IT Executive news

• DOJ knew of possible iPhone-cracking method before Apple case

  23-03-2016 22:30
  Weeks before the FBI sought a court order forcing Apple to help it break into an iPhone used by one of the the San Bernardino gunmen, a sister agency in the Department of Justice was already using an Israeli security firm's technology to attempt to crack a similar device.The FBI and the DOJ have repeatedly insisted that they had no other option but to force Apple to help them crack an iPhone used by the gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, at least until an outside party offered assistance earlier th
  
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• Microsoft's Millennial Twitter chatbot is both totes cringey and epically awesome

  23-03-2016 22:29
  
  Everyone just stop right now and check out Microsoft’s new Tay chatbot, an “AI fam from the internet that’s got zero chill.” Guys, this is everything. OMG!
  Slightly awkward? Yep. Probably a bit derogatory towards Millennials? Um, yeah. Hilarious and worth checking out for a good chuckle? Yeah, I’d say so. 
  If you have an account on Kik, GroupMe, or Twitter, you can begin interacting with Tay right now. “Tay is designed to engage and entertain p
  
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• Google launches service to make machine learning easier

  23-03-2016 22:23
  
  Google is making it easier for businesses to take advantage of the machine learning revolution with a new product for building models that predict the future. At the company's GCP Next conference in San Francisco, Google announced the private beta of a new Cloud Machine Learning service that lets businesses create a custom machine learning model. To do so, users work with data they have in Google's other cloud services. Cloud Machine Learning handles data ingestion and training and then use
  
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• Tesla nixes 10kWh home battery, for now

  23-03-2016 22:20
  
  Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced two Powerwall lithium-ion batteries last year: one was a 7kWh (6.4kWh in actuality) version for $3,000; the other a 10kWh version for $3,500. (Prices do not include an AC-to-DC power inverter and system installation.) But the 10kWh version is no longer going to be sold.
  The 10-kilowatt-hour (kWh) Powerwall would have been optimized for backup and the 7kWh battery is meant for daily use. Both can be connected to rooftop solar panels or the grid to provide power, eit
  
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• Hottest job? Data scientists say they're still mostly digital 'janitors'

  23-03-2016 22:01
  
  Data scientists are considered to have the hottest job right now, but a new study suggests they're little more than "digital janitors" who spend most of their time cleaning data to prepare it for analysis.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• AT&T uses low-power antennas to prevent cellular interference with telescope

  23-03-2016 20:28
  
  AT&T engineered an unusual low-power antenna system inside a radio quiet zone at a snow resort in rural West Virginia, giving thousands of daily smartphone users network access for the first time.
  Work on the multimillion-dollar solution started in 2013 and took months of testing with engineers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and staff at Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort.
  The custom-designed Distributed Antenna System (DAS) network went operational in 2015 and worked well for
  
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• Eric Schmidt sees a huge future for machine learning

  23-03-2016 20:25
  
  The man who helped build Google from a search engine into one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world has predicted the emergence of a new computing architecture based on crowd-sourced data and machine learning.Speaking at Google's GCP Next cloud computing conference in San Francisco, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt said the combination of crowd-sourced data and machine learning will be the basis of "every successful huge IPO" in five years."He said the adoption of machine lear
  
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• Samsung is developing a new OS for the Internet of Things

  23-03-2016 20:11
  
  Samsung is developing a new operating system for the Internet of Things, hoping to make a bigger role for itself in the millions of smart home appliances, wearables and industrial equipment that are coming online.The OS, which will be open source and hasn't yet been named, will help devices to execute simple tasks quickly without human intervention. For example, the software could instruct a door lock to open and the lights to come on as a person approaches their home.More details are due to be
  
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• ISPs have built huge data systems to track you with, report says

  23-03-2016 19:47
  Web users face an even greater threat to their privacy as large ISPs align themselves more closely with data brokers to track their customers, an advocacy group said.Several large ISPs have either formed partnerships with, or acquired, data tracking and analytics firms in recent years, giving them a "vast storehouse of consumer data," according to a report Wednesday from the Center for Digital Democracy."ISPs have been on a shopping spree to help build their data-targeting system across devices
  
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• Google's new Stackdriver service can manage applications across multiple clouds

  23-03-2016 19:30
  
  Google is aiming to help companies manage applications across public and private clouds with a new product and a set of partnerships announced at its cloud user conference Wednesday.The company unveiled a new service that's now in beta called Stackdriver, which allows customers to monitor workloads running on both Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services. It's a powerful tool that should allow users straddling two  different public cloud environments to have a single pane of glass to m
  
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• Take a 4K VR tour around Google's Oregon data center

  23-03-2016 19:03
  
  Data centers are typically high-security locations and operators don't like you snooping around, but Google is giving users a look at one of its latest and most advanced data centers using virtual reality.The tour of Google's data center in The Dalles, Oregon, was published to coincide with the company's Google Compute Summit which starts Wednesday in San Francisco.Google is trying to entice more customers to its cloud services, to compete better with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and showi
  
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• Even 800-pound gorillas can be disrupted

  23-03-2016 18:49
  
  Frito-LayTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• French publishers are cracking down on Web freeloaders

  23-03-2016 18:18
  
  France declared war on freeloaders this week, as the Paris Métro cracked down on ticket fraud and the nation's newspapers formed a bloc against ad-blockers. But it seems freeloading does still pay.Ten percent or more of travelers on the tramways circling Paris don't pay, according to the local transit authority, which this week began deploying additional ticket inspectors on the three lines most affected.But the proportion of freeloaders is far higher online in France, where as many as 30
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Red Hat just proved you can make billions of dollars with open source

  23-03-2016 18:17
  
  Red Hat has become the icon for other companies to follow: they established that you can make money from open source. And they do it the old fashioned way, selling subscription and support.
  What makes Red Hat an important case is that while they retain their business model they are an extremely dynamic company that continues to transform itself.
  Red Hat made the right bet at the right time by announcing its transformation from a client-server company to cloud-mobile company. It invested in tech
  
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• Google: Autonomous cars coming 'relatively soon'

  23-03-2016 18:13
  
  Google says autonomous cars will be available "relatively soon" and people will accept them in their lives faster than some observers have expected.
  "It's not coming until we're confident about your safety," said Ron Medford, director of safety for Google's Self-Driving Cars program and former deputy director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). "It'll be relatively soon but we don't have a date to put on it. It'll be a gradual rollout. It's not going to be replacing t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Inside AT&T's open source, software-defined transformation

  23-03-2016 17:48
  
  John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President, Technology and Operations at AT&T said during his keynote at Open Networking Summit earlier this month that they are going through a data explosion at AT&T. The has been more than 150,000% growth in data traffic on AT&T’s wireless network from 2007 through 2015. Out of all this traffic, over 60% is video. And virtual reality (VR) promises to push networks to their limits.
  To address these changing market dynamics, compa
  
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• Meet Tay, Microsoft's new AI chat bot

  23-03-2016 17:34
  
  Attention all 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S.: Tay is online now, and she wants to chat with you.That, at least, is according to a new Web page for the artificially intelligent bot, which was created by Microsoft to learn more about how people converse.The bot is now on hand to chat with you on Twitter as well as Kik and GroupMe; it's also on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. The more you chat with it, the smarter it gets, Microsoft says, leading to a personalized experience.To re
  
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• Here's how the FBI plans to crack terrorist's iPhone

  23-03-2016 17:33
  
  An outside contractor with established ties to the FBI has most likely shown investigators how to circumvent the iPhone's security measures by copying the contents of the device's flash storage, a forensics expert said today.
  Called "NAND mirroring," the technique relies on using numerous copies of the iPhone storage to input possible passcodes until the correct one is found.
  "The other ideas, I've kind of ruled out," said Jonathan Zdziarski in an interview. Zdziarski is a noted iPhone forensic
  
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• Microsoft adds macros lockdown feature in Office 2016 in response to increasing attacks

  23-03-2016 17:14
  
  Enterprise system administrators can now block attackers from using a favorite malware infection method: Microsoft Office documents with malicious macros.Microsoft this week added a new option in Office 2016 that allows administrators to block macros -- embedded automation scripts -- from running in Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that originate from the Internet.Microsoft Office programs support macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and they can be used for malicious activ
  
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• Uber dares hackers to find flaws, offers up to $10K bounty

  23-03-2016 17:13
  
  On-demand car service Uber is offering from $3,000 to $10,000 to hackers who can find flaws in its computer and communications systems.
  HackerOne, a company that connects white-hat hackers to companies who want to use them to test the security of systems, is running Uber's "bounty program."
  The amount of the reward is based on the severity of the flaw discovered by a hackers, i.e., security researchers.
  HackerOne has established three categories of rewards; $10,000 for a "critical flaw," $5,000
  
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• Social engineering 101: 18 ways to hack a human [Infographic]

  23-03-2016 16:45
  
  What will the cause of your next security breach?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Deflating Apple's hubris: Why 600 million people using 5-year-old PCs is a great thing

  23-03-2016 16:33
  
  Something made me uneasy watching Apple’s iPhone SE event earlier this week.
  No, it wasn’t the fact that Apple threw a big event to launch a few watchbands and smaller versions of iPhones and iPads that already existed—though that was sort of weird. Instead, it was a line that Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing, tossed out in the middle of peddling the 9.7-inch iPad Pro as a so-called PC replacement.To read this article in full or to leave a com
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Opportunity knocks for IBM customers, but will they answer?

  23-03-2016 16:15
  
  At UpperEdge, clients often ask us, “When is the best time to negotiate with a particular vendor?”  Clients will inquire about quarter-end, year-end, earlier renewal, new large strategic purchase, etc.  The answer is that it depends on a number of factors and is typically unique to the specific circumstances of the client and vendor at that particular point in time.  However, there are certain vendor specific situations that arise that make for an ideal time to negotia
  
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• Moore's Law stutters: Intel officially puts 'tick-tock' CPU release cycle on hiatus

  23-03-2016 15:51
  Intel is saying goodbye to its traditional “tick-tock” product cycle, and turning to a new three-step process for the foreseeable future.
  The chip giant revealed its plans in a 10-K filing with the SEC, first spotted by Fool.com. Instead of moving to a new manufacturing process technology roughly every two years—with new CPU architecture on that same process in intervening years—Intel will stretch out the timeline and add a third leg to the cycle, called “Optimizat
  
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• Want a Chrome tablet? CTL's new Chromebook features a flip screen

  23-03-2016 15:38
  CTL's new J5 Rugged Convertible Chromebook offers versatility: It can be used as a laptop or a tablet, and pricing starts at just US$249.The device has an 11.6-inch touchscreen that can rotate to turn into a Chrome OS tablet. It is designed similar to Lenovo's popular Yoga hybrids.At the entry-level $249 price, the Chromebook doesn't boast premium features. The screen displays images at a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution, in line with other low-cost Chromebooks. The J5 Rugged Convertib
  
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• Quantum networkers, watch out: Twisting light slows it down

  23-03-2016 15:00
  
  Slowing down the speed of light may sound exciting if you're a sci-fi author, but if you're an optical engineer, it might just make your workdays longer.Scientists at the University of Ottawa say twisting light into a corkscrew shape slows it down. Doing this can cut 0.1 percent off the speed of light, a tiny tap of the brakes that nevertheless could create a traffic jam for future networks and even quantum computing.Twisted light is emerging as a possible boost for optical networking, which is
  
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• Why Apple no longer needs an iPhone 'wow factor'

  23-03-2016 14:46
  
  CUPERTINO, Calif. — When Apple releases new products these days, the company simply doesn't "wow" as many customers or industry watchers as it once did. Apple says it makes revolutionary changes in virtually all of its product innovations — a boast that invites endless skepticism from the tech press and other critics — but most of its true technological advances today are "under the hood," and they largely go unnoticed by the masses. 
  Technologists and media that follow A
  
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• iOS 9.3 brings Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE to Verizon iPhones

  23-03-2016 14:26
  
  Verizon Wireless customers who use an iPhone 6 or newer can now make voice calls over Wi-Fi, a feature that can improve call quality in areas where the cellular signal is weak. Later this week, Verizon plans to push another free update to late-model iPhones that will enable an HD Voice feature to improve call quality and add other enhancements.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Azure IoT Suite gets down to business

  23-03-2016 13:17
  
  Whether your business is making jet engines, delivering towels or emptying rat traps, you need to be looking at how you can improve margins and customer satisfaction with the Internet of Things – because your competitors is.Services like Microsoft’s Azure IoT Suite mean you don’t have to become experts in distributed systems to make IoT work for your business. That’s handy, because it’s more often business leaders than IT teams buying IoT. It’s not about gadge
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The trouble with rogue IT, a service provider perspective

  23-03-2016 13:10
  
  With the migration to the cloud in full swing, rogue IT can be a problem for companies when employees bypass corporate IT and sign up for cloud services. To get his take on the problem and solutions, I spoke with Peter Kraatz, national practice director of cloud service management at Datalink.Peter opened the conversation by commenting that if IT does not change the way they engage the business, rogue IT will only get worse. Part of the problem is that IT does not understand the business. At a c
  
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• How social media adds value to CRM

  23-03-2016 13:08
  
  Sales and marketing increasingly rely on digital tools to achieve their goals. IT leaders have the opportunity to support these functions by enhancing CRM tools. Delivering social media capabilities to CRM platforms is an excellent way to help these groups. Effective solutions, however, require more than a technology connection.CIOs and their staff need to build process and people strategies to ensure tools are used effectively. In many areas, the “build it and they will come” approa
  
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• How to prepare your website for Google algorithm updates

  23-03-2016 13:00
  
  During the past few years, Google released major updates to its search engine algorithm, including the "Panda," "Penguin," "Pigeon," "Payday," "Pirate," and "Mobile Friendly" upgrades. These algorithm changes often leave digital marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners scrambling to adapt, especially when their websites suddenly drop in Google search rankings.What's next on Google's algorithm to-do list? It's hard to say, because the company is famously quiet about its plans
  
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• 8 tips to handle IT job search rejection

  23-03-2016 12:55
  
  Even in the booming IT industry with unemployment at historic lows, landing a tech job isn't a given. Making it through several rounds of interviews and technical screenings can make you feel as though you're a shoe-in for the role, only to discover the company's decided you're not the right fit.
  "In the IT industry, demand is incredibly high right now, and with that many other candidates, competition is fierce and the pressure is high. It can be devastating if you're passed over for a role, but
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Did Apple cripple the 9.7-inch iPad Pro by only including 2GB of RAM?

  23-03-2016 12:46
  When Apple announced the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, there was quite a bit of interest from current iPad users. Many of these potential upgraders also have older iPads and have been waiting a long time for a new iPad Air.The initial reaction about the 9.7-inch iPad Pro from Apple’s customers was quite positive…until it was disclosed that the smaller iPad Pro ships with only 2GB of RAM. This stands in stark contrast with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which comes with 4GB of RAM.As you might imagine
  
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• FBI, Apple battle may leave lasting legacy

  23-03-2016 12:45
  
  The FBI may have backed off from its demand that Apple build a backdoor to an iPhone security mechanism, for now at least, but experts say that a lasting legacy will remain in terms of the educational impact of the battle.
  John Oliver's 18-minute segment on strong encryption for HBO's Last Week Tonight has been watched nearly 5 million times on YouTube since it first aired on March 13.
  Apple CEO Tim Cook was on the cover of the March 28 issue of Time magazine, pledging not to back down.
  [ MORE
  
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• Diversity's more than gender

  23-03-2016 12:41
  
  Despite the IT industry's push for greater diversity and inclusion, there's still a long way to go. Though there's been a major effort, industry-wide, to increase the numbers of women working in the industry, there's still a dearth of black, Latino/Hispanic and native American tech talent. In 2014, USA Today reported that black and Hispanic tech talent made up 4.5 percent of computer engineering and computer science graduates, based on data from the Computing Research Association's most recent T
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How medical robots will change healthcare

  23-03-2016 12:00
  
  Robotics health threatens to challenge how patient care and treatment is performed redefining the word "preventative."All too often we hear about the benefits of mobile or 3D printing, but how often do you hear about medical nanobots or nanomites? The average life expectancy is increasing.  In 1960, average life expectancy was 69.8 years, thirty years later that rose to 75.2 in 1990 and today it’s around 78.8 years according to the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC). Ne
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What changing a tire taught me about project management

  23-03-2016 11:51
  
  I thought I was a fairly organized person. Thought. And then I started to change a tire on our large 12-passenger van. The best part of it was the help I received from my project team – my 5-year-old son Ryan and my two 7-year-olds, Jack and Leah. The worst part? Everything else.I hate rework above just about anything else and I've managed projects long enough and I've been an application developer long enough to know that rework usually results from poor or incomplete planning or poo
  
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• Janneke Niessen meest innovatieve leider van Nederland

  23-03-2016 11:48
  Janneke Niessen, innovatiebaas en medeoprichter van Improve Digital, heeft gisteravond in Den Bosch de TIM Award gewonnen voor de meest innovatieve IT-leider van Nederland. RET en Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) vielen in de prijzen in de categorieën meest innovatieve bedrijf en IT-vendor. HPE speelde bovendien... lees meer
  
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• Security spring cleaning time

  23-03-2016 11:05
  
  Get rid of that stuff collecting dustImage by ThinkstockAs new security threats continue to emerge and security teams find themselves stuck in the cycle of piling on new products and policies each time they receive an alert notification, true functions of security programs get lost in the clutter. As melting snow and longer days promise that spring is right around the corner, take this time to start fresh and “spring clean” your security ecosystems. To help get you started, these inf
  
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• Why the iPad Pro may, or may not, work at work

  23-03-2016 11:00
  
  Apple filled out its iPad lineup on Monday. As expected, the company announced a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. The new model doesn't replace the year-and-a-half-old iPad Air 2, despite having pretty much the same form factor. Instead it strikes a middle ground between the size of the iPad Air 2 and the performance of its 12.9-inch sibling released last fall. It also strikes a middle ground in terms of price, coming in at $200 more than the iPad Air 2 and $200 less than the larger iPad Pro.
  Apple also
  
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• What we’d like to see in Apple’s next MacBook update

  23-03-2016 11:00
  The news and the rumors never stop. When we woke up from our hangovers from covering Monday’s Apple event, we saw a vague Digitimes report stating that new MacBooks will be revealed “at the end of the second quarter.” Then AppleInsider posted an article stating that “low stocks of some current MacBooks models may indicate that Apple is preparing to refresh its laptops,” which seems to support the Digitimes report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment,
  
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• Should you worry that your car will be hacked?

  23-03-2016 11:00
  
  The federal government's warning last week about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in vehicles is a well-intentioned public service announcement that has little value for consumers.
  The warning noted the highly publicized wireless vehicle hack of a Chrysler Jeep Cherokee last July, where two security experts demonstrated they could control critical functions of the vehicle. The revelation lead to Chrysler recalling 1.4 million vehicles to update software.To read this article in full or to leave a c
  
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• Third jury trial in Apple-Samsung patent dispute in California postponed indefinitely

  23-03-2016 08:37
  A third jury trial in a patent dispute between Samsung Electronics and Apple in a court in California has been postponed, pending a review by the U.S. Supreme Court of the principle for the award of damages for infringement of design patents.
  The third trial in the case that dates back to April 2011 had been set for March 28 to reassess the damages to be paid by Samsung on five products that were earlier found to infringe certain Apple patents and dilute its trade dresses, which refer to the ov
  
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• What will Google do to make its cloud appeal to more companies?

  23-03-2016 02:40
  
  When Google executives take the stage Wednesday at the company’s conference for customers of its cloud platform, they’re going to have quite a task in front of them.While the company’s cloud is the choice for some household names like Best Buy and Spotify, it hasn’t seen the same adoption as competing offerings from providers like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.These vendors are currently the market leaders in the public cloud race, with Amazon holding a dominant share
  
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• The Syrian Electronic Army was careless with Gmail, Facebook

  23-03-2016 02:14
  
  If you're a hacker, it's a good idea to stay away from Facebook and Gmail to communicate with your colleagues.Three men, who allegedly were part of a multi-year hacking campaign executed by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), left a long digital trail that didn't make them hard to identify, according to court documents.The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges on Tuesday against the men, who are accused of hacking companies and defacing websites.The SEA, which emerged around July 2011, claim
  
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• Apple Watch's $50 price drop shows reaction to slow 2015 sales

  23-03-2016 02:08
  
  Apple's smartwatch-related announcements on Monday, including a price drop, reveal a clever adjustment to slow sales in 2015 for the entire smartwatch category, analysts said.
  The biggest news: Apple announced a $50 price cut to $299 for its entry-level 38mm Apple Watch Sport model, along with several new watchband colors. The stylish woven nylon bands will cost $49 apiece when purchased separately from Apple. The 42mm Sport model was also reduced by $50 to $349.
  Possibly more important, Apple
  
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• Two dozen vehicles found to have wireless key-entry systems that are vulnerable to hacking

  23-03-2016 02:04
  
  On the heels of the federal government's warning about automotive cybersecurity vulnerabilities, a group of German vehicle security researchers has released a study showing many wireless key entry systems are vulnerable to hacking.
  Munich-based ADAC (Allgemeine Deutsche Automobil-Club) performed the study on dozens of cars to test a radio "amplification attack" that extends the range of a driver's wireless key fobs to open cars and even start their ignitions.To read this article in full or to l
  
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• Oracle winds up legal machine, lobs copyright lawsuit at HPE

  23-03-2016 02:04
  
  Oracle has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Hewlett Packard Enterprise, claiming it was part of an illegal scheme to sell Solaris support services to Oracle customers.The case involves an area of the tech industry known as third-party maintenance and support, in which customers buy support services from a third party for less than they would normally pay their primary vendor.Oracle has brought several lawsuits against such providers, and last June it won a judgment against a third-
  
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