IT Executive news

• A mystery user breached an email account on Clinton's server

  02-09-2016 22:59
  
  In 2013, an unknown user accessed an email account on Hillary Clinton’s private email server through Tor, the anonymous web surfing tool, according to new FBI documents.On Friday, the FBI provided details on the possible breach in newly released files about its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was the U.S. secretary of state.The affected email account belonged to a member of Bill Clinton's staff. In January 2013, an unknown user managed to log in to t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The Free Software Foundation Europe Organizes its First ever Summit in Berlin

  02-09-2016 22:45
  
  Free Software Foundation Europe, a non profit organization that focuses on increasing open standard and free software in government, is organizing their first summit. The summit will take place in Berlin, September 2 - 4, 2016. The Summit coincides with the 15th anniversary of the foundation.
  The summit will cover three primary areas in three days. The first day (Friday) is dedicated to businesses with or around Free Software. On the second day (Saturday), the focus will be on various aspects o
  
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• Google patches critical bug on Android Nexus 5X devices

  02-09-2016 21:57
  
  Google's Android security team patched a critical vulnerability in the company's Nexus 5X devices which would have let attackers bypass the lockscreen. An attacker who successfully triggered the vulnerability would be able to obtain data stored on the device via a forced memory dump, according to researchers from the IBM's X-Force team.
  An attacker with physical access to the device can easily steal data or perform other malicious activities. The most common recommendation to protect the device
  
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• BrandPost: Driving Shop Floor Efficiency, Connectivity, and Mobility with Wearable Technology

  02-09-2016 21:05
  
  According to a January 2016 report by PwC and the Manufacturing Institute, more than one-third of U.S. manufacturers either already use virtual reality (VR) technology or plan to do so in the next three years. Adoption plans for augmented reality (AR) technology are roughly the same. While AR technology is still not a mainstay on the plant floor, use cases continue to show promise for manufacturers looking to increase efficiency, reduce downtime, and maintain high quality.1. MaintenanceTo read t
  
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• Here's what U.S. carriers are doing about the Galaxy Note 7 recall

  02-09-2016 20:58
  
  So now that Samsung has issued a recall for the Galaxy Note 7, you’re probably wondering what to do with that potentially-combustible smartphone you’re holding. 
  Your choice is going to depend on what carrier you've got. We have some more details on what each is doing, thanks to a series of official statements. Samsung has pledged to replace devices “over the coming weeks” once it determines the cause of the problem. To date, 35 phones worldwide have been identified
  
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• Point-of-sale data breaches have now reached the cloud

  02-09-2016 20:42
  
  The latest in a string of hacks against retail point-of-sale systems has hit the operator of a cloud-based service with about 38,000 business clients.Montreal-based Lightspeed reported the breach on Thursday and said it affected a system that retailers can use from tablets, smartphones and other devices.  The incident occurs as a growing number of retailers and hotels have been targeted by hackers, who typically install malware into the point-of-sale systems to steal credit card numbers.To
  
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• A series of tubes: What's next for home automation

  02-09-2016 20:08
  
  "A series of tubes" is one of the most famous explanations of what makes the internet work, but it's also what many Europeans use to heat their homes. That's made room-by-room heating automation difficult -- until now.Heating systems in Europe typically circulate hot water from a boiler to radiators around the home, with the pump and boiler controlled by a central thermostat. Programmable timers can boost the temperature on winter evenings or lower it at night.Generally, though, such control is
  
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• Google Closure compiler moves from Java to JavaScript

  02-09-2016 20:02
  
  Google's Closure compiler, for optimizing and transpling JavaScript, no longer needs Java to run. Instead, Java source code is compiled to JavaScript so it can run under Node.js or in a browser. Java-dependent Closure had been introduced by Google in 2009.
  The experimental release detailed this week supports ECMAScript 2015 features like arrow functions and let and const, and it provides polyfills for some ES2015 methods. It will check both syntax and types, and will provision warnings for Java
  
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• Apple updates App Store developer guidelines ahead of iOS 10

  02-09-2016 19:12
  
  Apple is cleaning up the App Store as it prepares to release iOS 10, a new generation of iPhones and an updated Apple Watch at its annual product showcase on Sept. 7. The company says it will begin to enforce stricter guidelines and a more comprehensive review process for software in the App Store. Apps that have been abandoned by their developers or "no longer function as intended" will be removed from the shop, according to Apple. "We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating
  
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• Galaxy Note 7 recall: What to do with the phone until it is replaced?

  02-09-2016 18:45
  
  After reports that some Galaxy Note 7s have caught on fire, Samsung said Friday it will stop all sales and replace all of those devices now owned by customers.But the South Korea-based company so far remains unclear in its public statements about what a customer should do immediately with that model of smartphone in their hands.[ Related: Samsung halts Galaxy Note 7 shipments after reports of exploding devices, may issue recall ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click he
  
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• Google Analytics just got a new AI tool to help find insights faster

  02-09-2016 18:44
  
  Services like Google Analytics are great for amassing key data to help you make the most of your web efforts, but zeroing in on the parts that matter most can be a time-consuming challenge. On Friday, Google added a new feature to its analytics service that taps AI to surface insights automatically.Now available in the Assistant screen in the Google Analytics mobile app, the new automated insights feature "lets you see in 5 minutes what might have taken hours to discover previously," wrote Ajay
  
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• Scientists look at how A.I. will change our lives by 2030

  02-09-2016 18:13
  
  By the year 2030, artificial intelligence (A.I.) will have changed the way we travel to work and to parties, how we take care of our health and how our kids are educated.
  That’s the consensus from a panel of academic and technology experts taking part in Stanford University’s One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence.
  Focused on trying to foresee the advances coming to A.I., as well as the ethical challenges they’ll bring, the panel yesterday released its first study.
  
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• Dell believes VR will be as important as gaming to PCs

  02-09-2016 18:04
  
  Twenty years ago, Frank Azor and three other Alienware founders built and sold their first gaming PCs. Gaming was a niche market at the time, but two decades later, it's booming.Virtual reality occupies a similar space as gaming for Azor, who is general manager for Alienware and XPS products at Dell. For him, VR is the future of PCs and will be as hot as gaming. Though full of promise, VR is still raw, however.VR is important for Dell, but Azor doesn't want to rush in and then regret i
  
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• There's GOLD in them thar electronics!

  02-09-2016 18:01
  
  It's fair to say that interest in gold is longstanding. This includes recovering the gold used as a conductor in electronics -- especially cell phones, which use more than laptops.
  Gold is considered a particularly good conductor, but much of it is never recovered and reused. There are a number of ways of separating it and other precious metals from electronics, including smelting through chemicals. The latter involves the use of toxic chemicals, such as cyanide, mercury and hydrochloric acid.
  
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• Suspect arrested in 5-year-old kernel.org breach

  02-09-2016 17:38
  
  Five years after a security breach forced the Linux Foundation to take kernel.org offline and to rebuild several of its servers, police have arrested a suspect in the case.Donald Ryan Austin, a 27-year-old computer programmer from El Portal, Florida, was arrested during a traffic stop on Aug. 28 based on a sealed indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of California in June.Austin is charged with intentionally damaging four protected servers operated by the Linux Fou
  
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• Hybrid tablets will continue to grow in popularity

  02-09-2016 17:17
  
  The tablet market has declined over the past year, and trend will continue through the end of the year, according to recent data from IDC.Sales of tablets and hybrids fell 11.5 percent, with an all-time year-over-year low of just 183.4 million units sold. But IDC is optimistic about the future, predicting "positive growth" in 2018 that will continue to rise over the following two years, potentially reaching 194.2 million units sold by 2020.The future is hybrid
  Hybrid devices like the iPad Pro an
  
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• Fossil aims to make smartwatches fashionable

  02-09-2016 17:14
  
  Smart and beautiful: two qualities consumers can't get enough of in their gadgets. Fashion brand Fossil has picked up on this trend and aims to deliver on consumers' desires with its newest smartwatch, the Q Marshal. 
  At first glance, you may mistake the Q Marshal for a conventional watch, a feature that seems now to be the aim of many smartwatch makers. The watch comes in a variety of bands including leather, stainless steel, and silicon. 
  I tried it on for myself at IFA in Berl
  
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• Best practices for incident response in the age of cloud

  02-09-2016 16:38
  
  This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.
  Most CISOs receive a rude awakening when they encounter their first major security issue in the cloud. If they identify a critical vulnerability that requires a patch, they may not have the authorization to tweak the cloud provider's pre-packaged stack. And if the customer does not own the network, there may
  
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• Intel's low-cost 'Apollo Lake' Celeron and Pentium processors quietly debut

  02-09-2016 15:53
  Intel’s biggest reveal during IFA Berlin was the new Kaby Lake 7-th generation Core processors, but it wasn’t the only CPU news from the chip maker.
  Intel also debuted the new 14nm Apollo Lake platform featuring six different Celeron and Apollo processors—though the company didn’t make a big deal about it.
  The story behind the story: Apollo Lake uses the next-generation Atom architecture, Goldmont, that was meant primarily for the defunct Broxton and Sofia mobile chips.
  
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• Peanuts with a purpose: Sen.se unveils new smart sensors at IFA

  02-09-2016 15:50
  
  Expecting people to figure out what its Cookie multipurpose smart sensors could be used for didn't work out so well for Sen.se. It's trying a different approach with its new Peanut sensors: application-specific packaging that sells the purpose, not the product.The first Peanut, launched Thursday, is a thermometer presented as a way to get alerts if a child's room gets too cold or a refrigerator too hot.Future Peanuts, all in the same 7.5-gram, 45 x 25 x 5 millimeter case, will contain different
  
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• Your strategy for dealing with web bots has to take into accout business context

  02-09-2016 15:37
  
  This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.
  Between 30%-70% of traffic to most websites is from bots, meaning it is non-human traffic. And while many assume bot traffic should be blocked, that is a black and white approach to a problem that’s very much grey. The reality is that some bots are good, some bots are bad, but most will be somewhere in
  
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• Best Deals of the Week, August 29 - September 2 - Deal Alert

  02-09-2016 15:18
  Best Deals of the Week, August 29 - September 2- Deal AlertCheck out this roundup of the best deals on gadgets, gear and other cool stuff we have found this week, the week of August 29th. All items are highly rated, and dramatically discounted!43% off NETGEAR AC750 WiFi Range ExtenderIf you're struggling with wifi dead zones, boost the range of your existing WiFi and create a stronger signal in hard-to-reach areas with a wifi extender, like this one from Netgear. The AC750's design is compact an
  
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• U.S. cloud vendors adjust to Snowden effect, Privacy Shield

  02-09-2016 15:10
  
  When whistleblower Edward Snowden shocked the world in 2013 by revealing that the NSA was allegedly siphoning data from U.S. internet companies, pundits proclaimed that winter was coming for American cloud vendors in Europe. Evidence now suggests those fears may have been overblown.IDC said this month that U.S. cloud vendors have increased their combined cloud infrastructure revenue two-and-a-half-times in Western Europe, topping $2 billion since the Snowden Effect was supposed to freeze the mar
  
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• Majority of Netflix subscribers would pay more for the service

  02-09-2016 15:04
  
  Most companies (pharmaceutical giants aside) worry that price increases will drive away customers. However, a new survey of 3,114 Netflix subscribers found that 60 percent of those customers would keep the service if the price went up. And 21 percent of respondents said they'd stick around even if the current $10-a-month price plans jumps by 60 percent or more, according to the survey from TiVo's Digitalsmiths division.Netflix already raised prices for its streaming video service earlier this ye
  
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• Microsoft bug bounty program adds .NET Core and ASP.NET Core

  02-09-2016 14:33
  
  Microsoft has expanded its bug bounty programs to cover the open-source .NET Core and ASP.NET Core application development platforms.
  The .NET Core and ASP.NET Core technologies are used to create server applications that can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The ability to write code once and have it run on multiple platforms have made these technologies popular with enterprise software developers.
  Microsoft will pay monetary rewards between US$500 and $15,000 for critical vulnerabilities in the
  
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• Apple quashes 3 zero-days with emergency Mac update

  02-09-2016 14:05
  
  Apple yesterday issued an emergency security update for the Mac, patching the same trio of vulnerabilities the company fixed last week on the iPhone.
  According to one of the groups that first revealed the flaws, the vulnerabilities could have been "weaponized" for use against OS X, the Mac's operating system.
  The out-of-band update was aimed at OS X El Capitan (aka 10.11) and Yosemite (10.10), the 2015 and 2014 editions, respectively. Older versions, including 2014's OS X Mavericks, went unpatc
  
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• How analytics could end layoffs

  02-09-2016 13:00
  
  To say I’m not a fan of layoffs would be an understatement. Most are done horribly and do far more damage to the firm’s and CEO’s brand, making the company less competitive and often starting a death spiral that the company never pulls out of. This is largely because little of the data that surrounds a layoff is actually captured and is virtually never made part of the decision.   The only predominant data element is cost savings, but that tends to be a tactical measu
  
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• The weird, wild, and occasionally practical PC hardware of IFA 2016

  02-09-2016 12:30
  A great last gaspThis is it, folks. IFA isn’t only Europe’s largest technology trade show, it’s also the last chance for PC vendors to present their swanky new hardware before the critical fall season kicks off. It’s kind of a big deal.And that’s immediately evident when you look at the lineup of high-profile PC announcements pouring out of Berlin. All sorts of wild new PC gear was revealed this week, spurred on by the launch of Intel’s newest generation of pr
  
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• Chicago deploys computers with eyes, ears and noses

  02-09-2016 12:08
  
  Chicago this week began deploying sensors on light poles to monitor, photograph and listen to the city. The effort is costing as much as $7 million, and may be the largest urban data collection of its kind once all 500 nodes are in place.
  The beehive-shaped nodes have an array of sensors with enough onboard computing capability to conduct data processing on the deviceand minimize the amount of bandwidth needed to transmit data.
  Cameras will track the movement of pedestrians, vehicles and whethe
  
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• Fall security conferences you don't want to miss

  02-09-2016 12:06
  
  Check out more than foliage this fallImage by ThinkstockConferences can be great opportunities for networking and information sharing. While it's a challenge to break away from the responsibilities at the office, taking a day or two to connect with peers across the industry can be invigorating and uplifting, allowing you to return with a fresh and optimistic perspective on the doldrums of threat intelligene. At the MASSTLC Conference in Cambrige, the message of keynote speaker Dave Mahon was to
  
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• Myth vs. fact: Open source projects and federal agencies

  02-09-2016 12:00
  
  Many agencies in the federal government use approved public repositories for open source software development. According to the General Services Administration (GSA) GitHub dashboard, there are 236 federal organizations using a combined 5,254 project repositories.
  More federal agencies are increasing their use and creation of open source software to achieve their IT objectives. In order to best prepare for the implementation of even more open source projects, federal agencies need to understand
  
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• Facebook taps deep learning for customized feeds

  02-09-2016 12:00
  
  Serving more than a billion people a day, Facebook has its work cut out for it when providing customized news feeds. That is where the social network giant takes advantage of deep learning to serve up the most relevant news to its vast user base.
  Facebook is challenged with finding the best personalized content, Andrew Tulloch, Facebook software engineer, said at the company’s recent @scale conference in Silicon Valley. “Over the past year, more and more, we’ve been applying d
  
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• EVGA GTX 1060 3GB review: A compelling $200 graphics card with a questionable future

  02-09-2016 12:00
  
  Nvidia's new 3GB version of the GeForce GTX 1060 goes toe-to-toe with the $200 Radeon RX 480—in theory.
  
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• Everything you need to know about wireless charging

  02-09-2016 12:00
  
  Wireless charging is one of the most liberating developments in technology today. Instead of searching for and fiddling with wall warts and cables, or crawling under my desk to reach an AC outlet, I just set my Galaxy S7 Edge smartphone on a special pad to top off its battery. When I need to use the phone or leave the house, I pick up it and go—there’s nothing to disconnect or unplug. It's awesome.
  You can enjoy the same experience, but there are a few pitfalls you’ll want to
  
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• App the vote: 8 mobile tools for tracking the election

  02-09-2016 12:00
  
  Which side are you on?Image by ShutterstockWhen it comes to the presidential election, it can be mighty challenging to separate the wheat from the chaff. We're not talking about the actual candidates (though that poses challenges as well), but rather about the onslaught of news, opinion and polling that accompany the whole process. Sometimes it feels like you're standing in a hailstorm of election coverage with an umbrella made of tissue paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment,
  
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• Raad voor Rechtsbijstand verlengt overeenkomst met Cegeka

  02-09-2016 11:35
  De Raad voor Rechtsbijstand heeft het outsourcingscontract met Cegeka met 2 jaar verlengd tot 2018. Het contract omvat outsourcing van de datacenterinfrastructuur en het technisch beheer op het applicatielandschap van de raad.
   
  De samenwerking met Cegeka verloopt goed, wat resulteert in een stabiele ICT-omgeving.... lees meer
  
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• Samsung recalls Note 7 on battery fire reports

  02-09-2016 10:42
  
  Samsung is halting sales of its recently-launched flagship Note 7 smartphone and recalling phones of this model sold worldwide after reports of several units catching fire due to battery problems.The company examined a phone that had caught fire and confirmed a faulty battery was to blame, according to a Yonhap News report. Of the roughly 1 million Note 7 handsets already sold, only 24 contain the potential problem, Samsung said late Friday in Seoul.Users will be offered a replacement phone.The
  
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• Google will not make Project Ara modular smartphone

  02-09-2016 09:20
  
  Google has dropped plans for a modular smartphone with interchangeable parts as it realigns its investments in the area of hardware.While the company will not be releasing the Project Ara phone that was to have been easily customizable, it may bring the phone to market through licensing deals with partners, Reuters reported late Thursday.Google confirmed the report was “true and accurate” but said it had no official comment.The Lego blocks model for smartphone design was first mooted
  
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• HPE said to plan sale of its software unit

  02-09-2016 05:49
  
  Hewlett Packard Enterprise is said to be looking to sell its software division, which would include the business from its disastrous acquisition of Autonomy in 2011, according to news reports.The enterprise IT company that emerged from the breakup of Hewlett-Packard has been restructuring its operations recently, including a US$8.5 billion deal announced in May to spin off and merge its enterprise services business with CSC. A sale of the software business would leave the company focused la
  
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• Samsung halts Galaxy Note 7 shipments after reports of exploding devices, may issue recall

  02-09-2016 01:44
  
  Update 09/01/16 4:37pm: A report from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency cites an unnamed company official in saying that the Note 7 will be recalled, both in Korea (where most of the explosions have been reported) and abroad. It continues to say that, “results of the investigation and relevant countermeasures will be made public this weekend or early next week at the latest.” The source claims only 0.1% of devices sold contain the potentially problematic battery. The report goe
  
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