IT Executive news

• BrandPost: 12 ideas for advanced DevOps practices

  14-02-2017 23:18
  
  If your organization has adopted a DevOps initiative, you’re likely already seeing improvements in culture and processes. Maybe you’ve automated manual tasks, built a continuous delivery pipeline, and improved collaboration between Dev and Ops. Team morale has gone up, and the number of 3 AM calls has gone down. You’re doing really well compared to many other organizations.Of course, DevOps is not one-and-done; it’s an ongoing journey. There’s always a way to achiev
  
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• Facebook debuts vertical video format and confirms forthcoming TV apps

  14-02-2017 22:29
  
  Facebook wants be in your TV screen in 2017.
  On Tuesday, the network launched new ways to watch videos on your iOS and Android device. You can now watch vertical videos in full-screen, autoplay videos with sound, and watch picture-in-picture while scrolling down your News Feed. In addition, Facebook confirmed the forthcoming launch of TV apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung Smart TV.
  Previously, all videos on Facebook’s News Feed autoplayed on silent, and you had to tap on
  
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• NASA at work on autonomous space rendezvous technology

  14-02-2017 22:27
  
  Various companies may be working on self-driving cars, but NASA is about to launch technology to the International Space Station that could bring the agency closer to enabling rendezvous with a spacecraft without human intervention.
  A test module, dubbed Raven, will help NASA autonomously rendezvous with and dock with satellites traveling through space at more than 16,000 mph.
  “Two spacecraft autonomously rendezvousing is crucial for many future NASA missions and Raven is maturing this ne
  
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• Microsoft adds Outlook.com to service-subscription list with $50/year Premium option

  14-02-2017 22:11
  
  Microsoft today officially launched a premium-grade Outlook.com email service in the U.S. that omits ads, provides five inboxes and supports personalized addresses.
  The service, labeled "Outlook.com Premium," had been branded "Preview" until today, according to the Thurrott.com blog, which had been tracking its progress for almost a year.
  Outlook.com Premium appeared to target both small businesses and families with the five user accounts and the personalized address. The domain name for the la
  
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• Juniper facing fatal clock flaw that impacts Cisco routers, switches

  14-02-2017 21:44
  
  The fatal clock timing flaw that causes a variety switches, routers and security appliances to crash and die after about 18 months of service is apparently part of some Juniper products.
  Cisco was the first vendor to post a notice about mortal clock fail earlier this month saying the notice includes some of the company’s most widely deployed products, such as certain models of its Series 4000 Integrated Services Routers, Nexus 9000 Series switches, ASA security devices and Meraki Cloud Ma
  
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• Secrets of successful CISOs [Infographic]

  14-02-2017 21:24
  
  A new report from IANS Research shines a light on the current state of CISOs and their role in building in influence in leadership across an organization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• CIOs disrupt IT operating models to align with digital business

  14-02-2017 21:11
  
  To adapt to an increasingly digital world, CIOs are changing the way they run their IT organizations, spurring adoption of agile and DevOps programming and multithreaded operating models and creating software to automate tasks. CIOs are instituting startup-like operating models in which their software engineers experiment with emerging technologies, says Bill Briggs, CTO and managing director of Deloitte Consulting."We're in a moment now of [asking], how do you reinvent what it means to deliver
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Deletion is not destruction: ensuring the permanent removal of data

  14-02-2017 20:19
  
  Some words of warning to all armchair data security "experts:" The Delete button is not a substitute for destruction; it no more eliminates data than a pink eraser removes magic marker, or a magic wand has the power to do anything more than — to ever be anything more than — a cheap prop.And yet, these same people furiously press that button, in an attempt at some kind of false self-confidence.Perhaps they think that a simple tap will make a surplus of data — from private and pu
  
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• Amazon releases Chime, a new cloud-based UCaaS

  14-02-2017 20:11
  
  Amazon today announced Chime, a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offering hosted in Amazon Web Service’s cloud.
  Amazon is entering a crowded market of UC solutions, some of which are already cloud-based and others that run on customer premises. Nevertheless, analysts who track Amazon say the company has an opportunity here.
  Chime uses a mobile or desktop application that is available across iOS, Android and Windows environments. It uses noise-cancelling wideband audio, which Am
  
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• Toshiba's in chaos, but not quitting PCs -- yet

  14-02-2017 19:48
  
  Toshiba is more than a laptop maker, but the vast Japanese conglomerate shrunk on Tuesday under a wave of bad news.In one day, the company lost its chairman, said it will stop building nuclear power plants, wrote off about US$6.2 billion relating to that business, and postponed its fourth-quarter earnings report for a month.Its financial problems were no secret: Two weeks ago, it revealed plans to sell stakes in its memory chip and SSD businesses to cover the nuclear write-offs.Last June, it sol
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to avoid hitting a wall in a digital transformation

  14-02-2017 19:45
  
  I recently spoke with Alexandre Pereira, Global CIO at Vale, a Brazilian multinational mining company, who told me about a conversation with one of the company’s business leaders when they considered launching a transformation initiative. The executive asked Alex, “Why do cars have brakes?” The answer: “It allows cars to go faster.” When it comes to advice about how to build a foundation for success in a transformation initiative, the comment about car brakes is one
  
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• Intel ships latest Itanium chip called Kittson, but grim future looms

  14-02-2017 19:36
  
  Intel's Itanium chip is hanging by a thread, and after more than three years, the company is now shipping the next and possibly final version of the processor, which is code-named Kittson.The chip is now shipping to test customers, and volume shipments will commence later this year, a company spokesman said.Itanium chips have been used in mainframes and mission-critical servers. Hewlett Packard Enterprise will ship servers with Kittson later this year.Itanium has been dying a slow and painful de
  
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• Microsoft shelves all February security updates

  14-02-2017 19:35
  
  Microsoft today took the unprecedented step of postponing an entire month's slate of security updates for Windows and its other products just hours before the patches were to begin rolling out to customers.
  "We discovered a last-minute issue that could impact some customers and was not resolved in time for our planned updates today," Microsoft said in a post to the MSRC (Microsoft Security Research Center) blog. "After considering all options, we made the decision to delay this month's updates.
  
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• Amazon's Paperwhite e-reader just dropped to $100

  14-02-2017 19:20
  
  Nothing says “I love you” more than the gift of digital books. Or at least, that’s what I tell my wife when I want a new e-reader. Anyone looking for a last-minute Valentine’s Day gift should take a look at Amazon today: The online retailer—as well as other retailers like Best Buy—are selling the Kindle lineup for $20 off. 
  You can pick up the base Kindle for $60, the Paperwhite (Wi-Fi) for $100, and the Kindle Voyage (Wi-Fi) for $180. Note that these pr
  
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• Russian cyberspies blamed for US election hacks are now targeting Macs

  14-02-2017 19:09
  
  Security researchers have discovered a macOS malware program that's likely part of the arsenal used by the Russian cyberespionage group blamed for hacking into the U.S. Democratic National Committee last year.The group, which is known in the security industry under different names, including Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, and APT28, has been operating for almost a decade. It is believed to be the sole user and likely developer of a Trojan program called Sofacy or X-Agent.X-Agent variants for Windows, L
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Augmented Reality – Next Frontier for Competitive Advantage

  14-02-2017 18:36
  
  2016 was an interesting year in many ways. It was an inflection point where IoT, Cloud and AI started to converge together to lay the foundation for new set of business applications. One of the most interesting development where this convergence comes together is the field of Augmented Reality (AR for short).Microsoft
  AR’s older cousin Virtual Reality (VR) has been in existence for quite some time and had its origins into the gaming, entertainment & training (e.g. Flight Simulators) s
  
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• BrandPost: Successfully Straddling the Transformation/Legacy Datacenter Divide

  14-02-2017 18:35
  
  CIOs are grappling with two seemingly contradictory imperatives: transform IT to the digital future — i.e. cloud, analytics, mobile, IoT and social — while at the same time keeping the legacy applications and processes operating securely — and accomplish both with relatively flat budgets. On the face of it, a difficult challenge, but enhancing your automation and orchestration capabilities will help you to successfully straddle the Digital Transformation(DX)/legacy datacenter
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Apple: Why a Mac user is switching to Windows

  14-02-2017 18:23
  
  Apple’s recent attitude and behavior toward its Mac computers has not created confidence among Mac users. The Mac has more or less become a third wheel behind the iPhone and iPad, and the company’s heart has clearly not been in improving its Macs.The Mac Pro, for example, has not been updated since 2013. The Mac mini has also been languishing, and even the venerable iMac is in need of a hardware refresh.The end result of this is that Mac users have been left wondering if Apple even c
  
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• Google’s new cloud service is a unique take on a database

  14-02-2017 18:00
  
  Google has turned a database service that it uses to run some of its mission-critical products into an offering for its public cloud customers.On Tuesday, the company launched Cloud Spanner, a new, fully managed database that’s supposed to provide the transactional consistency of a traditional database plus the scalability and performance of a NoSQL database. It’s based on the same systems that run the company’s own Spanner database internally.Usually, businesses have to pick e
  
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• Microsoft's president wants a Geneva Convention for cyberwar

  14-02-2017 17:30
  
  Microsoft is calling for a Digital Geneva Convention, as global tensions over digital attacks continue to rise. The tech giant wants to see civilian use of the internet protected as part of an international set of accords, Brad Smith, the company’s president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post.
  The manifesto, published alongside his keynote address at the RSA conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, argued for codifying recent international norms around cyberwarfare and for e
  
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• HP hardens EliteBook protection with Sure Click, a browser secured in virtual hardware

  14-02-2017 17:25
  
  More and more browsers, such as Google Chrome, are implementing sandboxing to prevent any malware from escaping the browser. HP’s new Sure Click technology is something new, however: a hardware-based, isolated browsing session that will be a feature on upcoming PCs.
  HP Sure Click will first appear in the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2. Other Elite PCs will add support for Sure Click during the second half of the year. 
  HP partnered with Bromium, a maker of “virtual hardware,”
  
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• Save $50 on the PlayStation 4 Slim 500GB Console, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Legacy Bundle - Deal Alert

  14-02-2017 17:12
  
  The bundle includes a new slim 500GB PlayStation 4 system, and a matching DualShock 4 Wireless Controller. It's discounted 17% on Amazon at the moment, so you can buy it for $250 instead of $300. See the discounted PS4 bundle now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Seastar C++ framework looks to simplify coding

  14-02-2017 17:07
  
  Seastar, an event-driven C++ framework for building applications for multiple processor cores, is adding the notion of concepts to make coding easier.
  With concepts, recently hailed by C++ founder Bjarne Stroustrup, specified interfaces are provided to templates without runtime overhead; design is simplified and the amount of boilerplate code is reduced. Concepts will be included in Seastar 1.8, due in about six weeks. “[Concepts] simplifies the code,” said Dor Laor, CEO o
  
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• Beveiligen van clouddiensten kost organisaties hoofdbrekens

  14-02-2017 17:04
  Het vertrouwen in de veiligheid van publieke clouddiensten neemt toe, waarbij de meeste organisaties denken dat publieke services minstens zo veilig zijn als private diensten. Bijna vier op de tien diensten in de cloud worden echter in gebruik genomen zonder medeweten van de IT-afdeling, waardoor de risico’s... lees meer
  
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• In Verizon's wake, T-Mobile adds hotspot data, HD video streaming to unlimited data plans

  14-02-2017 15:44
  
  T-Mobile under CEO John Legere doesn’t like to cede the spotlight to a rival carrier. True to form, T-Mobile struck back at Verizon’s new unlimited plan late Monday as the “un-carrier” announced new features to bring its unlimited plan in line with Verizon’s.
  The new features to T-Mobile’s unlimited plan, dubbed T-Mobile One, include a monthly allowance of 10GB for mobile hotspot over LTE. After hitting the 10GB limit, T-Mobile drops mobile hotspot users
  
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• 22% off Intel NUC Kit Mini PC - Deal Alert

  14-02-2017 15:39
  
  The Intel NUC Kit NUC6i5SYH is a Mini PC with the power of a desktop PC. Equipped with Intel’s newest architecture, the 6th generation Intel Core i5-6260U processor, NUC6i5SYK has the performance to stream media, manage spreadsheets, or create presentations all in a 4x4” form factor. With 7.1 surround sound and an HDMI port for brilliant 4K resolution, the NUC6i5SYH is an ideal home theater PC. There’s room for a 2.5” SSD or HDD and up to 32 GB of RAM. This NUC is a bareb
  
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• IBM’s Watson teams up with its SIEM platform for smarter, faster event detection

  14-02-2017 15:36
  
  San Francisco -- IBM’s Watson supercomputer can now consult with the company’s security information and event management (SIEM) platform to deliver well researched responses to security events and do so much faster than a person.
  Called IBM Q Radar with Watson, the new offering is the introduction of IBM’s push for a cognitive security operations center (SOC) that will be built around Watson contributing to decisions made in tandem with other security products from the vendor.
  
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• Forget the network perimeter, say security vendors

  14-02-2017 15:27
  
  What if all your company’s computers and applications were connected directly to the Internet? That was the assumption behind BeyondCorp, a new model for network security that Google proposed back in 2014, and it’s one that’s starting to get some attention from networking and security vendors.
  Enterprises have moved beyond the traditional workspace in recent years, allowing employees to work remotely by using their personal devices and accessing apps in private or public cloud
  
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• The Week in iOS Apps: Help the FBI track down fugitives

  14-02-2017 15:00
  
  New apps of the weekImage by Rob Schultz/MacworldThis week’s roundup includes a new app from the FBI, an update from Flipboard, and several cool new games.EmojiplodeImage by Heiko WichmannTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Why tech companies are uniting to fight Trump’s immigration ban

  14-02-2017 14:58
  
  In less than a month since being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump has struck an emotional chord with tech companies, generating an unparalleled unifying force of opposition. The Trump administration’s executive order banning all people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from the entering the United States has created a rift between political and business interests, and one that many technology leaders consider a threat to their very existence.A group
  
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• What is the point of learning C?

  14-02-2017 14:46
  
  Take a look at the TIOBE Programming Community Index — an indicator of the popularity of programming languages — and you'll see that Google's Go and, to a lesser extent, Dart and Perl are trending up. The venerable C, however, is a language whose popularity is plummeting, according to the index.In a world where there is huge demand for mobile and web applications coded in higher-level languages that are easy to learn and debug and difficult to make mistakes in — at least compar
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Tech leaders’ love letter to the liberal arts

  14-02-2017 14:00
  
  I am business leader and strategy consultant with two degrees in industrial engineering and a Wharton MBA. I lead a graduate program for technology professionals aiming for business leadership. And this, though it may surprise you, is my love letter to the liberal arts.You see, early in my career when I joined the Boston Consulting Group the majority of hires were, like me, MBAs from select schools. But I recall they reserved a specific number of spots for what we called “nontraditional hi
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to use social media to boost your ecommerce sales

  14-02-2017 14:00
  
  When many businesses think of online marketing, they first consider social media. It’s the best way to reach customers, since it has a measurable impact on customer purchases, especially for millennials. However, the platform seems to be most effective in building brand awareness and driving local sales. Ecommerce businesses have an ongoing challenge to drive traffic to their websites, where they turn visitors into paying customers.But there are ways ecommerce businesses can leverage socia
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How we can create universal health data

  14-02-2017 13:56
  
  Healthcare has evolved to recognize that health data needs to be centralized. A person-centered, universal store of one’s health data, combining the pieces of the story broken into the many different institution-centered fragments where it now lies, is the best way to deliver coordinated, intelligent healthcare to everyone. Moreover, as we move towards population health and value-based compensation for healthcare services, the ability to survey a population and capture all the data from wh
  
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• 5 things the iPad Pro needs instead of skinnier bezels

  14-02-2017 13:10
  
  While the iPad has certainly matured since its humble beginnings, it still has many of the same shortcomings it did at its debut in 2010. Even with productivity-minded accessories like the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, the iPad is still a far cry from the super computer Apple’s new tagline would have you believe it is. And you only need to look at the latest sales figures to see that people aren’t into it as much as they once were.
  Of course, Apple isn’t resting on its laur
  
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• The 12 worst Android phone gimmicks once hailed as 'innovations'

  14-02-2017 13:00
  
  Sometimes innovation is best left on the drawing boardImage by Ryan WhitwamIt's hard for a phone to get noticed by consumers when it looks like all the other flat black slabs out there. That has led some OEMs to try some particularly wacky things—gimmicks to set them apart. Just because a gimmick is new doesn't mean it's good. In fact, there are a lot of gimmicks that look cool at a tradeshow, but in real life they're terrible ideas. Here are some of the worst to make it to market.To read
  
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• Heartbreaking hacks

  14-02-2017 12:48
  
  It warms a hacker's heartImage by ThinkstockValentine’s Day is historically about love, flowers and chocolate. Unless you're a hacker, then it’s about worms, vulnerabilities, data theft and more. Preying on our need for love and affection, hackers have historically unleashed some hard-hitting attacks around Valentine’s Day, or in relation to the topic of love. So, before you open that Valentine’s Day email or click through to that online dating site, WatchGuard’s Ma
  
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• Rise of as-a-service lowers bar for cybercriminals

  14-02-2017 12:39
  
  As-a-service offerings for things such as DDoS and malware -- including ransomware -- via exploit kits has seriously lowered the bar for entry into the criminal market. Hackers no longer need to have sophisticated skills in order to gain entry into the world of cybercrime.
  According to Geoff Webb, vice president of strategy at Micro Focus, the industrialization of the processes and the availability of the tools has created this expanded forum that allows non-technical people, anyone really, to
  
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• Smartphone CPUs put desktops to shame

  14-02-2017 12:00
  
  Fighting severe size and power constraints, the makers of smartphones have achieved levels of ingenuity not seen on the desktop. This results in mobile devices that not only have multiple cores, but multiple sizes and types of cores.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Mapping: Disruption ahead!

  14-02-2017 12:00
  
  Have you ever sent a package to a remote part of the world that lacks a consistent set of physical addresses? Unless your organization specializes in logistics and distribution, you probably outsourced the task to a company that does. At a more personal level, have you gone to one door at a concert when the friend with the tickets went to a different door? Have you tried to find a tourist attraction known by its name but lacking a street address? These situations highlight the importance of bet
  
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• Hot products at RSA 2017

  14-02-2017 11:44
  
  RSA Conference underwayImage by Web SummitRSA, the world’s largest security conference, is underway this week in San Francisco with attendees from around the world gathering to hear the latest strategies for fighting cyberattacks. They’ll also be able to view the latest hardware and software to protect their most valuable corporate assets. Here is a brief description of some new security products being announced at the conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, pl
  
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• Top 10 U.S. cities for employee happiness

  14-02-2017 10:22
  
  It's common knowledge that where you work -- meaning who employs you -- impacts your happiness. But according to new data from employee review site Kununu, your workplace happiness is also affected by location, location, location.Kununu analyzed 194,645 employee reviews from 2016 and took the average across four user-rating categories: Support from management, challenging work, office/workplace environment and teamwork. They used these average scores to rank the happiest cities in the U.S. and c
  
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• Cybersecurity alliance promoting intel-sharing seeks to expand

  14-02-2017 09:59
  
  Hackers have probably had a harder time slipping past your security software, thanks to an alliance between some of the top vendors in the industry.
  The Cyber Threat Alliance, a group of security firms that often compete, says its efforts to share intelligence on the latest hacking threats have been paying off. 
  Rivals including Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec originally entered into the alliance over two years ago, even as doubts arose over whether it’d las
  
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• Worried about hacks, senators want info on Trump’s personal phone

  14-02-2017 08:54
  
  Two senators have written to the U.S. Department of Defense about reports that President Donald Trump may still be using an old unsecured Android phone, including to communicate through his Twitter account.“While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records,” Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, and Claire McCaskill, a D
  
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• Twitter rolls back abuse fix few hours after protests

  14-02-2017 07:39
  
  Twitter rolled back a new fix aimed to prevent abuse a few hours after it met with protests, reflecting that the company is still scrambling to find solutions to the problem of harassment on its service, but is willing to make changes quickly in response to its users.The social network on Monday rolled out a new feature that would ensure that users would not get notified when they are added to a list. “We want you to get notifications that matter. Starting today, you won’t get notifi
  
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• Amazon Chime goes after WebEx, Skype for Business and more

  14-02-2017 06:00
  
  Companies looking for a new video- and teleconferencing system have a fresh face to turn to in the market: Amazon Web Services.On Monday, the public cloud provider announced the launch of Amazon Chime, a new service that’s designed to compete with the likes of WebEx, Skype for Business and GoToMeeting. It’s a powerful swing at some very entrenched enterprise software players by the public cloud provider.AWS launched the service with native applications for Windows, MacOS, iOS and And
  
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• Researcher develops ransomware attack that targets water supply

  14-02-2017 03:27
  
  A security researcher is showing that it’s not hard to hold industrial control systems for ransom. He's experimented with a simulated water treatment system based on actual programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and documented how these can be hacked.David Formby, a PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology, conducted his experiment to warn the industry about the danger of poorly-secured PLCs. These small dedicated computers can be used to control important factory processes or utiliti
  
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• Chips coming by June will herald the next generation of Wi-Fi

  14-02-2017 02:57
  
  Qualcomm will start shipping sample chips for the next generation of Wi-Fi by June, helping device and network vendors develop products that might quadruple users’ speeds and lengthen battery life.The new silicon uses an early version of IEEE 802.11ax, a specification designed to make wireless LANs more efficient and increase their performance as a result. The formal standard isn’t expected to be signed off until late next year, but it’s common for some components using a new s
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How voice search is transforming digital marketing

  14-02-2017 01:59
  
  Last night, I was cooking dinner and then wondered what NBA games would be on national television. I grabbed my phone, but rather than typing “NBA TNT” on my browser, I asked the Microsoft Cortana and promptly got the answer I sought.Moments like these are an example of how voice searching has grown in popularity thanks to the development of virtual assistants like Cortana, Amazon Alexa, and the newer Google Assistant. These virtual assistants, combined with how mobile search has bec
  
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