IT Executive news

• Walgreens names new CIO

  02-03-2017 23:52
  
  Walgreens has promoted Steve Turner to CIO, effective April 1. The company veteran oversaw the pharmacy retailer's foray into Hadoop data analytics. Turner will work with outgoing CIO Abhi Dhar during the transition."Steve’s experience and his deep knowledge of our systems position him well to move into this new role," a Walgreens spokesman told CIO.com via email. Turner will report jointly to Walgreens Boots Alliance Co-COO Alex Gourlay and Global CIO Anthony Roberts.[ State of the CIO 20
  
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• Snap soars on IPO, now what?

  02-03-2017 23:31
  
  Let’s talk about Snap, the business behind Snapchat and those bizarre Spectacles. The company went public today and shares closed for the day 44 percent higher than its pricing at the open. The IPO is the largest ever for a Los Angeles-based company and Snap currently enjoys a market cap almost three times as large as Twitter. (When the market closed today, Snap's stock was at $24.48 with a market cap of $28.33 billion.)Where the five-year old company goes from here, however, is unclear. T
  
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• BrandPost: Atlassian Shares 4 things the Highest Performing IT Teams Do That Others Don’t

  02-03-2017 23:05
  
  The numbers speak volumes: High performing IT organizations are two times more likely to exceed productivity goals, according to Puppet Labs 2015 State of DevOps Report. They also experience 60x fewer failures and recover 168 times faster.
  But what makes an IT team “high performing?” What practices do the very best teams follow to become more efficient, collaborative, and responsive?
  With more than 68,000 customers (and millions of IT and DevOps users), we’ve learned a ton at
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How older IT pros can crack the 'hidden job market'

  02-03-2017 22:44
  
  Did you know that baby boomers are getting jobs with better pay, status, and working conditions than prior generations of older workers?
  According to a Nov. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article titled “Five Myths About Landing a Good Job Later in Life,” recent studies are demolishing many of the negative stereotypes about workers over 50, for example:The 55-and-older crowd is now the only age group with a rising labor-force participation rate, despite age discrimination, which rema
  
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• H-1B reform bill unites political opposites

  02-03-2017 22:18
  
  Since 2005, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) has been introducing H-1B reform legislation in the House and getting nowhere. But with the bill he introduced today, he might have struck gold.
  Pascrell calls his bill bipartisan, but that doesn't quite do it justice. The co-sponsors of this bill, called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2017, are about as far apart politically as you can get.
  This legislation, perhaps more than any other H-1B reform bill introduced in either chamber, illustrates
  
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• Classic smartphone brands get a spring in their step at MWC (+video)

  02-03-2017 22:00
  
  BARCELONA -- Venerable smartphone brands Motorola, Nokia and BlackBerry got new life at Mobile World Congress 2017, but that was primarily due to the influence of Chinese and Finnish manufacturers that have licensed the names.
  One new Android smartphone, the BlackBerry KEYone, was launched by TCL Communication, based in Huizhou, China.The phone has both a touchscreen and a physical keyboard, with 52 keys that can be used as shortcuts to find apps and functions. It goes on sale in April for $549
  
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• Why awareness needs to teach scam detection and reaction

  02-03-2017 21:54
  
  Everyone makes mistakes, but do they know it or know what to do next?
  When I realized I did something “stupid”, the important question was, “What do I do next?” I figured it out. Can your users?
  Over the past month, there were countless news stories highlighting a new scam where criminals call up random telephone numbers, and a recording begins the call with, “Can you hear me?” The scam then goes on to record you saying, “Yes,” and then the crimin
  
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• AWS says a typo caused the massive S3 failure this week

  02-03-2017 21:45
  
  Everyone makes mistakes. But working at Amazon Web Services means an incorrectly entered input can lead to a massive outage that cripples popular websites and services. That's apparently what happened earlier this week, when the AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) in the provider's Northern Virginia region experienced an 11-hour system failure.Other Amazon services in the US-EAST-1 region that rely on S3, like Elastic Block Store, Lambda, and the new instance launch for the Elastic Compute Cloud inf
  
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• AWS blames a typo for Tuesday’s outage

  02-03-2017 21:21
  
  Amazon Web Services said today its outage earlier this week that affected major websites and apps was caused by human error.
  Sites including Netflix, Reddit and the Associated Press struggled for hours on Tuesday -- all because of a simple typo.
  "While we are proud of our long track record of availability with Amazon S3, we know how critical this service is to our customers, their applications and end users, and their businesses," the company wrote in an online message. "We will do everything w
  
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• Slack bug paved the way for a hack that can steal user access

  02-03-2017 21:06
  
  One bug in Slack, the popular work chat application, was enough for a security researcher to design a hack that could trick users into handing over access to their accounts.
  Bug bounty hunter Frans Rosen noticed he could steal Slack access tokens to user accounts due to a flaw in the way the application communicates data in an internet browser.
  “Slack missed an important step when using a technology called postMessage,” Rosen said on Wednesday in an email.  
  PostMessage is a ki
  
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• Free decryption tools now available for Dharma ransomware

  02-03-2017 20:50
  
  Computer users who have been affected by the Dharma ransomware and have held onto their encrypted files can now restore them for free. Researchers have created decryption tools for this ransomware strain after someone recently leaked the decryption keys.Dharma first appeared in November and is based on an older ransomware program known as Crysis. It's easy to recognize files affected by it because they will have the extension: .[email_address].dharma, where the email address is the one used by t
  
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• BrandPost: Technology Helping Change CEO’s Playbook

  02-03-2017 20:49
  
  CEOs wake up every morning fully aware the corporate playbook is being rewritten and that companies are changing almost beyond recognition. As a result, they’re choosing their priorities carefully, knowing the next few years will upend business models, blur lines between industries and companies and demand a new way of thinking. A KPMG CEO Outlook survey found that two-thirds of U.S. chief executive officers said they believe the next three years will be more critical for their indust
  
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• Microsoft starts selling 6 more years of Windows Server support

  02-03-2017 20:46
  
  Microsoft yesterday started selling extended support for its Windows Server software, letting corporate customers add up to six years to the lifespan of Windows Server 2008 and later, and SQL Server 2008 and later.
  The company had announced this "Premium Assurance" in December, saying then that the extended support would be available for purchase this month.[ Further reading:SharePoint 2013 cheat sheet ]
  Under Premium Assurance, only vulnerabilities graded as "Critical" and "Important" will be
  
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• These IoT devices shown at MWC mean business

  02-03-2017 20:26
  
  IoT goes to workImage by Stephen LawsonAlong with all the hype about phones and 5G networks, Mobile World Congress 2017 was also a showcase for the internet of things, including IoT gear for enterprise and government use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Why Apple won’t ditch Lightning for USB-C in the next iPhone

  02-03-2017 20:06
  
  Speculation about Apple's plans for its next iPhone, due out this fall, has been building in the last few weeks, with attention focused on everything from the prospect of wireless charging to OLED displays and now, the possibility Apple might dump the phone's Lightning connector for USB-C.
  That last prospect was highlighted this week by the Wall Street Journal, which also predicted Apple would source OLED screens for the new iPhone from Samsung.To read this article in full or to leave a comment
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: A process with just one page?

  02-03-2017 20:02
  
  Stop me if you’ve heard this:You have a breach of the terms of your service level agreement (SLA) or a bad incident in your IT organization that results in lost productive time or embarrassment to your organization. Or there is consistent, negative feedback regarding the service desk and the activities they do in support of the user community. Or a change goes through to the production environment that breaks something else downstream. Most likely, there will be a “post-mortem”
  
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• 52% off Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard - Deal Alert

  02-03-2017 19:55
  
  Here's a Bluetooth keyboard for your computer that you can also use with your tablet and smartphone -- switch between all three effortlessly by just turning the dial. And unlike other Bluetooth keyboards, Logitech has integrated a cradle so your device stays propped up at just the right angle as you type. Works with Windows or Mac, Android or iOS, and features a key layout you'll be familiar with on any of those platforms. Logitech's multi-device keyboard currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The end of IT outsourcing as we know it?

  02-03-2017 19:12
  
  You: CIO. You: VP of infrastructure. You: VP of application maintenance.You know what you did.You know that the biggest single expense in running an IT shop is labor. Your legacy IT departments — which constitute the majority of companies — are particularly vulnerable because your older infrastructure and applications require extensive, labor-intensive customized care and feeding. You were under pressure to reduce costs. You are always under pressure to reduce costs. So you succumbed
  
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• Cisco expands Docker partnership, rolls Contiv open source container networking software

  02-03-2017 18:59
  
  Cisco and Docker today announced an expanded partnership that will see further integration of container management software from Docker with infrastructure equipment.
  Cisco also released a 1.0 version of an open source container networking project named Contiv.
  +More on Network World: 5 Lessons from Amazon’s S3 Cloud blunder – and how to protect yourself from the next one +
  The integration of Cisco hardware with Docker software is codified through new Cisco Validated Designs (CVD).
  
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• How to format an SD card in Linux

  02-03-2017 18:34
  
  As I was working on a tutorial about installing Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3, I realized that I had to format the Micro SD card with fat32 partition. Another tutorial was in order!
  Since different desktop environments use different tools to perform the same task, I resorted to one method that can be consistent across desktop environments: command line.
  So here is how you format an SD card, USB drive or Micro SD card with fat32 file system from the command line in Linux.
  1. Plug in your removable
  
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• Hacking for Defense to solve national security challenges

  02-03-2017 18:31
  
  As the transition to a Trump administration continues, how the private sector and government will interact to support national security remains unclear. President Trump has signaled that cost savings is a priority for him, while operational leaders in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have said that speed is most important to the nation when confronting America’s adversaries.For good reason.The velocity and complexity of our national security threats grows daily. Today,
  
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• HPE refocuses tech services group on cloud, big data

  02-03-2017 17:56
  
  Hewlett Packard Enterprise has revamped its existing technology services unit to focus on helping customers adopt emerging technologies, including cloud computing, the internet of things, and big data.HPE's new Pointnext technology services division, announced Thursday, is designed to help businesses speed up their adoption of several technologies, also including hybrid IT services and analytics, the company said. HPE announced the rebranded services unit with an "unboxing" video.To read th
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Artificial intelligence, the tech revolution and the future of consulting

  02-03-2017 17:55
  
  If you want to know the future of business consulting, just look to the firms and universities at the forefront of a revolution in technology and a transformation in recruiting. I write those words as both a means of advice, to readers, and as an admonition, to companies.
  Far too many businesses are not ready for this change — too few are even aware that change is afoot — so preparing for this event is critical to the health of the economy and the expansion of the workforce as
  
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• 33% off Resident Evil 7: Biohazard For PlayStation 4 - Deal Alert

  02-03-2017 17:48
  
  Set within a sinister plantation mansion in modern day rural America and taking place after the dramatic events of Resident Evil 6, players experience the terror directly from the first person perspective for the first time in the series. Embodying the iconic gameplay elements of exploration and tense atmosphere that first coined "survival horror" some twenty years ago, Resident Evil 7 biohazard delivers a disturbingly realistic experience that will define the next era in horror entertainment. I
  
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• BrandPost: Is Digital Transformation the path for your company?

  02-03-2017 16:52
  
  Is Digital Transformation the path for your company?It hard not to look at the predictive analytics used by Uber to manage a fleet of drivers without owning one vehicle, or marvel at Netflix’s use of viewer data to power their own production house without a bit of envy. By now, most companies recognize that they have opportunities to use data and analytics to raise productivity, improve decision making, and gain competitive advantage. In a 2015 report, Bain & Company showed stark advan
  
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• Chrome for MacOS to block rogue ad injections and settings changes

  02-03-2017 16:32
  
  Google has expanded its Safe Browsing service, allowing Google Chrome on macOS to better protect users from programs that locally inject ads into web pages or that change the browser's home page and search settings.
  The Safe Browsing service is used by Google's search engine, as well as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, to block users from accessing websites that host malicious code or malicious software. The service is also used in Chrome to scan downloaded files and block users from executin
  
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• Understanding Windows 10's Unified Update Platform

  02-03-2017 16:22
  
  The Unified Update Platform (UUP) was introduced to the Windows 10 Insider Preview with Build 14986 on December 11, 2016. It changes how Windows Update works in a profound and interesting way. This is explained in some detail in a Windows Insider blog post entitled "Introducing Unified Update Platform (UUP)" that posted on November 3, 2016, so I'll just hit some high points here. The original post is well worth a read, if you're into the nitty-gritty details.To read this article in full or to le
  
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• Gmail users can now receive attachments up to 50MB, but please don't send them

  02-03-2017 16:21
  
  It might not be a problem that affects us all that often, but we’ve all experienced it. Someone emails you a message asking if you got that PDF or picture they sent over. You search through your inbox, trash, and spam folders only to discover it’s not there. The reason? It never went through because the attachment was too big.
  Starting now, those situations will happen a lot less frequently. Google has announced it is doubling the size of attachments Gmail users can receive from 25M
  
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• Charitable donations made via PayPal may be going astray

  02-03-2017 16:05
  
  Like millions of other people, you may well have made a donation to your favorite charity via PayPal. It turns out, though, that those donations don’t always go where you intended. Instead, the money may go to other charities selected by PayPal without the knowledge or consent of the donor, according to a class action suit filed against PayPal earlier this week.
  The suit is not alleging that the money is simply pocketed illegally, says Chris Dore, the attorney who filed the action. But th
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How geospatial analytics can give your business a competitive edge

  02-03-2017 15:59
  
  Remember life before GPS? Having to purchase a paper map and pore over it to figure out how to get from A to B? Not being able to instantly see nearby service stations and coffee shops? It’s hard to imagine how we ever managed to find our way around.
  A few years from now, businesses will be asking, “Remember business before geospatial analytics? When we had to pore over Excel charts without real-time location data, and try and glean insight from numbers on a sheet?’’
  Bec
  
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• University of Washington Wi-Fi-meister talks Aruba, managing big networks

  02-03-2017 15:51
  
  The challenges of networking on college campuses can be serious business, particularly if, like the University of Washington, you’ve got to worry about not one but three distinct campuses.
  And, as Washington’s director of mobile communications David Morton told Network World Wednesday at Aruba Atmosphere 2017, that challenge isn’t limited to those campuses.
  +ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Amazon's AWS S3 outage impacted Apple's services + Cisco warns of NetFlow appliance vulnerability
  
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• 3 reasons fitness buffs may want a Mio Slice

  02-03-2017 15:27
  
  I know it’s absurd. But it looks like I’ll be using three activity trackers every day from now on. And when you read about Mio’s SLICE ($129), you may want to get one, too. 
  Why I still wear Fitbit and an Apple Watch
  I’ve worn a Fitbit since fall 2012. That’s almost five years of activity data I want to continue building. Plus, I wouldn’t want to drop off the Fitbit leaderboard, where I compete with a dozen friends and family members. And Fitbi
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How social media influences political participation and news consumption

  02-03-2017 15:00
  
  The campaign and election process of 2016 was unprecedented in countless ways, from the size of the initial GOP field (US News called it “the largest primary field of the modern era”), televised debates that hit record viewership numbers, the divide created between the Democratic and Republican parties, and the level of dirt and finger-pointing (one Politico headline read “This Is the Dirtiest Presidential Race Since ’72”). NPR lists 65 ways the campaign was unprece
  
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• 12 ways bad web design can hurt your online business

  02-03-2017 14:57
  
  Today, thanks to a number of DIY tools and services, just about anyone can design a website. But that doesn’t mean everybody should. However, whether you hire a professional web designer or plan to design your site yourself, if you want your online presence to look professional – and keep potential customers from bouncing – avoid these web design no-nos.[ Related: 8 keys to ecommerce success ]1. Using a splash page
  “Splash and [entrance] pages really have no value in toda
  
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• Kickstarter op het hoogste niveau

  02-03-2017 14:07
  Xebia Studio geeft innovatie bij klanten een kickstart. Vanuit een nieuw en sfeervol kantoor in Hilversum kunnen teams – bestaande uit Xebianen, desgewenst aangevuld met mensen van de klantorganisatie – binnen twee dagen aan de slag. Development as a service, beamen businessunit-manager Mark Hoek en CTO... lees meer
  
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• Data protection code beschermt clouddiensten conform GDPR

  02-03-2017 13:18
  Dertig Europese clouddiensten voldoen inmiddels aan de CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct, die aansluit op de GDPR. Met de code zijn afnemers ervan verzekerd dat hun cloud infrastructuur-aanbieder de juiste standaard van databescherming gebruikt.CISPE is een coalitie van Europese cloud providers. Doel van de code... lees meer
  
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• Everything you need to know about the Google Home app

  02-03-2017 13:00
  
  You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Google Home lately. Yes, it’s the all-knowing oracle that tells you what’s coming up  your day is and fill the room with the sounds of whales if you so desire.
  But there’s another Google Home you need to know about. It’s an app that bears the same name, although it does way more than just work with your living room answer box. The Google Home app is essential because it does so many things, such as connecting to your ph
  
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• Nieuwe API-standaarden voor SDN en orchestrated services

  02-03-2017 12:57
  AT&T, Orange en Colt Technology Services werken samen met brancheorganisatie MEF en het TM Forum, een wereldwijd innovatieplatform, voor de ontwikkeling van de eerste reeks van API’s waarmee zogenaamde orchestrated Carrier Ethernet-diensten worden ondersteund. De beoogde standaard moet diensten op netwerken... lees meer
  
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• How to respond to a cyberattack

  02-03-2017 12:37
  
  Preparing and responding to a cyberattackImage by ThinkstockCybersecurity incidents continue to grow in both volume and sophistication, with 64 percent more security incidents reported in 2015 than in 2014, according to a June 2016 report by the Ponemon Institute. The human instinct is to try to find those responsible. However, any attempt to access, damage or impair another system that appears to be involved in an attack is mostly likely illegal and can result in civil and/or criminal liability
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Is the business-IT gap intentional?

  02-03-2017 12:35
  
  The 2017 State of the CIO report by CIO.com does an excellent job in reminding us of the eternal gap between the business and IT: While CIOs think of IT as a strategic business partner, business executives think of IT as an important, yet supporting, function. Is this a problem?Not necessarily. Functional specialization is an intended feature of the industrial era operating models designed for efficiency through scale; and the multi-decade-old business-IT gap is a textbook style illustration of
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: From medical records to Merkle trees with IPFS

  02-03-2017 12:30
  
  It’s the application of technology, not the technology itself, that provides for business transformation. Making the connection between how the technology works and how it applies to healthcare can be perplexing. Today, we’ll untie the knot of Merkle trees and Merkle-DAGs and connect these innovations to healthcare.A Merkle treeHash values are numeric values, created from data. Hash values uniquely identify data and provide a “digital fingerprint.” These values are used
  
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• How to get your infrastructure in shape to shake off scriptable attacks

  02-03-2017 12:11
  
  According to F-Secure’s The State of Cyber Security 2017 report, criminal hackers perform most cyber-attacks using basic, scriptable techniques against poorly maintained infrastructure. This will continue as long as there are loads of attack scripts and plenty of poorly secured networks.
  The number of attack scripts is climbing as elite hackers continue to create these scripts and sell them to others, says Itzik Kotler, CTO and Co-Founder, SafeBreach. There doesn’t seem to be any st
  
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• Shake, rattle and roll: We test 3 rugged tablets (with video)

  02-03-2017 12:00
  
  Anyone who depends on their tablet throughout the workday knows that disaster can strike at any moment -- it can get accidentally pushed off a desk or dropped while you're running for your airline connection, or caught in a sudden storm, or sat on by your three-year-old.
  If you want to avoid last-minute catastrophes, then you may want to consider buying a ruggedized tablet.
  There were about 530,000 rugged tablets sold in 2016, about 0.3% of the overall computer market, making it a niche within
  
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• HyperApp takes functional JavaScript to web apps

  02-03-2017 12:00
  
  The HyperApp JavaScript library serves as mechanism for building web applications while using a functional programming paradigm and stateless components.
  Accessible via NPM, open source Hyperact has no dependencies, author Jorge Bucaran said. It's currently in a beta stage of development with version 0.6.0, although the API is not going to change.[ Use JavaScript in your dev shop? InfoWorld looks at 17 JavaScript editors and IDEs and 22 JavaScript frameworks ready for adoption. | Get started wi
  
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• 15 tools to prime your Raspberry Pi for IoT

  02-03-2017 12:00
  
  Prime your Pi for enterprise IoTImage by Logo by Raspberry Pi FoundationIoT is a sparkly new term for what the scientific community has been doing for a long time. But now, in its enterprise incarnation, we’re trying to place those data-gathering devices closer to the edge. Both researchers and businesses are essentially looking for “time series” data -- in other words, time-stamped data about the physical world around you. A great example of this can be found in the power indu
  
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• 13 reasons not to use Chrome

  02-03-2017 12:00
  
  OK, we’re kidding a bit. Chrome is great. Google did a wonderful job with it—and continues improving it every day. The marketplace recognizes this, and many surveys show Chrome is the most popular browser by far.
  It’s not hard to see why. Chrome is stable, in part because its architects made a smart decision to put each web page in a separate process. It has excellent HTML5 standards support, loads of extensions, synchronization across computers, and tight integration with Goo
  
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• Uber scandal highlights what's wrong with Silicon Valley

  02-03-2017 10:28
  
  If you want to know why it's so difficult for companies in the technology industry to hire and retain women, people of color and LGBTQ people, look no further than Uber. It's a living, breathing example of the type of environment that's all-too-common in Silicon Valley.
  Shortly after Susan Fowler's explosive revelations about her tenure at the ridesharing startup, others began speaking up. Another female Uber engineer, under the alias Amy Vertino, wrote about her tenure at Uber; it's incredibly
  
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• 3 ways to gauge employee engagement and satisfaction

  02-03-2017 10:25
  
  Performance reviews and employee satisfaction surveys aren't always the best way to get honest feedback from employees. And as a result, more companies are moving to establish a feedback culture, which relies on fostering an open-culture through communication and frequent check-ins with employees.Ty Tucker, CEO of REV, a performance management platform vendor, emphasizes the importance of encouraging trust and patience when building a feedback culture.
  "In the end, it doesn't matter if you have
  
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• US FCC stays data security regulations for broadband providers

  02-03-2017 05:36
  
  The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has halted new rules that would require high-speed internet providers to take 'reasonable' steps to protect customer data.In a 2-1 vote that went along party lines, the FCC voted Wednesday to stay temporarily one part of privacy rules passed in October that would give consumers the right to decide how their data is used and shared by broadband providers.The rules include the requirement that internet service providers should obtain "opt-in" consent from
  
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• Yahoo execs botched its response to 2014 breach, investigation finds

  02-03-2017 02:01
  
  If your company has experienced a data breach, it's probably a good idea to thoroughly investigate it promptly.Unfortunately, Yahoo didn't, according to a new internal investigation. The internet pioneer, which reported a massive data breach involving 500 million user accounts in September, actually knew an intrusion had occurred back in 2014, but allegedly botched its response.The findings were made in a Yahoo securities exchange filing on Wednesday that offered more details about the 2014 brea
  
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