IT Executive news

• Solar on all U.S. roofs would supply 39% of power

  08-04-2016 22:01
  
  A federal study has revealed that if Americans installed solar panels on every roof, it would supply 39% of the total power used by the U.S.
  Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) used light detection and ranging (lidar) data, geographic information systems and photovoltaic (PV) generation modeling to calculate the suitability of rooftops for hosting solar panels in 128 cities nationwide, representing about 23% of U.S. buildings.
  The total national potential of rooftop
  
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• U.S. newspapers threaten to sue Brave browser maker over ad-blocking scheme

  08-04-2016 21:45
  
  More than a dozen newspaper publishers yesterday threatened the maker of the new Brave browser with legal action if Brave Software goes ahead with plans to replace websites' ads with its own.
  "Your plan to use our content to sell your advertising is indistinguishable from a plan to steal our content to publish on your own website [emphasis in original]," lawyers for 17 publishers wrote in a letter to Brave Software's founder and CEO, Brendan Eich.
  The publishers represented more than 1,700 U.S.
  
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• BlackBerry will attempt its last hurrah with a pair of mid-range smartphones

  08-04-2016 20:56
  
  BlackBerry isn’t throwing in the towel just yet.
  In what could be described as a last ditch effort, the company’s chief executive, John Chen, told The National that BlackBerry plans to launch two mid-range Android smartphones this year. One of those phones will come equipped with a physical keyboard similar to that featured on last year’s launch, the Priv, while the second smartphone will offer a full touchscreen experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, p
  
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• Proposed US law would require tech companies to help defeat encryption

  08-04-2016 20:35
  A proposal from two senior U.S. senators would force tech companies to give technical assistance to law enforcement agencies trying to break into smartphones and other encrypted devices.The draft bill, released Friday by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, would allow judges to order tech companies to comply with requests from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to help them break into devices. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Com
  
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• GDPR explained: What you need to know about the EU's data protection rules

  08-04-2016 20:27
  
  If your organization does business in Europe or collects data on European citizens, you're likely well aware of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is expected to be formally adopted this spring and go into effect in 2018. But how prepared are you to take the steps necessary for compliance?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• The FCC aims to restore competition in the business broadband market, may help slash costs

  08-04-2016 20:24
  
  The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will take steps to restore competition in the market for broadband services used by businesses, potentially saving them billions in costs.For years, groups have called on the FCC to cap the rates charged by Verizon and AT&T, the two carriers that dominate the market.At a meeting on April 28, the FCC will consider an order that looks at the charges for dedicated connections paid by offices, retailers, banks, schools, hospitals and other types of
  
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• The government still needs Apple’s help to crack a locked iPhone 5s in New York

  08-04-2016 19:56
  Like sands through the hourglass, so are the iPhones the government wants Apple’s help breaking into.
  Recently, the FBI said it had paid for a “tool” that broke into the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI also said that even though this tool allegedly works on a narrow slice of phones, they’d be happy to help other law enforcement agencies use it to break into locked phones they’ve seized in the course of investigating crimes.To re
  
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• Facebook rolls out React 15 upgrade to JavaScript library

  08-04-2016 19:56
  
  Facebook is offering a stable release of React 15.0, the latest version of the company's highly touted JavaScript library for developing UIs, highlighted by improvements for the DOM (document object model) and SVG (scalable vector graphics).
  As part of its virtual DOM effort, version 15 supports all SVG attributes recognized by today's browsers. "Historically our support for SVG has been incomplete, and many tags and attributes were missing. We heard you," said Dan Abramov, a software engineer
  
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• BrandPost: Is Your ERP Strangling Your Business?

  08-04-2016 19:48
  
  As a manufacturer, your focus is on quality, equipment maintenance, profit, on-time delivery, and customer satisfaction. You’re probably not thinking about the pitfalls of your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. However, the shortcomings can be more than a nuisance to your business. Here are five ways your ERP may be strangling your business:
  Money Drain
  You typically will pay 8–40 percent of your total software license values annually for bug fixes, support and access to
  
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• Public doesn't support federal takeover of drone regulation

  08-04-2016 18:28
  
  More than two-thirds of the U.S. public doesn't support a federal government takeover of drone regulation, despite a push in Congress to preempt state and local drone rules, according to a new survey.
  The survey, released by smart-cities research and advocacy organization Smart Government, underscores the opposition by some cities and local government groups to a provision in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act that would make the FAA the sole regulator over drones, the
  
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• Toyota wants robots to do the driving for us

  08-04-2016 18:24
  
  I’m finishing up at the NVIDIA GPU Developer Conference [Disclosure: NVIDIA is a client of the author]. The conference started out to be mostly about gaming, but now gaming is just a small part of the overall event, which has a massive professional VR, deep learning and automotive focus. The final keynote of the event was by Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research. Toyota Research is not only heavily involved with the future of cars, but has been prolific with regard to robotic research. With t
  
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• Millennials want to be digital entrepreneurs, not CIOs

  08-04-2016 17:44
  
  Roughly 100 CIOs from large corporations met at the Forbes CIO Summit in Half Moon Bay, Calif. last monthto share ideas and accept awards for their IT successes. They listened to Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff sound off on how crucial the CIO role is to the business. More specifically, CEOs are entrusting their CIOs to conduct digital transformations, essentially migrating to software many services that had been previously operated manually.Whitman
  
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• You have the power. Should you use it?

  08-04-2016 17:00
  
  Technological and legal changes over the last generation have dealt employers an increasingly strong hand in setting the terms of their relationships with the people they hire. Regardless of whether you think that this is a good thing or a bad one, it’s hard to deny employers’ clout.What’s less easy to see is the costs of exploiting that imbalance in power. They are worth considering. First, though, some background.Evidence of the aggregate power shift can be easily seen in the
  
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• Business email scams have led to $2.3 billion losses via rogue wire transfers

  08-04-2016 16:16
  
  Over the past two and a half years, cybercriminals have managed to steal over $2.3 billion from thousands of companies worldwide by using little more than carefully crafted scam emails.Known as business email compromise (BEC), CEO fraud or whaling, this type of attack involves criminals impersonating an organization's chief executive officer, or some other high-ranking manager, and instructing employees via email to initiate rogue wire transfers.According to an alert issued earlier this week by
  
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• 47% off TomTom VIA 1505M 5-Inch Portable GPS - Deal Alert

  08-04-2016 15:48
  
  The TomTom VIA 1505M 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator receives an average of 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews). With a list price of $169.95, this substantial 47% discount knocks the price down to just $89.99.Clean, clear and intuitive maps are displayed on the VIA's bright 5" inch touchscreen. Pre-installed points of interest and Advanced Lane Guidance help you find what you need quickly, and guide you there without confusion. This device comes with free map upgrades for the life of t
  
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• Microsoft's Edge will make Flash less annoying in Windows 10 Anniversary Update

  08-04-2016 15:37
  Microsoft is joining Google in the quest to remove Adobe Flash from the web. When the Windows 10 Anniversary Update hits this summer, Edge will be able to automatically pause “content not central to the webpage.” Google introduced the same feature last June in partnership with Adobe.
  Similar to Chrome, Edge's new Flash-halting feature won't affect auto-playing videos that are part of a site’s content. Instead, the feature will look at disabling flash video and animations in ad
  
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• Edge freezes Flash content; imitates Chrome and Safari

  08-04-2016 15:06
  
  Microsoft yesterday said its Edge browser would follow in the footsteps of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari by freezing some content rendered by Adobe's Flash Player.
  The new feature appeared in the edition of Edge packaged with Windows 10 Insider build 14316, which Microsoft issued Wednesday.
  "With the Anniversary Update to Windows 10, Microsoft Edge will intelligently auto-pause content that is not central to the Web page," wrote John Hazen, an Edge program manager, in a post to a company b
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What do chatbots mean for the enterprise?

  08-04-2016 14:45
  
  Last week was an exciting week for the chatbot space. During the Build conference, Microsoft announced the general availability of the Bot Framework, a platform that facilitates the implementation of chatbots that can be used from different messaging platforms such as Slack, Skype, WeChat, and many others. Beyond the excitement of the platform, the announcement represents a strong validation of the chatbot as one of the most exciting technology trends of the moment. From this perspective, chatbo
  
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• T-Mobile targets Verizon with wireless plans for love birds

  08-04-2016 13:49
  
  If you and your sweetie share a smartphone plan, or want to, T-Mobile has a new offer you just might be interested in. Starting Friday, the self-styled "Uncarrier" will sell you a plan that includes two lines with 6GB of data each, unlimited talk and text for just $80 a month.
  The offer includes access to T-Mobile's Binge On service, which lets subscribers stream select video content without eating into their data allotments. Customers with T-Mo "couples plans" also get the company's Music Free
  
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• Google's Nest struggles could set back the IoT movement

  08-04-2016 13:48
  
  The smart home devices sold by Google's home automation subsidiary, Nest, represent just a small fraction of the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) market. However, Nest has become one of the most recognizable IoT brands to tech-savvy consumers, and the company's recent struggles to bring new products to market and its decision to end support for an IoT hub it acquired two years ago could have a lasting impact on the IoT movement.
  At the end of 2015, nearly 20 percent of all U.S. households wi
  
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• Adobe fixes 24 vulnerabilities in Flash Player, including an actively exploited one

  08-04-2016 13:09
  Adobe Systems released a security update for Flash Player to fix 24 critical vulnerabilities, including one that hackers have been exploiting to infect computers with ransomware over the past week.The company advised users Thursday to upgrade to the newly released Flash Player 21.0.0.213 on Windows and Mac and Flash Player 11.2.202.616 on Linux. The Flash Player Extended Support Release was also updated to version 18.0.0.343.As usual, the Flash Player build bundled with Google Chrome on all plat
  
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• The Netflix neutrality farce

  08-04-2016 13:00
  
  Any day now, the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals will rule on the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory coup over the Internet, commonly known as net neutrality. And not a moment too soon. Because the FCC’s rules are quickly descending from tragedy to farce.  
  Netflix, whose streaming content makes up around one-third of Internet traffic at peak hours, was a chief advocate of the far-reaching rules, which, beginning in 2015, regulated the Internet for t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Thumbly: Easy one-handed typing on the iPhone 6s

  08-04-2016 13:00
  
  Ever since the iPhone SE was released, the issue of one-handed typing on the iPhone 6s has resurfaced in articles and discussion threads. Some folks consider the smaller iPhone SE’s screen easier to type on one-handed, but that’s because they are thinking inside the box and are still focused on the width of their phone instead of the on-screen keyboard they are using to type on it.Thumbly is an alternative keyboard that you can buy in the iOS App Store for $1.99. It provides a very d
  
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• Opportunities and risks in 5 global outsourcing locations

  08-04-2016 12:54
  
  Everest Group’s 2015 outsourcing year in review report included a quick peek at some important trends taking place in five global outsourcing geographies around the globe including India, China, the United States, Latin America, and Ukraine. CIO.com talked to Aditya Verma, practice director in Everest Group’s global sourcing practice in detail about the opportunities and risks that are arising in these areas.[ Related: 10 Outsourcing Trends to Watch in 2015 ]1. United States: Inflows
  
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• How to handle a zero-day attack – from lawyers

  08-04-2016 12:47
  
  It’s easy to make fun of lawyers, but the actual steps involved with legal proceedings is neither easy nor fun.  Before I start, I need to clearly state that I am not an attorney and none of this article should be used as legal advice.  It can be used as the starting point for a discussion with your lawyer ... and yes, my attorney made me write that. Let’s start at the beginning:  why would any legal eagle want access to your CRM data?  It’s just contac
  
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• Consider the Panama Papers breach a warning

  08-04-2016 12:00
  
  An MIT conference this week about the Internet of Things was fun until the topic of security came up. The audience stilled and focused at the mention.
  Sanjay Sarma, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, told this mostly startup crowd that he expects "a few disasters." Power plants will be taken down, as will a chemical plant. "I'm terrified of this," he said, about the cybersecurity risk.[ See infographic below for more on the scale of the Panama Papers breach. ]
  This week's hack of Pan
  
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• Tech titans rise up against anti-LGBT legislation in Miss., N.C.

  08-04-2016 03:53
  
  In the past few weeks, North Carolina and Mississippi have adopted laws enabling businesses to discriminate against gays and transgender people by those who say serving them would infringe on their religious beliefs.Some large technology companies have publicly condemned the laws, with one company making a statement by pulling a new business out of North Carolina."We are disappointed by the recent events in North Carolina," said Facebook, which has a data center facility in Forest City, N.C., in
  
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• Millions of child support records stolen, D.C. officials want answers

  08-04-2016 02:55
  
  In early February, a thief broke into several offices in Olympia, Washington to steal anything he could grab that was worth selling. In one locked drawer, the thief found a couple of external hard drives that he added to his haul of cash, cameras, electronics and laptops.
  The hard drives belonged to the local office of the Administration for Children and Families, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and contained between two and five million records related to child-support aud
  
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• That moment when you realize you're exchanging emails with a robot

  08-04-2016 01:34
  
  Next time you schedule a meeting and an assistant named Amy or Andrew Ingram sets up the logistics, here's a pro tip: You may be chatting with a robot. And if it's one of x.ai's bots, you might never know the difference.That was my experience when I exchanged emails with "Andrew" to set up an interview with x.ai's CEO. After I emailed x.ai's press contact, she referred me to Andrew to hammer out the details. Andrew proposed a time, thanked me when I accepted and sent out a calendar invitation. H
  
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• Korea's working on a cool combination: 5G and the Winter Olympics

  08-04-2016 00:43
  
  If you want to be one of the first to experience 5G mobile performance, get ready to bundle up.South Korean carrier KT has said it wants to launch the first 5G network at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. On Thursday, KT announced a successful trial of one potential 5G technology in the mountain resort region.The carrier tested a system from NEC that uses super-high frequencies to transmit data at speeds as high as 3.2Gbps (bits per second). Though the companies didn't mention the Olympic
  
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