IT Executive news

• John Oliver explains why he's on Team Apple in the encryption debate

  14-03-2016 23:10
  
  John Oliver helpfully explained the encryption debate Sunday on his HBO show Last Week Tonight—and how being able to protect the insane amount of data we create every day is “pretty fundamental to how we live our lives.” Now the FBI has taken issue with how built-in encryption in iOS is preventing them from gathering evidence from locked iPhones, and Apple is refusing to code them a way around it.
  It’s a great explanation too, covering most (but not all) of the sides. To
  
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• Comedians find Apple-FBI standoff a laughing matter (watch videos)

  14-03-2016 23:00
  
  Finding humor in Apple vs. FBIThe epic battle between Apple and the FBI over breaking the encryption of an iPhone 5c used by the San Bernardino terrorists is a serious matter and even Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert play it straight when discussing it on their shows recently. But comedians/talk show hosts have also taken the opportunity to point out the absurdities of the situation. Take a spin through these videos if you want a few laughs, though we suggest doing so away from earshot of
  
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• How Under Armour went from shoes and sweats to a health dashboard that might save lives

  14-03-2016 22:52
  
  When Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank was asked 10 years ago if his company was a tech company, he replied, “Well, we’ve got a website. Does that count?” Today, the company best known for its athletic apparel is a platform with four apps, a pair of smart sneakers, and a HealthBox that includes a heart rate strap, fitness band, and scale that all work together. Plank calls it the ultimate health dashboard—and maybe one day it will save your life.
  It took the compa
  
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• Almost 400,000 drones are registered with the FAA

  14-03-2016 22:44
  
  The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's drone registration system is about to hit the 400,000 mark, three months after it was launched."That’s really quite remarkable, and we are very encouraged by these numbers," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, speaking at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday.The FAA developed the registration system with input from the drone industry. It's less about the FAA tracking drone pilots than about educating them on drone safet
  
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• Google’s Cloud Studio proves that cloud-based tech doesn’t have to be boring

  14-03-2016 22:32
  
  Robots, GIFs, and lightsaber battles are not the first things that come to mind when I think about cloud services. But that’s the logic behind Google’s Cloud Studio, a South by Southwest popup showcase in Google’s Fiber building. Attendees can take breaks from the space’s coding challenges to check out some real-life examples of how Google’s cloud platform is used. 
  The cutest demos was Google’s Vision Bot, a little robot on wheels equipped with a camera
  
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• IT workers dispute Disney rehiring claims

  14-03-2016 22:29
  
  Disney is trying to put a happy ending on a grim story.
  Last year, Disney laid off about 250 IT workers after bringing in H-1B using contractors. Some of the employees trained their visa-holding replacements. The news struck a nerve nationally.
  At Thursday's Republican debate in Miami, IT outsourcing at Disney was raised in a question. Some of the presidential candidates were critical of H-1B use at Disney and said the visa program was being abused and needed reform.To read this article in full
  
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• So long, Watson - hello, Noodle: Ex-IBMer launches AI firm for enterprises

  14-03-2016 21:10
  
  Artificial intelligence has made significant inroads in the consumer world, but use of the technology in the enterprise is still in its infancy.Stephen Pratt, who recently quit his job as global leader of Watson for IBM Services, is looking to change that. On Monday, he launched Noodle Analytics, a company that promises to bring the power of AI to businesses. Billed as "the enterprise artificial intelligence company," Noodle is built on the premise that AI is the next big thing that will set com
  
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• U.S. set to smash solar power records this year

  14-03-2016 21:00
  
  New U.S. solar power installations this year are set to break all previous records by more than doubling what was installed last year with 16 billion new watts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity.
  The total operating solar PV capacity in the U.S. is expected to reach 25.6 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of direct current (DC) by the end of the year, according to GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight Report 2015 Year in Review.
  When accounting for all projects (both distributed and centralized), so
  
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• At the office, diversity works, but shorter work weeks may not

  14-03-2016 20:01
  
  AUSTIN -- Achieving a diversified staff in a tech firm can't be done casually, but offering prospective employees a shorter work week may or may not entice them to sign up.
  That was the message from two employment-related conferences at SXSW over the weekend, titled Why Diversity Can't Be Built in a Day and The End of the Work-More Culture?
  As for building diversity, "people say it should be everybody's job, but that hasn't worked — there's no explicit focus," said Abby Maldonado, diversi
  
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• Behind every stupid user is a stupider security professional

  14-03-2016 19:51
  
  Like most IT people, I love reading “stupid user” stories. As long as you don’t have to deal with them, they are generally relatable and entertaining. When I saw an article where a Reddit string asked for IT people to submit the most idiotic things “non-IT people” asked them, I had to click. I soon became very disappointed, but with the IT people.
  While the supposed “idiotic” things are not necessarily security-awareness related, they very well could be
  
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• New NPM will simplify React JavaScript development

  14-03-2016 19:44
  
  The Enclave NPM module currently under development will offer smoother project setup in Facebook's React JavaScript UI library.
  Enclave provides an NPM for compiling JSX and ECMAScript 2015 code into "browser-ready" JavaScript. It takes developers through a series of prompts, creating an enclave.js file in an application's root that will be used by Enclave to reference a build.[ Use JavaScript in your dev shop? InfoWorld looks at 17 JavaScript editors and IDEs and 22 JavaScript frameworks ready
  
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• Terrorist changed iCloud password, disabled auto-backups on his iPhone

  14-03-2016 19:32
  
  The government last week revealed new details about the iPhone that is at the center of an increasingly bitter dispute between federal authorities and Apple.
  In an affidavit submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week, an agent spelled out the steps his team took to access the content on the iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife, Tafsheen Malik, killed 14 in San Bernardino, Calif. on Dec. 2, 2015. The two died in a shootout with police later that day.
  The
  
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• Flash is rocketing into big-data analytics

  14-03-2016 19:31
  
  At one time, all-flash storage arrays were used for a single mission-critical application with a need for speed, usually in big IT shops. Now they're poised to take over many more parts of IT.Systems are being scaled down and tuned to the requirements of medium-sized enterprises, while larger, petabyte-scale flash platforms are about to take on big-data number crunching with unprecedented performance.Falling costs are the main reason. Flash media gets cheaper as it packs more bits into the same
  
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• For Germany's cloud providers, it's location, location, location

  14-03-2016 19:20
  
  German telecos are rolling out new cloud services this week to compete with those from the big U.S. providers. Their selling point is location -- though their “home grown” infrastructure is still dependent on technology from U.S. and Chinese suppliers.Deutsche Telekom switched on its Open Telekom Cloud at the Cebit trade show in Hannover on Monday, promising to keep data in German data centers. The day before, Vodafone Germany took the wraps off a virtual private cloud service for sm
  
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• BrandPost: The Next Wave of Business Software is Smarter, More Predictive

  14-03-2016 19:19
  
  Recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said at Forbes CIO Summit that there is a major shift taking place in the global business software space - toward smarter and more predictive software. According to Benioff, analyzing data and suggesting the future course of action are the next wave of business opportunity. With that growth potential in mind, Salesforce has been acquiring a number of machine learning and data analysis startups, including PredictionIO, MinHash, Tempo IO and RelatelQ.Benioff s
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 7 reasons IT managers have the toughest management roles

  14-03-2016 19:16
  
  IT managers have the toughest management roles in a company and there are 7 reasons that make IT management so difficult. Gaining insight into these dynamics will position you to achieve more success.1. Technology is changing rapidly
  No one disagrees with this point. In fact, most would say technology is changing faster than any time in history. “So what?” you might ask, “This affects all managers doesn’t it?”Well, yes it does to some extent but not to the same leve
  
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• Microsoft renews its pushy Windows 10 activities

  14-03-2016 19:14
  
  It's no secret Microsoft wants you using Windows 10 and will pull out the stops to get people to upgrade. The new strategy now appears to be setting business users against their boss while upgrading consumers without their approval.
  We've already covered the sneaky move Microsoft made when it added that reactivates the GWX.exe app to the updates distributed with last week's Patch Tuesday. GWX.exe is the app that pops up screens encouraging you to update. This has caused a marketplace of free ut
  
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• Algorithms and experiments make strange bedfellows at SXSW

  14-03-2016 18:57
  
  Search and social media algorithms can produce strange results for their users -- but fiddling with them can produce strange results from their users. In both cases the results may be too important to leave purely to machines.
  That was the message from two conference sessions this weekend at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive in Austin, as the largely youth-oriented technology conference moved into its second day under clearing skies.
  "How to raise your IQ by eating gifted children," suggest
  
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• Western Digital ships $31 PiDrive for the Raspberry Pi 3

  14-03-2016 18:43
  
  If you're looking to turn your Raspberry Pi 3 into a usable PC, you'll probably want an external hard drive to provide additional storage. Western Digital's newest PiDrive might be the answer.The company already offers a PiDrive with a 1TB storage capacity, but at $79.99 it's more than twice the cost of the Pi 3. But Western Digital is now offering a 314GB version for $31.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Dropbox takes the reins, moves off AWS and onto its own infrastructure

  14-03-2016 18:12
  After years of relying on the Amazon cloud to store its users' files, Dropbox has shifted gears and begun using primarily its own technology instead."We’re excited to announce that we’re now storing and serving over 90 percent of our users’ data on our custom-built infrastructure," the company said in a blog post Monday.Dropbox stores two kinds of data: file content, and metadata about files and users. The service always had a hybrid architecture, whereby metadata was stored on
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How conversational interfaces can be the future of mobile and IoT in the enterprise

  14-03-2016 17:55
  
  Voice interfaces have been a dream of technologists for a long time. In recent years, we have witnessed how advances in deep learning and cognitive computing technologies have made voice interfaces a reality for consumer mobile applications. Even though conversational interfaces still haven’t seen meaningful adoption in the enterprise—this  is about to change. The capabilities and rapid progress of conversational interfaces are set to become one of the fundamental building block
  
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• Documents with malicious macros deliver fileless malware to financial-transaction systems

  14-03-2016 17:36
  
  Spammed Word documents with malicious macros have become a popular method of infecting computers over the past few months. Attackers are now taking it one step further by using such documents to deliver fileless malware that gets loaded directly in the computer's memory.Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks analyzed a recent attack campaign that pushed spam emails with malicious Word documents to business email addresses from the U.S., Canada and Europe.The emails contained the recipients
  
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• Windows 7 users complain of unprovoked Windows 10 auto-upgrades

  14-03-2016 17:23
  
  As Microsoft auto-upgrades more PCs to Windows 10, some users are complaining that they weren’t adequately notified.
  Reports of unwanted Windows 10 upgrades have been circulating for the past few days on Reddit and Twitter, after the last Patch Tuesday. These users say they never approved or initiated the upgrade, and were dragged away from their Windows 7 (or perhaps Windows 8) installs anyway.
  This is all part of Microsoft’s plan, of course. Last October, the company announced tha
  
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• Make VR worlds for Samsung's Gear VR with Qualcomm dev kit

  14-03-2016 17:16
  
  As interest in virtual reality explodes, there's a growing focus among developers on  writing programs that can provide interactive experiences on VR headsets. Now, Qualcomm is jumping in with a new VR software development kit that makes it possible to write applications for Samsung's Gear VR headset.Apps written with the kit, due out in the second quarter, will exploit graphics features on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chip, which is in some models of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartpho
  
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• 4 things you won't like about Fitbit Blaze — and 3 you will

  14-03-2016 17:09
  
  When Fitbit first unveiled its $200 Blaze "smart fitness watch" in January, many Fitbit fans — myself included — rolled their eyes. Fitbit stock took a dive after Blaze's debut. I even wrote a blog post that detailed three ways Fitbit missed its mark with Blaze. Three months later, Blaze reviews are mixed at best. And yet, Blaze is currently the No. 1 best-selling smartwatch on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Lab test finds new Galaxy phones water resistant, but not waterproof

  14-03-2016 16:52
  
  Both the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are advertised as water resistant, but they aren't waterproof, as a 30-minute dunk test proved.
  SquareTrade Labs tested both phones in a Deep Water DunkBot and found that both mostly survived after 30 minutes under five feet of water, but their audio was left permanently muffled and distorted as a result.
  SquareTrade, which sells smartphone warranty plans,posted a video of its testing. In it, the company notes that Samsung's claim is that both phones a
  
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• Software defined mainframe biedt legacy-applicaties virtuele thuisopvang

  14-03-2016 16:34
  De Zwitserse Softwaremaker LzLabs claimt een oplossing te hebben voor de obstakels die grote ondernemingen verhinderen hun digitale transitie te vervolmaken. Met de door het bedrijf in de markt gezette oplossing, het Software Defined Mainframe, kunnen  organisaties hun legacy mainframe-applicaties en -data... lees meer
  
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• Microsoft Store's Pi Day discount offers 31.4% off the best Ultrabook in the world

  14-03-2016 15:36
  
  If you need any more proof that the geeks are taking over the world, look no further than Pi Day, a.k.a. March 14. (3.14, get it?) Pi day used to be made up “holiday” revolving around an amusing numerical coincidence your algebra teacher would talk about. Now, it’s marketing. Luckily for you, the Microsoft Store is celebrating this year with a fantastic deal, and it deliberately misplaced the decimal to boot.[ Related: 10 surprisingly practical Raspberry Pi projects anybody can
  
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• How CIOs can drive digital innovation through collaboration

  14-03-2016 15:01
  
  I have good news for the CIO community: Senior executives at leading companies are getting the message that leveraging information and technology to improve competitive advantage changes the dynamics of the enterprise and must be at the core of every corporate strategy. Here are a few examples.The board of ANZ Bank in Australia hired Filippo Passerini, former CIO of Procter & Gamble and currently an operating executive with The Carlyle Group, and three other IT thought leaders to provide adv
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: It’s 2:00 a.m. – do you know where your data streams are?

  14-03-2016 13:41
  
  Only two apps, Facebook and YouTube, occupy more of our time than our need to know our location and proximity to others. As humans, our need to connect socially and our need to be entertained are dominant instincts. But location – and its relative cousin proximity – has been one of the most important components of information exchange since the discovery of the first fruit tree  (“Eve, where did you get that apple?”). Latitude and longitude have been guiding traveler
  
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• On writing, collaboration and software development

  14-03-2016 13:05
  
  Back in college, as an English Literature major with a minor in journalism, most of my writing classes involved workshopping: sharing pieces of writing with the entire class or with a small group of classmates so we could constructively critique each other's writing in the hopes of making each piece stronger and better.While it's incredibly nerve-wracking (OK, sometimes downright painful) to share something of your own creation with others, we all quickly learned how valuable those objective ins
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Is the 5K iMac good for playing games?

  14-03-2016 13:02
  I bought a 5K iMac when it was first released a couple of years ago. I couldn’t resist getting the first iMac with a retina screen, after waiting such a long time for one. And I’ve never regretted my purchase. I use it every day, and I’m writing this post on it right now.But one of the issues that keeps coming up over and over again with the 5K iMac is how well it plays games. Is it worth buying if you’re a gamer? Or should you skip it and buy a Windows PC or even build a
  
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• 10 questions to ask analytics vendors (before you buy)

  14-03-2016 13:01
  
  Choosing the right analytics platform is essential. After all, the product you choose will be helping leaders make critical business decisions for years to come - that's if you get it right.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• March Madness apps for iOS could put corporate data at risk

  14-03-2016 13:00
  
  College basketball's popular March Madness tournament begins this week, and fans have access to more related mobile apps than ever before. However, people who use such apps on corporate-owned of BYOD devices should beware; many of these apps can burrow into corporate networks and present real security risks.Some of the most popular sports-related iOS apps for iPhone and iPad can access users' calendars, share data with social networking sites, send texts, and make repeat calls to premium-priced
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Looks like a three dog night - be careful with project terminology

  14-03-2016 13:00
  
  The radio is blasting, someone's knocking at the door. I'm looking at my project manager - he's passed out on the floor. I've seen so many things that I've never seen before. Don't know what it is - I don't wanna see no more.In 1967, an American band formed that would soon come to be known as “Three Dog Night.” And those are slightly altered words from one of their biggest hits...”Momma Told Me Not to Come.” Apparently a band member is singing about going to party and see
  
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• 14 things you need to know about SEO friendly site design

  14-03-2016 13:00
  
  Many misconceptions exist about what is and isn't search engine friendly website design, according to Shari Thurow, founder and SEO director of Omni Marketing Interactive.
  Thurow, who recently spoke at the SMW West search marketing conference, says one assumption is that search engine friendly sites are, by default, also user friendly. Many people believe that for sites to be search engine friendly, they must use only text links for navigation. Others think XML sitemaps are essential, or that s
  
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• 7 cringe-worthy video job interview bloopers

  14-03-2016 12:42
  
  Video job interview bloopersImage by ThinkstockAs the popularity of video interviews increases, so do chances for major "on-air" bloopers. IT recruiting, staffing, consulting and research company Robert Half Technology asked more than 600 senior-level managers to describe the most cringe-worthy video interview bloopers."There are so many horror stories around video. These all can be avoided if candidates recognize that they have to take this seriously -- just because it's not in-person doesn't m
  
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• HPE offers new business model for fashion, fitness and gaming businesses

  14-03-2016 12:09
  
  Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a new business model for the clothing retail, fitness and PC gaming industries: Get into the modeling business.The company has incorporated the mother of all photo booths into its stand at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week, and is inviting visitors to step inside to create their own digital avatar.HPE integrated offerings from three companies to create the Avatar Platform, which builds 3D models of people that can then be digitally clothed and ani
  
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• Galaxy S7 Edge review: Samsung's vanity phone is all grown up

  14-03-2016 12:00
  
  I was such a skeptic about last year’s Galaxy S6 Edge, but then I ended up buying one from my carrier. I still have it, and I still bring along the S6 Edge as my “camera phone” when I know the Nexus 6P just won’t cut it. 
  That said, I’m actually seriously disappointed in myself for not waiting another year before using my upgrade to buy a smartphone. The Galaxy S7 Edge is one of those Android flagship devices that’s worth blowing your carrier subsidy for
  
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• How to conduct a tabletop exercise

  14-03-2016 11:46
  
  As you discovered in the first installment of this five-part series, tabletop exercises can be an important practical tool for reviewing and updating incident response plans. You should schedule them to correspond with yearly Incident Response (IR) plan reviews.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Defense in depth: Stop spending, start consolidating

  14-03-2016 11:16
  
  When it comes to layered defense and security tools, less is often more just as more can sometimes be less. The average enterprise uses 75 security products to secure their network. That's a lot of noise and a lot of monitoring and testing for security practitioners. 
  To make sure that the security tools not only work but work in harmony with each other, some security professionals recommend taking a closer look at the layers of the security ecosystem to eliminate redundancies that contrib
  
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• The top 14 new open source projects

  14-03-2016 11:00
  
  Open source rookies of the yearWelcome to the eighth edition of the Black Duck Open Source Rookies of the Year awards. Each year, Black Duck reviews the world of open source and recognizes the best new projects launched during the past year -- and since 2014, we've published the results on InfoWorld.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Review: Consider VPN services for hotspot protection

  14-03-2016 11:00
  
  Virtual private networks have many uses. Typically, businesses deploy VPNs so employees can securely access the corporate network from outside the office. However, we’ve seen a rise in third-party VPN services that use the same underlying technology, the encrypted tunnel, to simply provide a secure Internet connection.
  The main window of the Freedome Windows application shows a big circle which tells you the connection status and serves as a connect/disconnect button. On the sides of that
  
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• Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 support ends in April

  14-03-2016 11:00
  
  Beginning next month, Microsoft will end support for its Visual Studio 2005 software development platform, which was released more than 10 years ago.
  Microsoft's Eric Zajac, senior program manager for Visual Studio, stated on Friday that it's time to "say good-bye" to the platform. "In line with our support policy, starting April 12, 2016, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, technical support, or hotfixes, for all Visual Studio 2005 products and the redistributable component
  
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• 7 VPN services for hotspot protection

  14-03-2016 11:00
  
  VPNsVirtual private networks (VPNs) have many uses. When connected to a VPN service, the websites you access think you’re at the location where the VPN server is located. This can help anonymize your Internet traffic so it’s much harder for websites to track your personal browsing history. This also allows you to access content that’s restricted where you are currently located, such as Netflix or Hulu when traveling overseas. We evaluated seven third-party VPN services. Here ar
  
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• 4 reasons not to pay up in a ransomware attack

  14-03-2016 11:00
  
  When a demand for your money or your data pops up on a critical system, you have only a short period of time to decide whether to respond to a ransomware attack.
  Online extortion is on the increase, as criminals use a variety of attack vectors, including exploit kits, malicious files, and links in spam messages, to infect systems with ransomware. Once all the files have been encrypted, victims can either try to recover the files on their own or pay the ransom. While there have been some ex
  
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• 10 surprisingly practical Raspberry Pi projects anybody can do

  14-03-2016 11:00
  Practical Pi projectsMost of the Raspberry Pi coverage you’ll see around the web focuses on the more fantastical projects—magic mirrors, portable gaming handhelds, intelligent drones, and so forth. And for good reason! Those maker masterpieces show what sort of power the $35 mini-PC is capable of in the hands of someone with a little imagination and a bin full of spare electronics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• AlphaGo’s unusual moves prove its AI prowess, experts say

  14-03-2016 10:48
  
  Playing against a top Go player, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo artificial-intelligence program has puzzled commentators with moves that are often described as “beautiful,” but do not fit into the usual human style of play.Artificial-intelligence experts think these moves reflect a key AI strength of AlphaGo, its ability to learn from its experience. Such moves cannot be produced by just incorporating human knowledge, said Doina Precup, associate professor in the School of Computer
  
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• TV's 'Mr. Robot' will take on encryption as Apple's battle with the FBI rages on

  14-03-2016 10:45
  
  For its second season, Mr. Robot will weigh in on the current spat between Apple and the FBI with a fictional storyline involving encryption and law enforcement.
  “What’s weird is [that for the second season] we were already going [into the new season] talking thematically about privacy, and then this whole thing with Apple and Tim Cook happened,” Sam Esmail said during the Mr. Robot panel at South By Southwest on Sunday. The creator of the hacker drama was joine
  
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• Microsoft to open-source AI development platform based on Minecraft

  14-03-2016 07:56
  
  Microsoft has decided to open-source a platform used by its researchers to test artificial-intelligence projects.The AIX platform, which is already being used by Microsoft Research and is available under a private beta to select academic researchers, allows researchers to use the unstructured play in the Minecraft  game as a testing ground for their AI research.AIX will also be made available this summer under an open-source license.The announcement comes at a time when Google DeepMind is g
  
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