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30 articles, 2016-08-20 06:00 1 Google is killing Chrome apps on Mac, Windows and Linux Three years after introducing special apps that run inside the (2.06/3) Chrome browser, Google announced Friday that it will be removing them from Windows, Mac and Linux by early 2018. 2016-08-20 06:00 2KB www.computerworld.com.au 2 Motorola's unsubtle Tweet suggests Samsung stole its "always on display" feature In today’s connected society, having a grievance with someone (1.02/3) often involves unsubtly having a go at them on social media. And the practice isn’t limited to people; companies can do it as well. 2016-08-19 15:45 2KB www.techspot.com 3 Best Windows apps this week One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for (1.02/3) Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days. One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week’s... 2016-08-19 10:48 4KB feeds.betanews.com 4 Microsoft isn't alone when it comes to Windows 10's sneaky data mining Plantronics and McAfee could also use a good dose of transparency (1.02/3) 2016-08-19 09:07 4KB www.techradar.com 5 The best free PDF editor 2016 Edit images and text, split and merge documents, add annotations and convert formats 2016-08-19 09:30 7KB www.techradar.com (0.03/3)

6 The NBA is holding its first hackathon - should your company, too? Companies large and small have already embraced the hackathon as a way to foster collaboration and innovation, and now the NBA has announced that it's jumping on board. 2016-08-20 06:00 5KB www.computerworld.com.au 7 Marcher Android Trojan Can Steal Logins from Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Gmail Many other popular Android apps targeted as well 2016-08-20 01:55 2KB news.softpedia.com

8 Google Releases Chrome Extension That Restores Backspace as "Back" Button Google removed Backspace shortcut support in Chrome 52 2016-08-20 01:10 2KB news.softpedia.com 9 Dridex Returns with New Spam Campaign After Two-Month Hiatus Dridex now focuses on high-value targets 2016-08-20 00:15 3KB news.softpedia.com 10 Here Are the Seven Candidates for Mozilla's New Logo Mozilla will have a new logo by the end of September 2016 2016-08-19 21:45 1KB webscripts.softpedia.com 11 Samsung Announces Commercial Launch of the Note 7 in Select Markets The smartphone is available for purchase in multiple markets 2016-08-19 12:40 1KB news.softpedia.com 12 UAC Bypass with Elevated Privileges Works on All Windows Versions Microsoft delays fixing the reported issue 2016-08-19 12:35 4KB news.softpedia.com 13 IAG to push API, mobile-first software architecture Introducing API and mobile-first architecture in order to push the reuse of technology, as well as implementing social coding practices, is one of the key priorities for the Digital Labs wing of IAG in FY17. 2016-08-19 12:19 3KB www.computerworld.com.au 14 Stress-test your PC with HeavyLoad Jam Software’s quick and easy PC stress-tester HeavyLoad has just been updated to version 3.4, its first release in more than two years. The package is as easy to use as ever, maxing out your CPU, allocating RAM and drive space and stressing your... 2016-08-19 12:12 1KB feeds.betanews.com 15 Google Duo Becomes the Most Popular Free App in the Play Store The application was released just days ago 2016-08-19 12:03 1KB mobile.softpedia.com 16 Sony to Announce the New Xperia XR During IFA 2016 Sony will also introduce new accessories during the event 2016-08-19 11:26 1KB news.softpedia.com

17 Galaxy C9 Is the Next Smartphone in Samsung's C Series The new Samsung smartphone is codenamed Amy 2016-08-19 11:14 1KB news.softpedia.com 18 Apple to Launch Watch 2 Without Cellular Support Due to Battery Life Worries Apple wanted the device to come with such a feature 2016-08-19 10:54 2KB news.softpedia.com 19 iPhone 7’s Camera Will Still Be a Big Deal, Even Without Dual Lens Leaks shows image stabilization improvements for the camera 2016-08-19 10:49 1KB news.softpedia.com 20 Traditional malware falls as mobile malware rises in July The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July, but mobile malware now accounts for nine percent of the total -- up 50 percent from June. The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July,... 2016-08-19 10:39 2KB feeds.betanews.com 21 Windows Defender Demo App Lets You Try Out a Modern Windows 10 Antivirus Try out a modern version of Windows Defender yourself 2016-08-19 09:55 1KB www.softpedia.com 22 Apple's macOS beta timings hint at later Sierra launch It's running later than the pace of El Capitan's previews last year 2016-08-19 09:55 2KB www.techradar.com 23 Samsung and Android Saw Increased Market Share in Q2, Gartner Reports Global sales of smartphones grew 4.3% year-on-year 2016-08-19 09:48 2KB news.softpedia.com 24 The Galaxy Note 7 Undergoes Teardown, Is Slightly Easier to Repair than the S7 iFixit performed a teardown of the Galaxy Note 7 2016-08-19 09:12 2KB news.softpedia.com

25 SD Times GitHub project of the week: FastText The Facebook AI Research lab open-sourced its library that helps developers build scalable solution for text representation and classification 2016-08-19 09:00 3KB sdtimes.com 26 Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile Finally Available for Download The official app is now available for all users 2016-08-19 08:54 1KB www.softpedia.com 27 Microsoft Seeking “Curious Minds” to Try Out New Android App Join this private testing program to try out a new app 2016-08-19 08:40 2KB news.softpedia.com 28 NVIDIA 354.99 Quadro and Tesla Packages Are Up for Grabs The new version adds security updates for driver components 2016-08-19 08:25 1KB drivers.softpedia.com 29 China wants to monitor and control all live streams in real time China's overarching control of the internet, technology, and its people in general is nothing new. The Great Firewall of China is famous for placing huge restrictions on what citizens are able to access online, and recently the government banned the use of social media as... 2016-08-19 08:16 1KB feeds.betanews.com 30 An impressive first experience with the Honor 8 The Honor 8 is an impressive device that takes high-end specifications, packages it in an elegant exterior using quality materials, while offering itself at a reasonable price of $399. 2016-08-19 07:36 5KB feedproxy.google.com Articles

30 articles, 2016-08-20 06:00

1 Google is killing Chrome apps on Mac, Windows and Linux (2.06/3) Three years after introducing special apps that run inside the Chrome browser, Google announced Friday that it will be removing them from Windows, Mac and Linux by early 2018. Google introduced those apps in 2013 as a way to offer new functions that weren't otherwise available on the web. Chrome browser apps also gave developers a way to write one app that would run across Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS. The apps come in two flavors: Hosted Apps, which are essentially installable web apps, and Packaged Apps, which are closer to a traditional app like those you might find in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store. The phase-out gives developers about a year and a half to figure out how to migrate their applications away from the Chrome browser. For Hosted apps, that's not too big a deal, since their functions reside mostly on the web. Users will be able to keep using the web app after the transition, but completely through the web. For Packaged Apps, developers will have to build something new. Google recommends a quartet of alternatives : web apps, extensions, extension- enhanced web pages and native apps. For the last one, they suggest developers take advantage of technologies like Electron or NW.js to build applications that run on desktop operating systems. The reasoning behind Google's decision is pretty clear: Over the past few years, web technologies have advanced to the point where many of the features of Chrome apps are available on websites. Meanwhile, only about 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux use Chrome Packaged Apps. The shutdown will be gradual. Starting later this year, new Chrome apps will only be available on Chrome OS, while existing apps will be available on all platforms. Then, in the second half of 2017, the Chrome Web Store will no longer show Chrome apps to users on the affected platforms. Finally, Chrome apps will cease to function on Windows, Mac and Linux in early 2018. Phasing out Chrome apps across the top desktop OSes may cause developers to lose interest in developing them for Chrome OS, too. But a few months ago, Google announced that Chrome OS computers will also be able to run Android apps, so those may help to take up the slack. Tags Google More about Google Linux 2016-08-20 06:00 www.computerworld

2 Motorola's unsubtle Tweet suggests Samsung stole its "always on display" feature (1.02/3) In today’s connected society, having a grievance with someone often involves unsubtly having a go at them on social media. And the practice isn’t limited to people; companies can do it as well. Motorola has taken to Twitter as a way of suggesting that Samsung stole the “always on display” feature found in the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge and Note 7 from the US firm. It didn’t name the South Korean company or its products directly, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out who Motorola is referring to in the tweet. “In what galaxy is it okay to steal competitor phones’ cool features? #TheOriginalAlwaysOnDisplay #motozdroid,” it read. In what galaxy is it okay to steal competitor phones’ cool features? #TheOriginalAlwaysOnDisplay #motozdroid pic.twitter.com/T75byy5bIx Samsung has pushed the always on display, which can show information such as battery life, time, date, and other information, as a desirable feature on its range of Galaxy 7 series smartphones, starting with the release of the S7 and Edge variant back in February. Motorola seems to be claiming that it was the first company to introduce the feature, presumably with the 2013 Moto X and its “Active Display.” But many on Twitter have pointed out that while this may have been first Android smartphone with an AOD, Nokia’s Symbian-powered N86 from 2009 had an always-on clock and date. A few years later, the Finnish firm introduced the Glance screen feature to its Lumia devices, which also shows always-on information. It’s pretty unlikely that Motorola would start any sort of legal dispute with Samsung, especially with Nokia seemingly coming up with the idea first. But the incident shows how companies don’t shy away from using Twitter to throw jabs at each other. 2016-08-19 15:45 Rob Thubron

3 Best Windows apps this week (1.02/3) One-hundred and ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days. Several promising apps and games were released this week, such as the Agricoal 2-player game and the Rockband-like game Gu. No app of the week award though this week. As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead. Discounts this week The following apps and games are discounted by at least 50 percent this week: App of the week None this week Other apps Agricola All Creatures Big and Small ($4.99, no free trial) Agricola All Creatures Big and Small is the faithful adaption of the two- player boardgame by legendary designer Uwe Rosenberg. You grow a farm in the game, send your workers out to buy livestock or goods, or build better buildings that give you special abilities. You may play the game against players on the worldwide leaderboard, or get your feet wet against AI opponents first. Gu This Chinese game is not called Gu, but they are the only two letters that I can read from the game's title. It is a Rockband-like game in which you play the drums and try to match the beat of the song that is playing. The game is playable with the mouse, but designed for other input devices as you need to hit different drums in rapid succession in later levels. You increase in level while you play the game and unlock new drums and songs. The interface is in Chinese but you can find your way around even if you don't speak the language. Health Band-It The third-party application Health Band-It visualizes heath data that gets uploaded from Microsoft Band devices or other devices that sync data to Health or Fitbit servers. The app does not sync data on its own, but will display data already synced in its interface. Hotstar TV Movies Live Cricked Hotstar is a subscription-based streaming service that is only available in India. It features TV, movie and sports content. Hotstar users may sign in to the Windows 10 application to stream contents provided by the service using the app. Logo Foundry Logo Foundry lets you create logos using a library of more than 3,000 symbols, shapes and icons. The app is free, but most assets become available after you purchase them. You may add text or icons to logos, and manipulate them in various ways. The app supports layers, and logos may be exported as transparent png files or jpg files. Prehistoric Mystery Prehistoric Mystery is a game with a strong story telling part. The free version is good for the first five pages of the story only. The remaining pages need to be purchased. You control Lucy, a young detective and her pet bird Darwin in the game. You read (or listen), learn and play at the same time. Stickman Soccer 2016 ($1.99, no free trial) The arcade football game may remind you of classic football games such as Sensible Soccer or Kick Off. It features a wide variety of game modes including seasons, national leagues, cups, and friendly games. You may play it with up to four friends on local multiplayer mode by connecting up to four controllers to the Windows 10 device. Notable updates Groove Music update pushed to the Fast Ring brings Cortana integration. SoundByte , a SoundCloud player, updated with a massive list of improvements that include instant search support, shuffling items, or a volume switch. 2016-08-19 10:48 By Martin

4 Microsoft isn't alone when it comes to Windows 10's sneaky data mining (1.02/3) Another piece of research has emerged which has a pop at Windows 10's poor treatment of user privacy – although in fairness, Microsoft isn't the only company to be taking liberties hoovering up data, as the author points out. The latest flak fired at Redmond comes from security analytics firm Plixer, the CEO of which – Mike Patterson – did some digging into Windows 10's privacy settings and the user data sent back to Microsoft's servers. Patterson observed several things: firstly, that by default, Windows 10 sends a hell of a lot of data back to Microsoft if you install the OS with 'express settings' – and let's face it, while clearly those who are even moderately tech-savvy will tweak the setup, there are a lot of folks out there who won't be bothered. The second point, also made by others previously, is that even if you do tweak said settings, and then dive into Windows 10's menus to turn off every data grabbing feature you can find, the operating system will still be sending some data back to Microsoft. Patterson made some interesting further observations, noting that: "Even after disabling everything I could find, I noticed that some form of metadata was still being sent to Microsoft every 5 minutes. Microsoft was making a connection to ssw.live.com over an HTTP connection on port 80. The content was encrypted in a way that made it impossible to determine what was being sent. "This is an interesting choice, as Microsoft could have sent the data over HTTPS via port 443 to prevent eavesdroppers from looking at the data; instead, however, they used an unencrypted HTTP connection over port 80. This extra effort to encrypt indicates that Microsoft not only didn't want non- authorized users of the machine from accessing the data – they also didn't want the end-user knowing what was being sent. " In other words, Microsoft isn't just failing to make it clear to users what data is sent back as a baseline, but it's also obfuscating this piped-out data. Of course, there is a group policy feature called 'Allow Telemetry' which can be used to switch off all data collection, but the option to disable everything is only available in Windows 10 Enterprise, not the Home or Pro versions. Although Patterson notes that it is possible, if you're particularly enterprising (pun not intended), to stop the data transmission manually by configuring your firewall to block the servers that Windows 10 hooks up with for telemetry purposes. Patterson also observed that Microsoft isn't the only company guilty of this sort of practice. He found that Plantronics (the headset maker) is sending back encrypted data over HTTP port 80 every minute, and security outfit McAfee is sending data back using a DNS lookup that bypasses security mechanisms when it comes to many companies. Patterson said: "While we agree that McAfee is a friendly vendor, we would like to know what they are sending, we want to be able to decrypt it using traditionally accepted decryption methods, and we want the ability to turn it off. " More transparency and control is needed, and not just from Microsoft. As Rahul Kashyap, EVP and chief security architect at endpoint security firm Bromium, chipped in: "It's unfortunate that many reputable brands are knowingly engaging in 'sneaky data mining' without providing upfront details to consumers. Moreover, it is important that users should absolutely be told – how long this data will be stored, the security of the data and what will it be used for. Failing to comply is a breach of consumer trust. " And in terms of the broader picture, let's not even get started on other firms, such as Google's vast data mining. It's certainly clear enough that the tech industry all round could do with cleaning up its privacy act, but Windows 10 is fully in the firing line right now – with volleys recently fired at the OS by the EFF and French watchdog the CNIL. Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:07 By Darren

5 The best free PDF editor 2016 (0.03/3) Adobe describes PDF as "three letters that changed the world", and it has a point: the Portable Document Format, to give it its Sunday name, was invented by Adobe to make it easy to share electronic documents. It's now an open standard used in everything from publishing to public bodies, and there are stacks of tools to create, edit, annotate and organise PDFs. But which ones are best? We've collated 10 of the most useful document wranglers for Windows. If you're a Mac user, don't forget about the Preview app - it's a very useful PDF editor in its own right, although some other programs can do even more. Foxit Reader is ideal for working on multiple PDFs at once, and is expandable via extensions Of all the free PDF tools available for Windows, Foxit Reader is our favorite. It looks and feels rather like Microsoft Office so it's instantly familiar, it has a tabbed interface for working on multiple PDFs simultaneously, and it enables you to complete forms and annotate documents. It also includes security tools for protecting your PDFs. It's expandable via a bunch of add-ons and if you find yourself needing even more power its paid-for sibling, PhantomPDF , has extensive organisation, sharing and document tracking features for a very reasonable US$109 (about £82.82, AU$144.89). Adobe Reader is a stalwart of the PDF scene, and for good reason. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to create your own PDFs, but Adobe Reader is excellent for form-filling and annotations Yes, Adobe Reader on the desktop has a reputation for being overly complex and overly needy - but the iOS and Android editions haven't inherited its flaws and stand on their own virtual feet as fast, flexible and lightweight PDF editors. Some of the best features require an Acrobat Pro subscription, so for example editing text isn't possible without Pro, but you can sign and fill forms and export Office documents to PDF. There's support for Dropbox too. Your PC will see PDF24 Converter as a printer attached to your PC, but it's actually a powerful PDF editing and conversion tool with support for watermarks and password protection One of the simplest ways to add PDF to Windows is to install a PDF printer driver. Windows sees it as a printer driver, but instead of controlling hardware it actually converts documents to PDFs. That's what PDF24 Creator offers, but it also adds its own Assistant that can split or merge PDF files, adjust document properties, re-order pages, password protect PDFs and add digital watermarks or signatures. It's hardly the prettiest app around but it gets on with the job and doesn't require loads of system resources. Adobe Acrobat DC uses Adobe's cloud services to deliver every function you can think of. It can convert just about any document into a PDF, making it particularly handy for multimedia projects The DC stands for Document Cloud, and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is designed to cover every eventuality - for a price. You can try out the software for free, but the license is an annual subscription that works out at £11.42 (about US$15, AU$20) per month for the Standard edition and £13.33 (about US$17.54, AU$23.33) per month for Pro. The Standard edition gives you online access via Adobe's Document Cloud, the ability to create PDFs from almost any source, to work on PDFs via the mobile apps and to electronically sign documents. Going Pro adds multimedia support, the ability to edit scanned documents and the option to request electronic signatures. Unlike many free PDF readers, Nitro supports editing of both images and text Here's another app that looks awfully like Microsoft Office, and once again that's no bad thing. Nitro PDF Reader has a feature set that shames some paid-for apps: despite a price tag of zero it offers document to PDF conversion, annotation and highlighting, image extraction, text editing and e-signatures. It's definitely one to try before you consider paying for a PDF app. PDF-XChange Editor, the successor to PDF-XChange Viewer - has a killer feature in the form of OCR for converting image-heavy PDFs. It also converts Microsoft Office documents to PDF Tracker's PDF-XChange Editor comes in three and a half flavours: a free Lite version for non-commercial use, two paid-for versions at US$43.50 (about £33, AU$58) and US$54.50 (about £41.38, AU$72.60) respectively and a free version of the $43.50 app that removes some of its advanced features. The Lite version doesn't do much - it's a print-to-PDF app to create searchable PDFs from pretty much any Windows app - but it also has has OCR scanning, Google Drive and Office 365 support, commenting and annotation, markup and file conversion. Paying for a license adds the ability to create forms, more advanced organizational tools and more extensive editing options. SlimPDF Reader is a no-frills affair that's light on features, but has an extremely small footprint The name should set expectations here: SlimPDF Reader promises to be "10% of the size of Adobe Reader but views 100% of PDFs". It's microscopic by app standards - just 1.43MB - and that's largely because it doesn't really do anything other than view PDFs. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though: its tiny footprint means it doesn't drag your system down like more advanced PDF apps often do, and it's ridiculously fast on even the most modest PCs. Icecream PDF Converter converts PDFs to and from almost any format, and lets you split up large documents to make them more manageable Icecream PDF Converter comes from the same developer as the useful Icecream Ebook Reader (which also doubles as a good-looking PDF viewer). This app's all about the file formats, though. You can drag and drop PDFs onto the app and convert them to JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, EPS, HTML or WMF format, and you can also convert ebooks and Microsoft Office documents to PDF. It can also run batch conversions and partial conversions for when you only need a few pages of a huge document. That's the good news. The bad news is that you're limited to 10 page PDFs when you export and five files per conversion to PDF unless you buy the Pro version for £14.95 (about US$19.69, AU$26.21). AbleWord isn't be best looking app, but it's very useful when you need to strip the text from a PDF Here's a blast from the past: AbleWord looks very like an old version of Microsoft Word or a recent OpenOffice.org app. It works like those apps too, but the unique selling point here is that it supports PDF files as well as the usual DOC, DOCX and RTF formats, and that means it's a handy tool for anybody who needs to create documents in PDF format or convert between Word and PDF formats. OpenOffice can export text documents in PDF format too, but reading them requires installing an extension. AbleWord has PDF import built-in. When you need to combine or split PDFs, reach for the free, lightweight PDFsam Basic. It gets the job done with the minimum of fuss PDFsam is an acronym of PDF Split and Merge, so you can probably guess what it does. Yep, it splits and merges PDF files. You can use it to combine multiple documents or break a single document into multiples, you can merge alternate pages - handy if you're trying to turn single-sided scans of double-sided documents into something readable - and you can split by size, which is useful if you're splitting a huge document across USB drives or other small storage options. There's also a handy tool for rotating pages across multiple documents. Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:30 By Gary

6 The NBA is holding its first hackathon - should your company, too? Companies large and small have already embraced the hackathon as a way to foster collaboration and innovation, and now the NBA has announced that it's jumping on board. Scheduled to take place next month in New York, the NBA's first-ever event is open to undergraduate and graduate student statisticians, developers and engineers in the U. S. who are interested in building basketball analytics tools. Participants will present their work to a panel of expert judges and an audience of NBA League Office and team personnel. Prizes will be awarded to the top three teams, including a tour of the NBA League Office and a lunch with NBA staff. Once considered a decidedly alternative approach, hackathons are becoming a mainstream corporate tool. The obvious next question is, should your company get involved? "Hackathons can be uniquely valuable in building culture, rapport, and a sense of teamwork -- not to mention creating a sense of urgency and actually building something useful," said Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of social media software firm Likeable Local , which holds regular internal hackathons of its own. "The only real question in deciding whether to move forward is: Can you get enough buy-in from the team to get a great turnout? " Kerpen added. "As long as the answer to this question is yes, you should go for it. " There are actually two different kinds of hackathons: internal ones, where a company's own staff are the participants, and external ones, which are open to the public. Kerpen's company uses the former approach, while the NBA has opted for the latter. Typically, internal hackathons are a good approach for companies that think they have all the talent they need but just need "a spark and an opportunity," said Patti Mikula, cofounder and CEO at Hackworks , which helps organize such events. Also distinguishing the two approaches is who owns the results. With internal hackathons, the host company typically owns any resulting intellectual property. With external ones, that ownership often remains in participants' hands, though it can be structured otherwise. "In many instances, the actual product at the end of an external hackathon is less important than the people involved, because it's often used as a recruiting tool," Mikula said. Companies may also hold external hackathons if they're getting ready to release a new technology suite and API to the general developer community and want to build branding and awareness, said Brian Collins, chief marketing officer for AngelHack . Alternatively, the events can be useful for companies seeking innovative ideas to help shorten their R&D cycle and rapidly prototype new ideas. "It allows for people outside of the company to bring an outside influence and an outsider's perspective to boost innovation and create liquid R&D force," Collins said. Such events are intense, often spanning 24 continuous hours, and "the projects that come out at the end of the hackathon are actual viable products, not simply ideas on a chalkboard," he added. As for internal hackathons, one of the big benefits there is that they can have a liberating effect on employees, opening the doors to new creativity. "It allows you to take employees outside both their comfort zone and their physical environment, and that frees them up in a variety of ways," Mikula said. A financial institution, for example, might take employees offsite, outside the corporate firewall, and invite them to brainstorm and explore to their hearts' content using their own devices. In fact, Mikula says internal hackathons can be particularly useful for companies in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, insurance, and banking. "For very good reasons, those employees are steeped in a culture of things you can't do," she said. "A hackathon says, 'forget all the reasons to say no, and think of all the reasons to say yes.'" Internal hackathons can also provide an opportunity to mash up teams of people who might ordinarily have few occasions to interact, she added. Deciding whether to hold an internal or an external hackathon is really a matter of thinking carefully about the company's goals, Mikula said. It's also important to be clear about what participants will get from the experience. With an internal event that's often fairly clear, but companies opting to hold an external hackathon have to tread a little more carefully. "Companies can't use hackathons as a way of getting free labor," Mikula stressed. "You don't hold a hackathon because you need a new website -- do an RFP and hire a vendor. It has to be more than that, and you have to look at who's going to own those products at the end. " In the case of the NBA's event, IP rights will go to the NBA, she noted, but for many participants, the experience and the exposure to the high-profile league could more than make up for that. "If it were a less flashy brand, some [participants] may weigh things differently. " More about NBA 2016-08-20 06:00 www.computerworld

7 Marcher Android Trojan Can Steal Logins from Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Gmail Android Marcher appeared on the mobile malware scene in 2013 and initially had the capability of showing a fake screen on top of the Google Play Store app whenever the user started that application. This screen asked the user to enter his credit card details, which the malware collected and sent to a C&C server. Later in 2014, the crooks added the ability to phish for banking credentials, mostly from financial institutions in Australia, France, Germany, Turkey and the US. An update detected by mobile security firm Zscaler has revealed that in recent weeks, the trojan has added more items on its target list. This time around the trojan's creators focused on popular Android apps instead of banking applications. Marcher can now collect login credentials by showing a fake login screen whenever the user starts one of these apps: WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, Line, UC Browser, Chrome, and the Play Store. As most malware these days, the stolen data is sent to an online server under the crook's control. While previously this data was transmitted in cleartext via HTTP, recent Marcher versions send it encrypted via an SSL- protected channel. This most recent Marcher version reaches Android devices via fake app stores, but Zscaler has also detected crooks using non-official Google domains to spread the malware packed as a fake Android firmware security update. In the past, the Marcher crew used to pack the trojan as Adobe Flash Player updates (which Android devices don't need or support), and via SMS and email spam . "These frequent changes clearly indicate active malware development that is constantly evolving -- making it the most prevalent threat to the Android devices," says Zscaler 's Viral Gandhi. Users should not install applications from outside the Play Store, even if the Play Store itself has been plagued with malware. The chances of getting infected with malware are much lower via Play Store apps. 2016-08-20 01:55 Catalin Cimpanu

8 Google Releases Chrome Extension That Restores Backspace as "Back" Button Back in May , to the dismay of a large majority of its users, Google announced it would remove the "navigate back" functionality of the Backspace keyboard shortcut, which doubled for so many years as a "Back" button. Google explained its decision by saying that only 0.04 percent of all Chrome users used the keyboard shortcut to navigate back. Additionally, 0.005 percent of those Backspace presses (and "back" navigations) came on web pages containing forms, meaning the user most likely pressed it by accident and had lost all the form's data, requiring to refill all the fields. As such, the company decided to improve the browser's UX (User Experience) by removing the ability to go back to the previous page by pressing the Backspace button. Chrome's more hardcore users didn't like the change, and the company was at the end of some hate filled criticism. Eventually, the Chrome community moved on, and developers created Chrome extensions that replaced the functionality when Chrome 52 came out at the start of August, and the feature was officially removed from Chrome's codebase. In the past, Chrome extension developers have known to suddenly change their mind and start delivering malicious code or ads via extensions that became very popular. Most likely to avoid this kind of developers from taking advantage of Chrome users looking for an alternative, Google has now released an official extension that replicates the original functionality. The Go Back With Backspace extension works by loading some JavaScript code on your page and nothing else. The extension works just like the original feature, but not on Chrome internal pages (those starting with "chrome://"). At the time of writing the extension has only over 10,000 installs, meaning Google was right to remove the Backspace functionality since it wasn't that popular among its regular non-tech users. 2016-08-20 01:10 Catalin Cimpanu

9 Dridex Returns with New Spam Campaign After Two-Month Hiatus The Dridex gang, as the cyber-crime syndicate behind the Dridex banking trojan is often called, has been relatively quiet since mid-June, about the same time when Necurs, one of the botnets it operates, has gone down and resurfaced after three weeks. Ever since then, Dridex distribution seems to have ground down to a halt, with only a few thousands of emails per spam campaign, which is a laughable number when compared to the millions of messages it was spewing out in May and earlier. Looking at the big picture, security researchers from Proofpoint say they've identified a shift in global Dridex gang operations. Starting with January-February 2016, the Dridex gang started delivering both the Dridex banking trojan and the Locky ransomware via their botnets. Locky numbers started out slow but grew to outpace Dridex distribution. Most of the spam was easy to distinguish. For many months, and up to August, Locky was delivered via ZIP archives that contained malicious JavaScript files. On the other hand, Dridex was delivered to victims as Office documents with malicious macro scripts contained within. As Locky spam numbers continued to grow, and after the Necurs botnet downtime, something strange happened. Locky spam started to use macro malware (Office docs with macro scripts), while Dridex spam almost stopped. Proofpoint claims that during this downtime, the Dridex gang changed their mode of operation, and started sending out smaller Dridex spam campaigns. Instead of blasting emails at random users, it started targeting businesses. The group is now trying to compromise employees and people with access to more valuable information and is using concentrated spam campaigns that deliver the Dridex trojan, which is capable of phishing credentials for all sorts of financial applications. Proofpoint says that this particular version of the Dridex trojans targets the backends of payment processing and transfer, Point of Sale (POS), and remote management applications. Most of these attacks have been focused on Switzerland, a hotspot for financial institutions, showing the group's interest in compromising accounts with access to more funds than your regular mom and pop banking accounts. Financial institutions in other countries were also targeted, Proofpoint says, but nine of the eleven Dridex spam campaigns targeted Switzerland. As the Dridex spam numbers started to rise up once again, it appears that the crooks have now fine-tuned their malware and are ready for a broader distribution that targets other countries as well. And as another sign that the Dridex crew was playing around with their toys, Proofpoint says it detected the gang using the Neutrino exploit kit to deliver their banking trojan, a technique the group hasn't used in many campaigns before. Just like in the smaller spam floods, the exploit kit campaign targeted Switzerland, and also the UK. In the meantime, Locky has been going strong, according to another report from FireEye, who recently detected a campaign mainly targeting the healthcare sector . 2016-08-20 00:15 Catalin Cimpanu

10 10 Here Are the Seven Candidates for Mozilla's New Logo By "open branding" Mozilla didn't ask for user submissions but said that the logo choice and as much as the input as possible would be coming from its users, not execs in a San Francisco office. All seven logo candidates came from UK-based design firm Johnson Banks, who previously worked with Virgin, the London Science Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum. Each logo candidate is unique in its own right and gives users good alternatives to choose a favorite from. The logos also have their unique names: The Eye, The Connector, The Open Button, Protocol, Wireframe World, The Impossible M, and Flik Flak. Unfortunately, the design community was not impressed, according to feedback provided on Designer News , a website where designers and developers meet to share links and opinions. Disregarding the criticism, by far the top favorites were The Connector and Protocol. The next step is for Mozilla to cut down the seven candidates to only three, which will receive further refinements and enter a round of consumer testing and live critique in mid-September. The Foundation hopes to have a final decision by the end of September. You can click on the image below to start a gallery/slideshow of all the seven Mozilla logo candidates. 2016-08-19 21:45 Catalin Cimpanu

11 Samsung Announces Commercial Launch of the Note 7 in Select Markets Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 is now available for purchase in the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, the UAE, and Korea. The handset has been well received on the market so far, as it seems that it has even recorded an outstanding number of pre-orders in certain countries, including Canada. It seems quite obvious that Samsung doesn’t see Europe as one of its main strong points and has prioritized the US and Canada. Nevertheless, the smartphone will be arriving in Europe next month while customers in some Western and Central Europe countries can already pre- order it. It has multiple security options, culminating with the iris scanner that allows users to lock their phones and content, as well as conduct financial operations. Other than that, it comes with IP68 certification, 4GB of RAM, enhanced S Pen, a 5.7-inch QHD Dual Edge Super AMOLED display, Snapdragon 820, a 3,500mAh battery and other exciting features. 2016-08-19 12:40 Alexandra Vaidos

12 UAC Bypass with Elevated Privileges Works on All Windows Versions The technique Gottesman discovered relies on the methods used to interact and control environment variables. Windows environment variables are a set of temporary settings that are specific to each Windows process and are inherited by their child processes, which can read and write their values. Unknown to the vast majority of users is that there are a class of system- wide environment variables that apply to the entire Windows operating system. These include details like the user's current username, the PC's domain, and file paths for various folders such as the Windows OS, AppData, user profile, and so on. This set of environment variables are stored in the Windows Registry, hence they are automatically persistent across reboots and can also be modified by any user via "set" or "setx" commands. But there is more. Because of the way Windows is built, there are special apps that, when launched by regular users, execute processes with higher privileges (Task Manager, Disk Cleanup - known UAC bypass , Event Viewer - known UAC bypass , more). When a user launches one of these apps, Windows UAC trusts its execution by default and does not show a warning. Crooks can use modified environment variables to spawn malicious child processes under the legitimate app and execute an attack. Windows UAC will stay quiet while the attack runs with elevated privileges because UAC trusts the parent process. Gottesman described five types of attacks, which can be combined, in a technical write-up for enSilo. In one example, an attacker can create a copy of the C:/Windows folder and modify the system-wide environment variable to point to the wrong Windows OS folder. This setting activates after a system reboot and allows the attacker to load malicious DLLs on the system. This doesn't mean the attacker has hijacked the OS, but when other legitimate apps need to load a system DLL, they'll be pointed to the wrong location, where the attacker can easily modify and replace files without security products warning the user. In another similar attack, he tricked Windows into loading the same C:/Windows folder from a local network folder, meaning the malicious DLLs don't even have to be stored on the same filesystem. In his examples, Gottesman was able to load mmc.exe, the Windows management console with elevated privileges under svchost.exe, meanwhile loading a malicious DLL from the attacker’s C:/copied/Windows folder. This was done with no UAC warning and with elevated privileges. The enSilo researcher notified Microsoft, but the company classified this as a UAC bypass issue, and not an elevation of privileges flaw. Microsoft doesn't consider UAC bypass a security flaw, meaning it won't get patched with the utmost urgency but will eventually be dealt with in the future. Proof- of-concept code is available on GitHub. "Environment variable expansion in Windows allows an attacker to gather information about a system prior to an attack and eventually take complete and persistent control of the system at the time of choice by running a single user-level command, or alternatively, changing one registry key," Gottesman explains. "This vector also lets the attacker’s code in the form of a DLL to load into legitimate processes of other vendors or the OS itself and masquerade its actions as the target process’ actions without having to use code injection techniques or use memory manipulations," the researcher also added. "3rd party services that run on behalf of an administrator may also be vulnerable to this attack and allow regular users to elevate their privileges inside the system. " 2016-08-19 12:35 Catalin Cimpanu

13 IAG to push API, mobile-first software architecture Introducing API and mobile- first architecture in order to push the internal reuse of technology and implementing social coding are two of the key priorities for the Digital Labs wing of IAG in FY17. IAG Digital Labs and IAG Customer Labs, which focuses on customer experience, were created by the insurer as part of a restructure in December , with both sitting underneath the IAG Labs banner. As part of its full year results announcement today, IAG said that Digital Labs would undertake a simplification of the insurer’s core policy and claims products, processes and platforms to drive efficiencies across its Australian and New Zealand businesses. In its results the insurer recognised a non-cash, pre-tax charge of $198 million for accelerated amortisation and impairment of capitalised software. “This follows a detailed review of the group’s assets in light of an environment of unprecedented digital disruption and the system simplification that the group’s commencing,” IAG CFO Nick Hawkins said today during a results presentation today. “We have identified this in our corporate expenses line and it has had no impact on our cash earnings for dividend purposes and had no impact on our regulatory capital. We believe we have adopted a prudent approach to the recognition of software capitalisation and expenditure.” “We have a core technology simplification program underway to reduce 32 policy and claims systems down to two; in addition we’re consolidating our insurance licences from nine to two,” Peter Harmer, IAG’s managing director and CEO, said during his presentation. Digital Labs will also work on developing IAG’s marketing automation, social and loyalty platform in FY17 and look at leveraging emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things, blockchain and drones. Its customer experience counterpart, Customer Labs, said one of its priorities in FY17 was taking Ambiata’s marketing attribution engine to market. IAG acquired Ambiata, which was developed at NICTA (now Data61), in FY15 and Customer Labs has been developing and testing its software capabilities as a service product offering for the broader market, the insurer said. “Ambiata has developed an analytical tool providing the intelligent analytical layer that connects an organisation’s data asset to its customer,” IAG said. “It places measurement and model-build in the hands of a corporation’s data scientists and cognitive intelligence at the centre of an organisation’s decision-making. Already deployed in a number of top 20 ASX organisations, this product is being launched in Asia and North America over the next 12 months”. For FY16 IAG reported a net profit after tax $625 million, down 14.1 per cent on the prior year. Tags software development IAG IAG Group APIs API More about Hawkins IAG NICTA 2016-08-19 12:19 www.computerworld

14 Stress-test your PC with HeavyLoad Jam Software’s quick and easy PC stress-tester HeavyLoad has just been updated to version 3.4, its first release in more than two years. The package is as easy to use as ever, maxing out your CPU, allocating RAM and drive space and stressing your GPU with a click. This release is mostly about compatibility, in particular improving results with the latest OpenGL drivers and handling individual cores in Windows 10. Unfortunately it’s not so compatible with older PCs any more: XP and Server 2003 are no longer supported. The "Simulate Disk Access" test now uses the latest version of Jam Software’s TreeSize Free, and the company reports several other non- specific "minor fixes". As ever, the download page offers 32 and 64-bit versions, both portable and installable editions, and they’re all adware-free. This kind of tool is mostly used for testing hardware stability, maybe after overclocking, but we’ve also found it helpful with Process Lasso-type software which claims to tame "resource hogs". If you’ve installed something which says it can optimize CPU or memory usage in real time, confront it with HeavyLoad and see what happens. HeavyLoad is a free application for Windows Vista and later. 2016-08-19 12:12 By Mike

15 Google Duo Becomes the Most Popular Free App in the Play Store Google’s Duo has become the number 1 free app in Google Play Store, surpassing other popular applications at the moment, including Messenger and Facebook, according to a Twitter post by Justin Uberti , who part of the Duo team at Google. Considering the craze around Pokemon Go lately, one would think that it is the ruler of all apps in the Play Store, but surprisingly, it ranks only third among all applications in the Play Store in the USA, surpassed by Google Duo and Facebook’s Messenger. In case you didn't know, Duo is a simple app for placing video calls and comes with a neat feature that allows users to see a video of the caller before they pick up the call. This way, they won’t miss any important details and will see who’s calling. In addition, Google intends to add audio calling to Duo as well. Google’s Duo is known to provide strong video calls and allow switching between mobile data and WiFi instantaneously, without dropping the call. 2016-08-19 12:03 Alexandra Vaidos

16 Sony to Announce the New Xperia XR During IFA 2016 Photos of the upcoming Xperia XR leaked earlier this month, depicting the smartphone’s design together with its USB Type-C port and rear camera setup, according to Fonearena. The images revealed the blue variant of the device and showed that the rear camera would come with dual LED flash and the ability to shoot 4k videos. New information has surfaced, suggesting that the Xperia XR will be introduced during one of the year’s biggest electronics event, IFA Berlin. Sony has released a teaser image with the invite to its press conference at IFA Berlin. The picture reveals some of the devices that Sony intends to showcase, including a TV, a PlayStation VR, Bluetooth headset, and a smartphone, namely the Xperia XR. The teaser image also depicts other gadgets that could be presented during the press conference. Aside from this, rear camera capacity is said to reach 21MP, and a 12MP unit will be incorporated on the front. The device will feature a 3.5mm headphone jack, will measure 146.4 x 71.9 x 8.1mm, and will sport a 5.1- inch display with 1080p resolution. All of these specs are uncertain at this point, but if the rumors are to be believed, we will also get a glimpse of the smartphone during its unveiling at IFA Berlin. Sony’s press conference begins on September 1, at 1 PM CET. 2016-08-19 11:26 Alexandra Vaidos

17 Galaxy C9 Is the Next Smartphone in Samsung's C Series According to SamMobile , Samsung is currently working on a new handset in the Galaxy C series, namely the Galaxy C9. It will join the other two, but there's no information at this point as to when that will actually happen. The phone is said to bear the codename Amy and the code number SM- C9000. The upcoming device’s specs are unknown, but it should have components similar to its predecessors revealed in late May this year. Samsung unveiled the Galaxy C5 and Galaxy C7 only in the Chinese market, and the Galaxy C9 could have the same fate. However, the company has made more mid-range smartphones available to other markets as well, like the Galaxy A9, which was released in China and later arrived in Malaysia. Samsung's Galaxy C5 came with a 5.2-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, together with Snapdragon 617 processor and 4GB of RAM. The smartphone also features Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and Adreno 405 graphics processing unit, together with 4G LTE and a dual-SIM slot, not to mention a 2,600mAh battery. It ran Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but so did the Galaxy C7 . However, the C7 packed a 5.7-inch display with 1920 x 1080p resolution and 4GB of RAM, with 32GB of internal memory. It also had a 64-bit 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and Adreno 506 graphics processing unit. It came with a 3,300mmAh battery and Quick Charge 3.0, together with a 16MP rear camera and an 8MP front unit. 2016-08-19 11:14 Alexandra Vaidos

18 Apple to Launch Watch 2 Without Cellular Support Due to Battery Life Worries But while a GPS sensor makes sense on the second- generation Apple Watch, there’s something a little bit more interesting coming from the same source (which cites people with knowledge of the matter, so we should take this with a healthy amount of skepticism since nobody can tell if it’s accurate info or not). Basically, Apple wanted the new Watch to come with carrier support, which means that the company planned to make it possible to use the device just like a smartphone and have data coverage wherever you go. This obviously would have created lots of new possibilities for the Watch, and since it already comes with a microphone and a speaker, making it possible to use it as a smartphone kind of made sense. But it turns out that Apple has actually hit some roadblocks in its attempt to create an LTE-connected smartwatch, and Bloomberg says that it was all because of battery life worries. Specifically, Apple wants the second-generation Watch to come with a battery that lasts longer than on the first model, but that’s quite a big challenge, given the fact that it’ll also offer a GPS sensor - GPS is usually the biggest battery hog on wearables, so Apple needs to offer a bigger battery and state-of-the-art optimizations to deal with this. And by coming up with LTE support on the Apple Watch 2, the company would have had another reason to worry about when it comes to battery life, and it appears that Cupertino actually decided to hold back this feature for a future model after getting in touch with several carriers. Of course, nobody can tell for sure when cellular support could land on the Apple Watch, but for the moment, it becomes more obvious that the second generation won’t have it. 2016-08-19 10:54 Bogdan Popa

19 iPhone 7’s Camera Will Still Be a Big Deal, Even Without Dual Lens Coming via NWE , this screenshot compares the camera module of the latest iPhone models and of the upcoming model, showing that the version prepared for the standard iPhone 7 will adopt technology that was previously available on the Plus. And the most obvious addition is optical image stabilization, a feature that was exclusively offered on the Plus and that will now be provided on the standard iPhone too. If you analyze the iPhone 6s Plus camera closely, you can see four different cutouts around the lens, and these are being used specifically for mechanisms that improve the stabilization and allow the camera to shoot better pictures and videos when you don’t have a steady hand. The existing iPhone 6s camera module, on the other hand, has only two such cutouts, and it’s believed that, by adopting the 6s Plus design, the iPhone 7 will benefit from huge improvements in terms of stabilization. The boring side of the iPhone 7, however, is the design, as the existing leaks have shown only small visual changes, such as antenna lines moved to the top and bottom of the device and the camera cutout closer to the left corner. Certainly, while hardware upgrades might be compelling for some, the very small design differences will make many delay their purchases, at least until next year, when Apple is expected to introduce a bigger overhaul of the iPhone lineup with a completely new design and bigger hardware upgrades. 2016-08-19 10:49 Bogdan Popa

20 Traditional malware falls as mobile malware rises in July The number of active malware families attacking businesses fell by five percent in July, but mobile malware now accounts for nine percent of the total -- up 50 percent from June. These figures come from threat prevention company Check Point based on intelligence drawn from its ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map. During July, Check Point detected 2,300 unique and active malware families attacking business networks, the first time in four months it has seen a drop in the number of unique malware families. However, the total number seen still matches the second all-time highest number recorded in a calendar month this year. Conficker was the most prominent family in July accounting for 13 percent of recognized attacks. In second place JBossjmx accounted for 12 percent, and third placed Sality was responsible for eight percent. The top ten families accounted for 60 percent of all recognized attacks. Mobile malware families had eighteen entries in the top 200 overall. The top three mobile families being HummingBad, Android malware that establishes a persistent rootkit on the device; Ztorg, a Trojan that uses root privileges to download and install applications on the mobile phone without the user's knowledge; and XcodeGhost, a compromised version of the iOS developer platform, Xcode, altered to inject malicious code into any app developed and compiled using it. "Businesses should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the slight drop in the number of active malware families during July. The number of active families still remains at near record levels, highlighting the scale of the challenges businesses face in securing their network against cyber- criminals. Organizations must continue to secure their networks vigilantly," says Nathan Shuchami, head of threat prevention at Check Point. "Organizations need advanced threat prevention measures on networks, endpoints, and mobile devices to stop malware at the pre-infection stage, such as Check Point's SandBlast and Mobile Threat Prevention solutions, to ensure they are adequately secured against the latest threats". You can view the live ThreatCloud map displaying cyber attacks in real time on the Check Point website. 2016-08-19 10:39 By Ian

21 Windows Defender Demo App Lets You Try Out a Modern Windows 10 Antivirus And because a concept released recently and imagining a modern look for Windows Defender was really successful, reddit user grigby has decided to go one step further and create a demo app that helps us try out this new interface ourselves. He thus built an application that has no features but comes with a modern UI of Windows Defender, showing us exactly what the antivirus solution would look like with the new interface. There are no features, just a UI demo, and you can try it by sideloading the app on your system. “I created a UWP ‘app’ that showcases their concept for Windows Defender. The app has four theme combinations available and is fully scalable with window size. While the UI is mostly in place, there is no backend code here; most buttons do nothing. It is simply a UI demonstration,” the developer explains. Microsoft hasn’t said anything about a potential makeover of Windows Defender, but there’s no doubt that users want it, so with a little luck, Redstone 2, due in spring 2017, will bring some changes in this regard. 2016-08-19 09:55 Bogdan Popa

22 Apple's macOS beta timings hint at later Sierra launch So how long have we got to wait for the next version of Apple's desktop operating system to turn up? Well, we know that macOS Sierra is due to pitch up in the autumn, but new speculation is pointing to the middle of October as the likely arrival date. And we should stress that this is purely speculation, but Computerworld has thought things through based on the pace with which Apple released preview versions of macOS Sierra, compared to the buildup proceeding the launch of El Capitan last year. Essentially, with Sierra, Apple is around two weeks behind where El Capitan was at this point in 2015. That's based on the fact that the sixth preview version of macOS Sierra emerged at the start of this week for devs, and the sixth beta of El Capitan hit home on August 3 (with previous versions of both more or less mirroring this fortnight gap). Hence if we add that two-week lag onto the release date of El Capitan, which was September 30, we end up with a probable mid-October launch for macOS Sierra (most likely the week ending October 16). That would be just less than two months away, and it seems a perfectly realistic landing date. Apple released the first public beta of macOS Sierra back on July 7 , allowing the general computing public at large to get a taste of the upcoming operating system, which brings Siri to the desktop, along with a number of other new features like picture-in picture mode and a Universal Clipboard (allowing for the likes of direct cutting and pasting between iOS and macOS devices). Another point worth noting is that Sierra is more demanding than El Capitan – you can check out the hardware requirements for the new OS here . Article continues below 2016-08-19 09:55 By Darren

23 Samsung and Android Saw Increased Market Share in Q2, Gartner Reports The Gartner report reveals that 5 out of the top 10 worldwide mobile phone vendors increased their sales in the second quarter of 2016 while the global sales of smartphones grew 4.3% year-on-year and totaled 344 million units in the second quarter of 2016. However, overall sales of mobile phones contracted by 0.5%, with only 5 companies recording growth, more precisely, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, BBK Communication Equipment, and Samsung. It was somehow to be expected that the demand for premium smartphones would slow in the second quarter of 2016, considering that consumers waited for new launches scheduled in the second half of the year, Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, has stated. In the second quarter of 2016, Samsung saw a market share 10% higher than Apple, which suffered a 7.7% decline in the second quarter of 2016. It seems that Apple sales dropped in North America and Western Europe, two of the biggest smartphone markets. Sales declined even in China and Asia Pacific regions, by 26%, but it wasn't all gloomy for Apple, as it seems that sales grew by more than 95% year-on-year in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Apple shouldn't worry about its sales in the next quarters, since the company is expected to release the next iPhone soon. Samsung will also see increased sales following the launch of its latest flagship, the Galaxy Note 7. When it comes to smartphone operating systems, Android overcame iOS by achieving an 86% share in the second quarter of 2016. Android continued to see an increased demand for mid- to lower-end smartphones in emerging markets, as well as from premium smartphones, which recorded a 6.5% increase in the second quarter of 2016. 2016-08-19 09:48 Alexandra Vaidos

24 The Galaxy Note 7 Undergoes Teardown, Is Slightly Easier to Repair than the S7 iFixit has subjected the Galaxy Note 7 to a teardown to determine how the handset ranks on the repairability scale. The iFixit team gets new smartphones and other devices shortly before or after their release and determines how repairable the said units are. The Galaxy Note 7 has ranked 4 out of a 10 scale of repairability, with one point more compared to the Galaxy S7. This means that the smartphone has a higher chance of getting repaired in case of damage as compared to units in the S7 line. Considering that the Galaxy Note 7 is water-resistant and has a non-removable back, it was to be expected that it would rank so low on the repairability scale. The teardown reveals all the components found inside the smartphone, starting with the wireless charging coil and the NFC antenna. The 3,500mAh battery was securely set in place inside the phone and took a little extra carefulness to get out. The video also shows the motherboard with all three of its cameras. The Galaxy Note 7 comes with a 5MP selfie camera and the IR scanner camera used for iris scanning, a technology believed to be more powerful than the fingerprint scanner. The scanner is a two-part system with an infrared blaster to light up the eye while the sensor captures the image of the user's iris. The motherboard comes with 64GB of internal storage and 4GB of RAM, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The Galaxy Note 7 scored 4 out of 10 because many components are modular and can be replaced, and the charging port board can be removed without disassembling the display. But on the downside, the front and back glass makes the phone vulnerable to cracks, and it's nearly impossible to replace the front glass without destroying the display. 2016-08-19 09:12 Alexandra Vaidos

25 SD Times GitHub project of the week: FastText For humans, writing posts on social media just comes naturally. Humans understand each word that’s said or typed, but for machines, it’s not that easy. Understanding the meaning of words is one of the biggest challenges that artificial intelligence researchers face today, and this week’s GitHub project named fastText aims to solve that challenge. Automatic text processing is a part of everyday interactions with computers, and it generates plenty of online data. With all of this data, specific tools are needed to understand the content of large datasets. To address this challenge, the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab is open-sourcing its fastText library to help build scalable solutions for text representation and classification. According to FAIR, “FastText combines some of the most successful concepts introduced by the natural language processing and machine learning communities in the last few decades. These include representing sentences with bags of words and bags of n-grams, as well as using subword information, and sharing information across classes through a hidden representation.” FAIR also employs a hierarchical softmax that takes advantage of unbalanced distribution of the class, which speeds up computation. Each of these concepts are used for different tasks: efficient text classification and learning word-vector representations. FastText helps solve the problem of deep neural networks, which can be slow to train and test, according to the research team. FastText uses a hierarchical classifier instead of a flat structure, and categories are instead organized in a tree, which reduces time for training and testing text classifiers. With fastText, the research team was able to cut training times from days to seconds and achieve “state-of-the-art performance on many standard problems, such as sentiment analysis or tag prediction,” said FAIR. The tool has been designed to work with languages like English, German, French, Spanish and Czech. FastText takes advantage of the languages’ morphological structure and uses a simple way of including subword information. The team hopes that other developers will help build better, more scalable solutions for text representation and classification by using this open-source tool. The Facebook AI Research lab is sharing its research relating to fastText, and it’s available here through the Cornell University Library. Also, fastText is available on GitHub today. Top 5 projects trending on GitHub this week #1. webpack-dashboard : A CLI dashboard for webpack dev server. #2. Weight-loss : Using machine learning to lose weight. Your actual weight, that is. #3. Recharts : A redefined chart library built with React and D3. #4. Top Deep Learning : A list of GitHub projects related to deep learning. #5. React-server : A React framework that loads pages really fast. 2016-08-19 09:00 Madison Moore

26 Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile Finally Available for Download Today, however, Facebook is officially releasing the Windows 10 Mobile client for all users, as it has finalized work on the beta, and the stable client is available for download. What’s important to know is that Facebook for Windows 10 Mobile is an iOS ported, so you’ll get the exact same features as on iPhones. And this is a good thing after all, given the fact that Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone users have often been left behind by developers bringing only some features from Android and iOS on their devices. Facebook, however, hasn’t ported its client from iOS to Windows 10 Mobile using Project Islandwood, which is Microsoft’s very own set of tools created specifically in this regard, but with Osmeta, a platform that has the exact same role and that is developed by the social network. This is once again welcome news because pretty much every single update that Facebook makes to the iOS client can be brought easily on Windows 10 Mobile, so users on the platform should always have a fully up-to-date client that lacks no functionality when compared to clients on other mobile OSes. 2016-08-19 08:54 Bogdan Popa

27 Microsoft Seeking “Curious Minds” to Try Out New Android App And today, the company is expanding on these efforts with a new private testing program that will involve “20- 50 curious minds” willing to try out a new Android app created by Microsoft Garage. Codenamed Sourcerer, the new app is supposed to be a productivity solution that could be considered part of the Office suite at some point in the future. Its purpose is to help students and researchers improve their projects, but the company doesn’t specifically say how this will happen. “Introducing Sourcerer, an early version of a brand new app, brought to you exclusively by the Office Insider program in affiliation with Microsoft Garage, the central hub for experimental projects from Microsoft. We've been working with Microsoft Garage to build an app that makes the research process easier for students. Our goal is to offer an app that helps students save time and makes research quick and intuitive,” the company says in a brief announcement on the Community forums. Microsoft explains that those who are interested in participating in this private beta program need to have an Android 4.0 or later phone and be students or full-time researchers who are working on a research project in August and September. Testers need to run the app for a full month on their device and send feedback to the company, with Microsoft explaining that it really doesn’t matter where they live as long as they comply with all the other requirements. You can find the entire announcement in the box below, and if you want to participate, you’d better hurry app because the number of seats is super limited. 2016-08-19 08:40 Bogdan Popa

28 NVIDIA 354.99 Quadro and Tesla Packages Are Up for Grabs As far as the supported OSes are concerned, the Quadro release is suitable for both 32- and 64-bit variants of Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 platforms, while the Tesla packages are available only for the 64- bit versions of Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Server 2008 R2, and Server 2012 R2 operating systems. Regarding the Quadro files, even though both desktop and notebook configurations are supported, bear in mind that notebook systems aren’t compatible with Windows Vista anymore. In addition to that, Quadro desktop configurations also benefit from an additional package that is suitable for the 64-bit architecture of Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2 platforms. When it comes to installation, first ensure that your configuration is valid for this update, save and run the appropriate package for your computer, and follow all instructions displayed on the screen for a complete and successful upgrade. Last but not least, once finished, it would be best to reboot your computer to make sure all changes take effect properly. If this isn’t requested automatically, it would be a good idea to perform this step manually to avoid any unwanted problems. 2016-08-19 08:25 Iulian Pascal

29 China wants to monitor and control all live streams in real time China's overarching control of the internet, technology, and its people in general is nothing new. The Great Firewall of China is famous for placing huge restrictions on what citizens are able to access online, and recently the government banned the use of social media as a news source. The latest target for the Chinese government is the increasingly popular activity of live streaming. The proposal includes a requirement for all live streamed content to be monitored around the clock. The Cyberspace Administration of China is looking to wipe out what it sees as inappropriate online content, and live streaming is being targeted because of its massive popularity, particularly with Chinese youth. Chinese newspaper the People's Daily reports that the Cyberspace Administration of China wants to introduce a couple of new measures. As well as forcing websites offering live streaming options to monitor the streams around the clock, sites would also be required to have a commenting system in place that appears over the top of video. It's all part of a drive to "strengthen security evaluation of new products like live broadcast", but it will be seen as the government's continuing project to control the internet and purge it of anything that "harms social morality". Photo credit: Blablo101 / Shutterstock 2016-08-19 08:16 By Mark

30 An impressive first experience with the Honor 8 While it used to be that you would have to spend over $600 to get a top-tier handset, there are now a handful of companies shaking up the industry by offering high quality devices at more reasonable prices. As of yesterday, Honor is now one of those companies, debuting the Honor 8 for the United States at a starting price of $399. I've been using the handset for a couple days and I can tell you - I'm highly impressed. When it comes to trying to compete in the same arena as a Samsung S7 or an HTC 10 , you have to first and foremost present a device to the world that exudes the highest of quality. The Honor 8 does this by offering a handset constructed from metal and glass. While this isn't something new, the Honor 8 executes construction with finesse by refining the details, making use of 2.5D glass on the front and back that seamlessly meld the aluminum alloy bezel with the sloping edges of the display and rear glass. Although this in itself would already be enough, Honor has taken the process a step further, by constructing the glass back panel from 15 layers, which gives it a prismatic shimmery effect that puts on quite a show in the right light, and is nothing like I've ever seen before. Although the rear panel is beautiful, it offers much more than just an aesthetic conversation piece, as it houses the 12MP dual lenses and fingerprint reader. The dual camera sits flush with the back panel, going against the norm, which has recently seen design regress, with many handsets' lenses protruding. But, looking good doesn't get you good marks, you also have to back up the aesthetic with performance. So far, the 12MP camera is doing a great job, making colors pop and offering great detail. The Honor 8 is able to accomplish this by using both lenses, one that takes a photo in color and the other in monochrome, and combines the two images for a superior result. As for clarity, most of the photos I have taken look crisp, which can be attributed to the devices use of a hybrid autofocus system that employs both contrast and laser focusing. Naturally, more testing will have to be done over the next couple of weeks, and in more environments. The Honor 8 also comes with a fingerprint reader that is quick and accurate, and can even learn your fingerprint to allow for faster recognition over time. But, what makes the fingerprint sensor on the device unique is that it can also be setup as a customizable button. By invoking what Honor is calling "Smart Key", users can setup the button to act as a shortcut button to gain instant access to actions or an app. Although the list for setting up an action is fairly short with only three (voice recording, flashlight, screenshot) options being available, the potential to setup an app as a shortcut is limitless. Currently, I have a single press opening Snapchat, a double press opening the camera app, and a long press activating the flashlight. So far, this has been extremely convenient, and is a very resourceful way of utilizing the fingerprint sensor. As for performance, the device seems zippy, with applications running smoothly without hiccups. The 3000mAh battery is able to power through most of the day and night, and should be enough for most users. If you tend to use battery intensive apps like Snapchat, the battery will suffer a bit and will most likely require you to recharge. In the intensive situation, using Snapchat sporadically, I was able to make it through a 12 hour day with about 10% battery life remaining. Luckily, the device supports fast charging, but does so through its proprietary charger. Honor 8 specifications: Along with the above, the handset also offers the usual array of ports and sensors like a 3.5mm headphone jack, single speaker output and USB Type-C port. You also have a power button with volume rocker, a set of microphones, IR blaster and a SIM slot that accepts Nano SIM and microSD. For the most part, I am enjoying my time with the Honor 8. The handset is a head turner, and although most that approached me to ask about the device didn't recognize the Honor brand, they did like the Honor 8. Like any handset vying to make a name for itself, the Honor 8 attempts to offer as much as possible with very little compromise. Its solid construction, excellent use of materials, a formidable spec list, and costing a few hundred dollars less than the competition, make this a very real threat for Samsung and others. Over the next week or two, I'll be putting the Honor 8 through its paces exploring the capabilities of the dual lens camera, performance and other aspects of the device. If you have questions in regards to the device, you can leave a comment or find me on Twitter , otherwise be sure to check back soon, as we will have our full review of the Honor 8 up soon. 2016-08-19 07:36 Timi Cantisano

Total 30 articles. Created at 2016-08-20 06:00