuisance, the truth is the safety and responsibility falls on the owner. In other words, if an owner is responsible and obeys the law, everything should be fine. Ultimately, these flying cameras have a lot of useful applications and should not be demonized. Lending to the mainstreaming and public acceptance of drones, the Twitter-owned Periscope today announces that it is partnering with famed drone manufacturer, DJI, for live broadcasting. This is a planned future feature. Sorry, Android users, it looks to be iPhone-only. "To broadcast from a supported DJI drone, just connect your iPhone to your drone's remote. We'll automatically pull in your drone’s video feed and let you switch between it, your iPhone cameras and even your GoPro. During your broadcast, you can narrate from a bird's eye view using your phone or even Sketch on the broadcast to highlight different sights", says Periscope. Not familiar with DJI drones? Check out the informative video below. If you like the way the drone broadcast turns out, you may be upset that you can't save the video for longer than 24 hours. No worries, folks -- Periscope will soon be extending the length of time that a video can be saved. The company says the following. My only concern with live broadcasting via drone, is that the pilots may take their attention off safely flying, instead paying attention to viewers. Hopefully Periscope will disable the ability to read comments and see hearts while the drone broadcast is happening. Safety first, drone enthusiasts! Are you excited for live Periscope streams from drones? Tell me in the comments. 2016-05-09 17:23 By Brian
44 IT departments need to adapt faster to change The fast-changing IT environment of today is forcing companies to reconsider their approach to IT, as they believe that can help them stand out in the crowd of their competitors. However, the process is quite challenging. Those are the general conclusions of a new research released by managed services provider Claranet. The research polled 900 IT decision makers in the UK, France, Germany, Span, Portugal and the Benelux about fast changing business models and in 46 percent of cases it’s very challenging. A year before, 35 percent of those surveyed thought it to be a challenge, showing how demanding the environment is becoming. The number of businesses struggling to adapt is even higher in the UK -- 54 percent. "Our research shows that the IT department needs a fundamental rethink of how it approaches innovation and development. Traditionally, IT departments have incrementally upgraded their capabilities, adding new features sequentially", said Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director. "While this pace of development was acceptable in the past, and often the only pace permitted by infrastructure and software development limitations, it is now no longer agile enough to satisfy the needs of modern businesses". He also says these departments need to adopt more progressive approaches to information technology management, focusing on app-boosting practices. "The flexibility and agility brought by public cloud services enable IT departments to spin up new services which scale on demand, without heavy investments in additional infrastructure. DevOps, meanwhile, can increase the frequency of updates, and speed to market, ensuring the application estate can support changing business conditions". Claranet’s full report can be found on this link . Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: phloxii/ Shutterstock 2016-05-09 17:20 By Sead
45 Google experiment replaces blue links with black text - do you approve? Upon submitting a Google query, you’re presented a handful of results in which the site name is written in blue and the URL for said site is listed directly below in green… or at least, that’s what most people see. The search giant is apparently toying around with how it presents web links and URLs. As The Telegraph notes , multiple users have taken to Twitter to share a new look that replaces the traditional blue site names in search results with black text. The URL and body text remain unchanged. Something as trivial as the color of a link in a search result sounds trivial but when the world’s most popular search engine makes even a small change, users take notice. People by and large dislike change, especially to sites and services they utilize on a daily basis. Such appears to be the case here as several have taken to social media to voice their opinions of the new link color. It’s no different than when people get all worked up each time Facebook makes a change to its Timeline. When asked for comment, Google said they’re always running many small-scale experiments with the design of the results page, adding that they’re not quite sure that black is the new blue. If you’re experiencing the black links and want to revert back to the way things used to be, logging out of your Google account then signing back in apparently does the trick. What do you think about Google’s black links? I don’t mind them personally although I’m unsure how one would differentiate between a clicked and unclicked link (maybe the black links turn grey?). Let us know what you think in the comments section below. 2016-05-09 17:15 Shawn Knight
46 The next iPhone might actually remain traditional with a single lens camera The flow of iPhone rumors has been steady over the past couple of months, with strong evidence that next iPhone may skew from a traditional port and camera setup. According to NowhereElse , a site that has had a decent track record when it comes to leaks, a new image shows that the next iPhone will go against previous reports, and offer a more traditional setup with a single camera lens. While this is all hearsay at this point, the new schematic shows a single lens, with what looks to be a slightly thicker protrusion than what can be found on the current model. The image also offers dimensions that look to be in line with the current iPhone 6s. This new leak is a bit underwhelming compared to what we saw last month ; an iPhone with dual camera lens and a Smart Connector port. While there are still several months until the unveiling of the next iPhone, Tim Cook has promised that whatever may come, will offer "great innovation, and give you things you can't live without". Source: NowhereElse.fr 2016-05-09 16:54 Timi Cantisano
47 Lenovo fixes yet another major security vulnerability This past year hasn't been kind to Lenovo. The company has had quite a few security problems on its hands, most affecting its Windows software. The PC maker has issued patch after patch to address them, but it now looks like the saga is far from over. A security researcher has uncovered a new vulnerability in the Lenovo Solution Center software, which comes preloaded on the company's desktops and laptops to help users monitor things like battery life and driver updates. "The flaw allows an attacker to elevate privileges and is tied to the LSC application’s backend. It opens the door for a malicious attacker to start the LSC service and trick it in to executing arbitrary code in the local system context", says Karl Sigler, who is responsible for finding this flaw. "This is a pretty bad vulnerability, but it does require an existing user to be logged in in order to pull off any attack", adds Sigler. "For a malicious insider or for an attacker that already has a foothold in the network, this vulnerability could be used to make that foothold a full gateway to your network". The good news is that Lenovo has fixed this vulnerability, and issued a patch for its software. You can download it from here. Solution Center also had to be patched in December, after a hacking group, called Slipstream/RoL, discovered a flaw allowing a webpage to execute code on Lenovo's devices using system privileges. Image Credit: wk1003mike / Shutterstock 2016-05-09 16:42 By Mihăiță
48 Hyperloop researcher to forego maglev, use 'Inductrack' tech to power its transportation system Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) on Monday said it will use a technology called passive magnetic levitation as the foundation for its version of Elon Musk’s futuristic transportation system. The technology, which was originally developed by physicist Richard Post in 2000, is said to be a cheaper and safer alternative to traditional magnetic levitation (maglev) currently in use by high-speed bullet trains in China and Germany. Post worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California until his death last year at the age of 96. As The Verge explains , passive magnetic levitation utilizes loops of unpowered wire in the track system along with permanent magnets in the train pods. When implemented in a track, the system is known as Inductrack. HTT is one of two US-based companies currently involved in the Hyperloop project, the other being Hyperloop Technologies. The latter company, led by former Cisco executive Rob Lloyd, is inviting select journalists to Las Vegas this week where it plans to demonstrate full-scale components that will be used in its transport system. Elon Musk announced plans for his Hyperloop concept in the summer of 2013. The billionaire envisions a network of cross-country tubes that will use pods to transport people long distances in a very short amount of time. The idea was proposed with a theoretical top speed of 4,000 MPH although that’s come down to a more realistic (although still incredibly fast) 760 MPH. 2016-05-09 15:30 Shawn Knight
49 Avira Phantom VPN is fast and free(-ish) Avira Phantom VPN is a fast virtual private network for Windows and Android. Once running, the program encrypts all your internet traffic, keeping you safe even when using insecure wireless hotspots. Avira Phantom VPN can also help you bypass geographical restrictions on websites by assigning you an IP address from another country. Options include Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Netherland, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA. Setup is easy. At a minimum, all you have to do is turn Phantom on and off as required. If you head into Settings, there’s little more than options to assign your preferred server country and have Phantom load when your computer starts (or not). If you need maximum privacy then you could even use the program without registering, but beware: the 500MB/ month free data allowance won’t last long, and handing over your details still only gets you 1GB/ month. Performance was a major plus for us, though, with speedy connections to most sites, so the program could be useful in some situations. If it works for you, the unrestricted commercial edition costs $77.99 a year. Avira Phantom VPN is a free application for Windows and Android. 2016-05-09 15:09 By Mike
50 Cyber criminals love to attack hotel chains Hotels represent rich pickings for cyber criminals. There's the potential to steal information from large numbers of customers with consequent financial gains. Researchers at Panda Security have issued a report showing the major attacks targeted against hotel chains in 2015. These attacks are against chains of all sizes and have resulted in the theft of credit card data from thousands of customers. In many cases this has been carried out using malware-infected POS terminals. In a recent instance spear phishing has been used to target one of Panda's Adaptive Defense 360 luxury hotel clients. "We know that, in most cases, these types of attacks are initiated through an email with an attached file that compromises the victim's computer, or a link to a page that uses vulnerabilities to achieve the attacker’s objective," says Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs. "In our client's case, the attack began with an email message addressed to a hotel employee stating the attachment provided all the information needed to pay for a hotel stay at the end of May 2016". This type of attack is hard to detect as the threats are created specifically for a victim and they always ensure that the malware is not detected by signatures or the proactive technologies of current anti-malware solutions. Having successfully snared a victim the criminals then move laterally to reach their ultimate goal, the point-of-sale terminals that process credit card payments. More details of how hotels and other companies can protect themselves against this type of attack is available on the Panda Adaptive Defense website. There's a summary of the extent of recent hotel attacks in the infographic below with more detail available to download as a PDF. Meantime if you've stayed in a hotel recently you might want to keep a close eye on your payment card statements. Image Credit : Dragon Images / Shutterstock 2016-05-09 14:27 By Ian
51 Lost Door Remote Access Trojan Distributed via Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot Security experts from Trend Micro say OussamiO created the Lost Door RAT in 2007 and hasn't shied away from advertising his software on the public Internet, unlike many of his fellow malware developers who like to keep their operations hidden from prying eyes. The main point of operation for OussamiO's activity is his Blogspot blog, where he regularly publishes about new Lost Door versions, upcoming updates, usage tricks and tutorial videos, which he brazenly hosts on YouTube. Besides ads on the Dark Web on underground hacking forums from Brazil, China, and Russia, the crook is also very active on Facebook, where he runs his own page. To buy his malware, users have to get in contact with him via email, either Yahoo or Gmail. The RAT's price is not publicly available, but similar tools usually sell between $10 and $50 depending on their capabilities. As for the RAT itself, Trend Micro says that security solutions may have a hard time detecting its activity because of the way it operates. Lost Door comes with a builder, which means anyone that buys it has a plethora of options at his disposal to create an unique-looking and operating malware. The RAT's detection is also made more difficult because of the way it hides traffic. "Lost Door leverages the routers’ Port Forward feature, a tactic also used by DarkComet. By abusing this feature, a remote attacker can gain access to the server side of a private network whether at home or in an office," Trend Micro's team explained. "This also means that any malicious traffic or communication can be passed off as normal/internal, thereby helping attackers mask their C&C address, since the server side does not directly connect to it. " Once Lost Door is deployed, an attacker would be able to access files, download and upload content from the computer, install and run any type of software, access webcam streams, log keystrokes, and virtually take control over the entire OS. OussamiO says he tested his RAT on all major Windows versions, from XP up to Windows 10. What's more curious about this is that neither Facebook nor Google have taken down this crook's public pages after all these years. 2016-05-09 14:20 Catalin Cimpanu
52 HTC pinning its hopes on the Vive and HTC 10 as sales fall 64% during last quarter HTC may be making plenty of positive headlines with its Vive virtual reality headset, but the company’s latest earnings report shows that it’s still struggling to compete with Apple and Android devices in the smartphone market, as the Taiwanese firm posted its fourth consecutive quarter of losses. Compared to the same period last year, HTC’s sales were down 64 percent to 14.8 billion Taiwanese dollars (US $460 million) from NT $41.8 billion (US $1.29 billion). Profits, meanwhile, fell 78 percent from NT $8.2 billion (US $250 million) to NT $1.8 billion ($60 million). It’s worth mentioning that the Vive isn’t included in the company's figures for the quarter, neither is the new HTC 10. But the report is still bad news for HTC, which will now be hoping that its VR device and flagship smartphone can turn around its ailing fortunes. "The media and consumer buzz around HTC, including for the keenly-awaited launches of the flagship smartphone and Vive virtual reality system, clearly demonstrate our leadership in innovation and have provided a great boost to the HTC brand," said Cher Wang, chairwoman and chief executive of HTC in a statement. HTC’s Cheif Financial Officer, Chialin Chang, said it will “trim expenses” as it attempts to lower operating costs. The company recently sold off some land and is continuing to invest heavily in the Vive. “HTC has seen strong launches in early Q2 ’16 for both the new flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, and the HTC Vive virtual reality system and anticipate good momentum over the year,” the company wrote in its earnings report.“HTC will continue to streamline processes and optimize resources to develop products in the most effective way.” As noted by the BBC , it was only five years ago when HTC was ranked as the fourth best-selling smartphone maker in the world, with a market share of around 9 percent. Today, it sits in 17th place and holds a 1 percent share of the market, according to research group IDC. 2016-05-09 13:45 Rob Thubron
53 Save 91% off a lifetime subscription to Celo VPN via Deals Today's highlighted deal comes from our Web Services section of Neowin Deals, where you can save 91% off a lifetime subscription to Celo VPN. Keep all your online activity 100% secure at home and on public Wi-Fi. Complete online security doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Celo VPN brings together all the essential tools one looks for in a VPN: high speed connections, worldwide servers, data encryption, and the ability to bypass location- based censorship. Plus with no logs kept of your online activity, you can put your full trust in Celo for years to come. A lifetime subscription to Celo VPN normally retails at $330, but you can pick it up for just $29 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 find out more about it | View more deals in Web Services 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 $1000 iTunes Gift Card Giveaway , all you have to do is sign up here to enter for this giveaway! How can I disable these posts? Click here . Disclosure : This is a StackCommerce deal or giveaway in partnership with Neowin; an account at StackCommerce is required to participate in any deals or giveaways. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. 2016-05-09 13:04 News Staff
54 Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Explained: Usage, Video and Download It's wrapped in a clean and attractive interface, featuring intuitive options for running two scan modes, managing a quarantine, creating logs, and configuring settings.. We are breaking down the free edition of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to show you how easy it is to use and configure. A list of all drives is displayed on the left so you can check any box to include locations in the scanner. By clicking the small arrow next to a partition or by double-clicking the drive, you can expand the tree and select individual folders without taking into account the entire partition. The free edition of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware doesn't have real-time protection, so it's not capable of blocking attacking malware agents. Instead, it can only identify and remove the ones already infiltrated into your system. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is an advanced security application that can clean computers of various malware agents, such as viruses, worms, Trojans and rootkits. Find out how it works by checking out our video and article: http://www.softpedia.com/blog/malwarebytes-anti-malware- explained-usage-video-and-download-503847.shtml 2016-05-09 11:23 Elena Opris
55 Winja is a feature-packed VirusTotal uploader Phrozen Software has released Winja , a one- stop VirusTotal uploader and system investigator. A simple opening menu allows scanning of individual files, downloads or running processes with VirusTotal. The "malware" score ("5/58") appears in a separate notification, and you can view a breakdown of verdicts by antivirus engine with a click. Winja also provides four extra system security tools of its own. Process Viewer is an expanded task manager, listing running processes in a tree, and detailing their loaded modules, opened files, and more. Task Scheduler lists your Windows scheduled tasks, and provides some basic right-click tools (Check with VirusTotal, Disable, Delete). Windows Startup lists your startup programs. Again, you can delete or disable selected items, or submit them to VirusTotal. Registered Services is more basic, essentially just a simple Windows Services viewer. There’s an option to scan a service with VirusTotal, but you can’t stop, delete or otherwise tweak it. While this worked as expected, Winja’s interface can be, well, awkward. To check a file, for instance, you click a button in one window, specify the suspect file in a separate dialog box, watch the upload process in a different tab, then have to look at a toast notification to see the overall score, and click yet another tab for the details. This needs to be streamlined a little (or, preferably, a lot). You’ll probably expect the ability to check all your scanning processes for malware, too, but -- no. "Quick Process Check" scans a single process only. ( Process Explorer checks everything automatically, if that’s a problem.) Still, there’s nothing here that isn’t fixable, and for a very first release, Winja seems promising. Winja is a free application for Windows XP or later. 2016-05-09 10:38 By Mike
56 Researcher Arrested After Finding and Reporting SQL Injection on Elections Site Police say Levin had illegally accessed state websites on three occasions. The first took place on December 19, 2015 when Levin illegally accessed the Lee County Elections website. This incident was then followed by two other, on January 4 and 31, 2016, when Levin also hacked into the Department the State Elections website as well. While it is common for infosec professionals to search for security flaws in state-owned infrastructure, authorities say they charged Levin because he never asked for permission prior to starting his endeavor. Levin, who's the owner of his own company called Vanguard Cybersecurity, has also recorded a video together with Dan Sinclair, detailing how he hacked into the vulnerable website using a simple SQL injection bug. Dan Sinclair is a candidate running for the position of Supervisor of Elections for Florida's Lee County. In the eyes of current Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington, this all seemed like a media stunt, and later filed a complaint against Levin. The video was posted on YouTube on January 25, and Florida police raided Levin's house on February 8 and seized his computers. Now authorities are claiming that Levin never asked permission to perform penetration testing on any of the state-owned servers and that he had gone overboard with his demonstration. They say that Levin "obtained several usernames and passwords of employees in the elections office" and that he "went a step further and used the Lee County supervisor's username and password to gain access to other password protected areas. " While judges may show lenience to security researchers that discover security issues and then properly report them (as Levin also did), they might not take it to heart when the researcher uses some of the data he finds on the hacked server to escalate his access. This incident is an exact copy of the Wesley Wineberg - Facebook incident. Back in December, Wineberg managed to hack Facebook's servers and gain access to the Instagram admin panel. Facebook declined to pay him a bug bounty because they discovered that Wineberg had downloaded data from their servers in order to escalate his access for a bigger reward. “ Dave did not dig around in the county's systems with the userid and password. He only showed that the login worked and then immediately backed out. Also, the state REQUESTED a written report on the issues. So, claiming he went in there without their permission is also factually incorrect. Some of the statements made by FDLE Agent/Spokesperson were factually incorrect. None of these claims were verified or investigated. However, the agent certainly had no problem repeating them as fact. He was called out at the press conference for spreading misinformation. There were some other lies told there, as well. This will all come out prior to trial. The charges are bogus. ” 2016-05-09 09:50 Catalin Cimpanu
57 Leaked Screenshots Reveal Improved Windows 10 Mobile Store Design Screenshots posted by @rlinev (via NPU ) indicate an improved store UI that’s being developed by Microsoft on mobile devices, and although the differences between the current and the future design aren’t huge, they can definitely improve the overall experience on the platform. This isn't the first time we're seeing this improved store and these screenshots confirm that we're very close to getting it. Microsoft seems to put the focus a little bit more on the community, so when you open a specific app, you are now allowed to filter ratings and reviews. You can see the most helpful and the most recent, thus helping you decide whether downloading an app is worth it or not. Then, the Downloads and updates section has been redesigned too, finally allowing users to launch an app by simply tapping its name. This is one of the biggest annoyances in Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile right now because while you can indeed see that an app has received an update, you cannot launch it from the update screen and you have to manually search for its name in the store. And last but not least, Microsoft has also improved the download progress bar, giving it a more modern touch, similar to the one that will be available on PC when the Anniversary Update goes live (offering a similar look and feel on PC and mobile is actually part of Microsoft’s plan, so this consistency isn’t at all too surprising). The build number holding these improvements hasn’t been revealed, but given the fact that Microsoft is expected to introduce a new version sometime this week, expect them to be included as well. As for the Anniversary Update, it should go live in the summer, most likely in July, bringing a plethora of improvements on both PCs and mobile devices. 2016-05-09 09:33 Bogdan Popa
58 HTC 10 review: the HTC redemption There was a time when HTC devices were highly revered. For some time, the firm had a very dedicated user base. Most of those users have abandoned the firm at this point. I know this, because every time I get an HTC device to review, friends want to check it out, because deep down, they're rooting for the struggling firm. So what went wrong? What led those loyal users astray? It's actually a fairly interesting story and to fully grasp what HTC is hoping for the 10 to do, we'll need to recap a bit. It started with the HTC One , a device that was praised by many, oddly enough. It was a beautiful device and the Beats speakers on the front made it very compelling. Unfortunately, the 4 MP camera was sub-par. This was the birth of the firm's UltraPixel camera. HTC said that a larger sensor and a lower resolution would lead to larger pixels (2 µm to be exact), which would lead to less noisy photos, at least in theory. As it turns out, the images would rapidly degrade as soon as the user tried to zoom or crop them. The One M8 followed it, also using a 4 MP camera; however, this time they added a second camera to the rear, allowing the user to refocus images after they had been taken. Despite continuing to be acclaimed by reviewers, shortcomings - such as the camera - kept it from being a well-rounded device. Next, HTC decided to go all-in on front cameras because everyone only cares about selfies now, right? This sparked devices like the Desire Eye , a phone with a massive 13 MP front camera and a front-facing LED flash. Few others adopted the idea of an LED flash in the front, because OEMs soon realized that you could simply light up the display. Then came the HTC One M9. It would seem that this is where they hit their rock bottom. Ditching UltraPixels, the camera was 20 MP with an f/2 aperture. This would be fine if other companies weren't using phase detect autofocus (PDAF) and f/1.8 apertures. This device also had a terrible display. The white balance was so off that everything that should have been white was slightly tinted green. Finally, we have the One A9. The One A9 was an upper mid-range device, but HTC had finally added PDAF to the camera and used an AMOLED instead of its trademark Super LCD. The white balance was great, as was the camera (for a mid-ranger, at least). After reviewing the One A9, I finally had high hopes for its new flagship, which was then referred to as the One M10. It was the struggling company's first step toward redemption. My first day with the HTC 10 was an absolute delight. While they hadn't stuck with the AMOLED/PDAF combination that was a recipe for success in the One A9, the 10's Super LCD5 seemed to be fantastic. The design of the 10 is exactly what we've come to expect from HTC's line of flagships. In fact, this is the fourth model in a row that has used a similar design, which includes a metal unibody with a rounded back. That being said, it's still an awesome design. Of course, it's worth noting that different people care about different things. Some prefer the rounded back (as I do), as it's more comfortable to hold; however, some prefer a device that will sit flat on a table. While it looks strikingly similar at first glance, there are a number of differences. The obvious front speakers are gone, the bottom one being replaced with a home button that doubles as a fingerprint reader. There's also chamfered edges going around the front of the device. To put it simply, the colors are vibrant enough that if you didn't know any better, you'd believe that it was AMOLED. In fact, I had to double-check. The bottom speaker wasn't just replaced with a fingerprint reader, but also two physical navigation buttons, which have their pros and cons. Having physical buttons helps for those that don't like to have to swipe up in a full-screen app to get to them, but at the same time, there's a reason that onscreen buttons go away in those apps. They get in the way. It's worth noting that the back and multitasking buttons have two settings. They can light up only when you use them, or any time the device is awake. I found it better to have them lit up all the time, as not all Android devices have their buttons in the same places. The back button is on the left and multitasking button is on the right, but Samsung, for example, does the opposite. While there are pros and cons to such a setup, there is a simple solution that could be solved with a software update. Allow users to turn off those buttons in favor of onscreen buttons. This is a feature that we've seen in other devices, such as the OnePlus One. To put it in simple terms, you'll be satisfied with the fingerprint reader on this device, but there are better ones out there. It seems to be the same sensor found in the One A9, as it's similar in terms of speed and accuracy. Like the A9, the sensor is capacitive, rather than a push-down home button. Of course, there is a difference in navigation buttons, as the A9 used onscreen buttons instead of the capacitive navigation buttons on the 10. OK, so it's not actually called Sense 8. If you look in the Software information on the 10 for the version number, it's not there, as it has been in previous versions. That's because HTC isn't using version numbers anymore. When we reached out to HTC about this, a spokesperson told us that most of Sense now gets updated through apps. Still, it's the latest version of Sense, and it followed Sense 7, so we're going to call it Sense 8. Sense is HTC's skin of Android. Just about every OEM has its own, such as Samsung's TouchWiz, LG's Optimus, and Motorola's Moto. Some are closer to stock than others. Personally, I'm not a fan of stock Android. As a Windows phone user, I know all about wanting a different experience, but the beauty of Android is that you can move from one device to another, gain that new experience, all without losing the power of the Google Play Store. I believe that Sense is one of the good skins, or at least it has been since Sense 6, which introduced BlinkFeed. It also brings lots of useful features, such as Themes and Sense Home, both of which were introduced in Sense 7. Themes are probably my favorite feature of Sense; however, there are other skins that have a Themes store, such as Cyanogen OS. This allows you to change up your wallpaper, sounds, icons, and fonts. Sadly, there is no Doctor Who theme, and personally, I'd like to see someone go to jail for that because it's certainly a crime. HTC devices with on-screen buttons can have those customized with themes as well. Also, Dot View displays can be customized this way, but the 10 supports neither of these. It does add Freestyle Layout themes, as users of the device now have the option to place icons anywhere on the home screens. This is another feature that I enjoy about Sense. As you can see from the screenshots, there's a box in the middle of the screen that says "Work". Based on where I am, it can show me a different selection of icons. The one limitation of this is that you can only set three locations: Home, Work, and Out. Two of them are preset addresses, and the other is anywhere else. It doesn't compensate for if you have two jobs or even two homes. I'd say this is something that may get fixed one day in a software update, but I've been calling for this since Sense 7 shipped with the One M9. Interestingly, the 10 doesn't come with Sense Home by default. If you want it, you have to add it as a widget. Introduced in Sense 6 with the One M8, BlinkFeed is your customizable news feed. You can plug in various news sources and social networks. Unlike Sense Home, this one does show up by default. Swiping to the right from your home screen will bring you right to the feature, something that I've done about five times since I got the 10. I'm honestly not a big fan of the feature, which has changed very little since its introduction. Luckily, it's easily removable. One of my biggest complaints about Android devices is that there's two of everything. There's Mail and Gmail, Internet and Chrome, Gallery and Photos, etc. Of course, this is because OEMs are forced to bundle Google apps on the device if they wish to have Google Play Services, and they also want to provide their own apps. Many companies won't even let you remove them, or at least they don't make it easy. The HTC 10 no longer has this, although like many of the fixes in the 10, the One A9 was the first step toward it. The only area where this is still an issue is that there is still two email apps (Mail and Gmail), but in fairness, Gmail didn't support Exchange email on non-Nexus devices until recently. That's right. The HTC 10 supports AirPlay, with HTC claiming to be the first to actually license the technology from Apple. Sadly, this feature only supports casting audio, although it's worth noting that the HTC Connect app has been updated to include this feature for all devices that support it. If you hadn't already guessed, the audio is awesome. This is something that HTC has been consistently at the top of its game with. With the trademark speakers now gone, BoomSound now consists of the ear speaker and one on the bottom of the device. The one on the bottom serves as a subwoofer. You see, the HTC 10 comes with a pair of Hi-Res Audio Earphones, except in the United States, so naturally, I wasn't able to test them. I pleaded with HTC to send a pair to me, explaining that our readers aren't US-only, but they didn't have a pair to send me. 12 MP seems to be the standard for many flagship smartphone cameras these days, with firms such as Samsung, Apple, and Google all adopting it in their flagships, HTC being no exception. With a 1/2.3" sensor, f/1.8 aperture, and laser focus, the hardware is definitely the best that the firm has put together to date. The camera was the one thing that I found to be a bit disappointing in the HTC 10. The photos tend to be very overexposed, resulting in an oversaturated image. This is something that tends to be true over and over again in cameras that come from HTC, but only from the UltraPixel cameras. Luckily, you can adjust exposure before taking an image with a simple slider. Unfortunately, you have to do it every time you take a picture. Changing up the exposure generally makes the image darker, so if getting the color to actually be accurate makes the image too dim, there's also a Pro mode that allows you to manually change some settings. For example, you could lower the exposure but change the ISO sensitivity. Here are some blue flowers, which with automatic settings, look purple: Unfortunately, you have to turn the exposure all the way down to get the right colors. This trick also works when taking pictures at night, as lights tend to look blown out. Of course, changing up the exposure also works when an image is too dark. While it's great that you can adjust exposure (as you can with most smartphone cameras), you really shouldn't have to. You're compensating for what's a sub-par algorithm to begin with. Most users want to be able to take their phone out of their pocket, launch the camera, and quickly take a picture. This gets in the way of that. HTC has long been an innovator where front cameras are concerned. The firm was among the first to use a 5 MP front camera with the One M8, to use a 13 MP front camera and an LCD flash with the Desire Eye, and now to have a front camera with optical image stabilization (OIS). The company has also left behind that idea of an LCD flash, adopting the idea that's now used by companies like Apple, Samsung, LG, and Motorola: lighting up the screen to be used as one. This is the part where I warn you not to put too much stock into benchmarks, as they rarely reflect on real world usage. First up is AnTuTu Benchmark and Geekbench 3, both of which show better scores than any handset we've reviewed to date. It's worth noting that while the 10 rocks better scores (with the exception of the single-core score) than the iPhone 6s Plus, the Galaxy S7 did not. This is interesting because both devices use Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 820 SoC (system on a chip). Next up is a stress test, done in AnTuTu. This is a test that lasts for 15 minutes, designed to see how the device performs under heavy usage. Next up are tests from GFXBench, an app that's renowned for testing graphics performance. I used both GFXBench 4 and 3.1, as having the results from both helps to compare it to other devices, which might not support GFXBench 4 (such as an iPhone). If you're not familiar with these tests, each one has a regular test and a "1080p Offscreen". The regular one tests the performance of the device with the resolution display that it has. 1080p Offscreen tests it for if the device had a 1080p display (the HTC 10 is 1440p). This helps to put all devices on a level playing field and it helps to tell how powerful the GPU actually is. For example, when we compared the 10 to the iPhone 6s Plus , the iPhone got better scores in the regular test, but the 10 did better in the 1080p tests. This means that the Adreno 530 GPU that's in the 10 is more powerful, but the iPhone performs better, as it's not weighed down by the 3.7 million pixels of a 1440p display. Finally, we have battery life. This is something that I didn't have any problems with at all. From a real user perspective, the device never had a single problem getting me through the day, but to be thorough, I also did a battery test. The main drawback to the HTC 10 is the camera, I'm sad to say. Yes, you can mess around with manual controls to get it straight, but you shouldn't have to, and many smartphone photographers don't know what it means to change exposure, ISO, and so on. The rest of the device is just a dream to use. HTC has refined its Sense UI to where it's lacking the junk that we're so familiar with from third-party Android skins. The Super LCD5 display makes that UI look incredible. The old design feels new again, probably because it has been so long since we were all talking about the device's predecessor, the One M9. I would say that the 10 is a 'buy', as long as you know what you're doing with the camera, or you just don't care about it. I had to ask myself if I would continue to carry the HTC 10 around with me after finishing this review. Sadly, the answer is that I would not. The phone is such a delight in almost every way, but the truth is that when there comes a moment that I want to capture, this is not the camera that I want to do it with. 2016-05-09 09:32 Rich Woods
59 Uber and Lyft consider sharing a ride out of Austin following legal defeat Ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft have been forced to halt their operations in Austin after losing a battle with the Austin City Council to prevent the passing of a law which makes fingerprint and background checks essential. 56 percent of voters within the Texas capital supported the law, while 44 wished for the fingerprint checks to be removed. The result comes soon after Uber settled two class action lawsuits in April and paying $100 million to its 385,000 drivers. The corporations collectively spent more than $8 million, which equates to approximately $200 per vote against the law. The manager of Uber's Austin team said they are not pleased with the result. "Disappointment does not begin to describe how we feel about shutting down operations in Austin. " Lyft and Uber terminated its services in Austin on the morning of Monday, May 9. However, representatives of Lyft argued that their background checks are sufficient to ensure the safety of its customers. "Unfortunately, the rules passed by City Council don't allow true ridesharing to operate. " The group fighting against Uber and Lyft said the large amounts of money spent on the case shows that the corporations care more about their profits than the safety of their customers. Those investigating the future of ride-sharing services have said the decision could push other councils to take on the ride-sharing services and enforce stricter checks. Similar cases are already underway in Atlanta, Houston and New York City. Atlanta and Houston have already applied the increased checks to its ride-sharing services, although Uber continues to operate within these cities. Source: Reuters 2016-05-09 09:06 Matthew Sims
60 Wercker Workflows available for managing container pipelines for distributed apps To give developers the tools they need to build complex applications, Wercker, a container- centric developer automation platform, announced the general availability of Wercker Workflows so developers can manage their custom Docker container pipelines for distributed applications and microservices. Users will be able to manage the build and other phases of the development workflow with this new solution, which works with Amazon Web Services, CoreOS, DC/OS, Deis and Kubernetes. (Related: Developers explain what’s keeping them from using containers ) With Wercker Workflows, users can define a hook, which could be a Git source or another pipeline. This could trigger other pipelines, allowing users to chain pipelines sequentially or in parallel, according to the company. Other features that allow users to manage their applications or microservices include the ability to create custom pipelines with steps from the Wercker registry, or to create their own. Users can also adapt their development pipelines to the three-step paradigm by adopting schedulers like DC/OS Marathon and Kubernetes, according to the company. “We know developers need to break out of the two-step paradigm to go beyond build and deploys, and we’re excited to partner with companies and open source projects like CoreOS, Deis, Kubernetes and Mesosphere to make it happen,” said Micha Hernández van Leuffen, founder and CEO of Wercker. 2016-05-09 09:00 Madison Moore
61 Microsoft: 'AI is the most important technology on the planet... it will change everything' Artificial intelligence (AI) is something of a buzz- phrase across the tech industry these days - but Microsoft's Dave Coplin says that it will come to have a profound impact on society as we know it. In his words, AI "will change everything". Coplin, the company's chief envisioning officer in the UK, was speaking a few days ago at an AI conference in London, where he described it as "the most important technology that anybody on the planet is working on today. " "This technology will change how we relate to technology," he said. "It will change how we relate to each other. I would argue that it will even change how we perceive what it means to be human. " AI is a broad term covering a wide range of technologies, but the most recognizable examples for many users are digital assistants such as Apple's Siri and Microsoft's own Cortana. But the reach of AI extends far deeper than just these interfaces, encompassing technologies such as natural language processing , along with machine learning capabilities that can be applied to everything from product personalization and preventing cyber-attacks , to medical research , and even predicting the future. When viewed in this broader context, it's not hard to understand Coplin's vision when he paints such an extraordinary picture of the future that AI has in store for us. But as Business Insider notes, Coplin also sounded a note of caution: And after pointing out that AI will raise fresh issues and concerns for humanity, he added: "We have to be ready to deal with them. We have to understand that they exist. We have to start being mindful about the processes we put in place. " A recent AI experiment by Microsoft went badly wrong, when the company launched its 'Tay' chatbot on Twitter. The bot was quickly taken offline after it ended up spouting shocking and deeply offensive statements. Microsoft later apologized for the situation, but blamed it on "a coordinated attack by a subset of people [who] exploited a vulnerability" in the chatbot. That incident seems particularly relevant to a further observation from Coplin: "The way in which we choose to use AI is a reflection of humans, the people, not the machines themselves. " He continued: If AI is indeed to have such a massive impact, there are clearly many issues that will need to be carefully considered - and there's no time to waste. As Coplin pointed out, this is where the whole technology industry is now heading, and there's no stopping it. "It's not just Microsoft, Google and Facebook," he said. "We're all at it because it will change everything. " Source: Business Insider 2016-05-09 08:52 Andy Weir
62 Rare win for a US firm as Chinese court rules that company can't sell "face book" food and drinks Just as Apple loses the exclusive right to sell goods under the “iPhone” brand name in China, Facebook has just won a major trademark victory in the country. After a Beijing court ruled in the US company’s favor, Chinese citizens won’t be able to enjoy “face book” food and beverages. The Beijing Higher People’s Court announced that it had revoked the Zhongshan Pearl River Drinks company’s approval to use the name on its selection of flavored drinks and oatmeal. The court said the company, which regisestered the name in 2014, had "violated moral principles" with "obvious intention to duplicate and copy from another high-profile trademark.” Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Pearl River Drinks’ marketing manager defended the company’s right to use the name. Liu Hongqun said that the words face book – lian shu in Chinese – referred to the masks used in traditional Chinese opera. The case was brought after Facebook unsuccessfully appealed to China’s Trademark Review and Adjudication Board on two separate occasions. The court’s decision comes as something of a surprise, as the country rarely sides with US companies in these incidences. It was reported last week that Apple had lost a similar trademark case in China. The company will now have to share the iconic “iPhone” name with Xintong Tiandi Technology, which uses the phrase on its leather wallets and accessories. Facebook is one of the many services banned in China, but Mark Zuckerberg and other executives have been trying to win over officials in the country. During a recent visit, the CEO met with China's propaganda chief Liu Yunsham. He also went for a run through the heavily polluted area of Tiananmen Square. While the news doesn’t indicate that China is any closer to allowing Facebook through its great firewall, it does show that relations between the social network and the Asian country may be warming up. 2016-05-09 08:30 Rob Thubron
63 Data Products: 9 Best Practices To Minimize Risk Data is finding its way into just about every type of modern product and service. As a result, some companies are necessarily rethinking their business models, product strategies, customer engagement strategies, and supply chain strategies. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs are discovering entirely new solutions to age-old problems. " Our traditional business model, the way we provide products and services, is being disrupted because people -- especially Millennials -- do not look at a big book of codes," said Nataniel Lin, analytics and strategy lead at the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) , in an interview. "We're in the process of becoming a 120-year-old startup. Essentially, we're leveraging all the data that's available out there and aggregating data to create unique value and solutions that up until today were not possible. " In NFPA's case, data is flowing in from connected IoT systems in homes and commercial buildings, insurance companies, and other sources. Lin is working with 26 different property and casualty insurance companies with the goal of anonymizing and aggregating data in a way that benefits all of the companies without exposing them to privacy or security risks. That way, the companies can have a more objective view of revenue, profitability, and risks than would be possible using only their own data. [Looking to make your analytics agile? Read Agile Analytics: 11 Ways to Get There .] In the agriculture industry, farmers, crop consultants, commodity traders, and food security analysts are consuming agriculture and weather data to make more informed decisions. Agronomic data provider and data management company aWhere is working with agriculture software companies, commercial agricultural research groups, and information providers, including mobile network operators, to change how agricultural decisions are made. Its data comes from a number of sources, including satellite sensors, ground radar stations, weather stations, and other sensor-based devices. "[Originally], our founders were working on agricultural research projects in Africa where the challenge was a lack of data. We developed techniques and methodologies to model weather across the landscape using a variety of other data sources to model virtual weather stations everywhere and give a complete picture of the climatology," said Stewart Collis, cofounder and CEO of aWhere, in an interview. Those initial efforts enabled the aWhere founders to assess agricultural risks and understand the impact of growing different crop varieties. Farmers now use the same data to more effectively manage the impact of weather variability and assess the impact of weather events on global agricultural production. While it's becoming more common to offer data products as part of a company's overall business strategy, the attractiveness of potential opportunities can sometimes blind founders and executives to some of the common risks and pitfalls that cause their companies to stumble. To minimize their potential effect, consider these best practices. 2016-05-09 07:06 Lisa Morgan
64 64 Facebook is testing a new 'Discover' feature that will help you find better groups to join Facebook Groups is one of the social network’s best elements, but many people don’t use it beyond joining a handful of groups they’ve been invited into by friends. Now, Facebook is looking to improve Groups by testing a feature that will make it easier for users to find more relevant and interesting online communities. Facebook has randomly selected a number of users to test the new Discover feature in the iOS and Android apps. It sits in the Groups section and lets you pick from themes such as Professional Networking, Buy/Sell/Trade, Animals, Hobby and Leisure, Travel, and Funny. Choosing one will bring up a list of related groups that you may find interesting. Facebook will also offer suggestions based on groups that your friends have joined, local groups, your interests and activities, as well as other variables. The feature will improve over time, which should mean the recommendations will improve, too. "As widely used as Groups is, if you think about it through the view of any individual person, I think people have tons of groups in their lives that they don't actually use. If you think of every team you're involved in -- groups of people at work, social clubs you have -- my bet is that for 9 out of 10 of them you don't have a Facebook group," Will Cathcart, Facebook vice president of product, told Bloomberg. The move comes after Twitter and Facebook-owned Instagram also introduced new features as a way of increasing user engagement. Mark Zuckerberg’s company wants Groups to become an integral part of the Facebook experience, and the Discover tab is a big step in that direction. Facebook told Mashable it plans to roll out the feature to more users soon. 2016-05-09 06:15 Rob Thubron
Total 64 articles. Created at 2016-05-10 06:01