IT Executive news

• Amazon brings Alexa to its main iOS app to help iPhone users shop and track orders

  16-03-2017 23:23
  
  Alexa is coming to Siri’s home turf.
  On Thursday, Amazon began rolling out Alexa and her voice-assistant capabilities inside its flagship iOS app (iTunes link). This means that iPhone users can now ask Alexa questions, get shopping assistance, track orders, and play Prime videos and music.
  After an initial rollout, Alexa will be available to all iOS users by next week, Amazon said. However, the company’s in-app Alexa won’t feature the Door Lock skill that Amazon introduced las
  
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• Oracle promises IaaS growth as cloud business rises

  16-03-2017 21:26
  
  Oracle’s third quarter financial results continue to show that the company’s future is in the cloud. On Wednesday, the company reported massive growth in its software- and platform-as-a-service businesses, promising further gains as its customers do away with their data centers.The company’s SaaS and PaaS revenue from December 2016 through February 2017 was a little over US$1 billion, up from $583 million during the same period a year prior. Its infrastructure-as-a-service busi
  
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• Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches

  16-03-2017 21:21
  
  New research is turning on its head the idea that legacy systems -- such as Cobol and Fortran -- are more secure because hackers are unfamiliar with the technology.
  New research found that these outdated systems, which may not be encrypted or even documented, were more susceptible to threats.
  By analyzing publicly available federal spending and security breach data,the researchers found that a 1% increase in the share of new IT development spending is associated with a 5% decrease in security b
  
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• Unpatched vulnerability puts Ubiquiti networking products at risk

  16-03-2017 21:18
  
  An unpatched command injection vulnerability could allow hackers to take over enterprise networking products from Ubiquiti Networks.
  The vulnerability was discovered by researchers from SEC Consult and allows authenticated users to inject arbitrary commands into the web-based administration interface of affected devices. These commands would be executed on the underlying operating system as root, the highest privileged account.
  Because it requires authentication, the vulnerability's impact is s
  
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• Windows 10 'servicing stack' update cripples some PCs

  16-03-2017 21:13
  
  Some users have reported that one of this week's Windows 10 updates crippled their PCs, according to a thread on Reddit.
  They fingered the KB4013418 update as the most likely culprit. That update was marked simply as "Update for Windows 10 Version 1607" in Windows Update, and in the accompanying support document, tagged as a "servicing stack update."[ Related: Fix Windows 10 problems with these free Microsoft tools ]
  In Microsoft's parlance, a servicing stack consists of the executable file and
  
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• BrandPost: Satisfying Your Customers

  16-03-2017 21:09
  
  The retail industry is undergoing a rapid transformation as stores are being forced to evolve into “brick-and-click” operations that meet the demands of today’s mobile phone-wielding customers, make the most of their physical location and the internet, and embrace the networking technologies that best-fit their operations. The retailers that survive these far-reaching business challenges are the ones that can learn to adapt to these quickly changing times.Without further ado, h
  
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• Face-off: HPE vs. NetApp for enterprise flash storage

  16-03-2017 21:08
  
  Bluntly put, IT managers move to flash array storage for speedy performance and reliability. But the systems vary widely in many respects and the selection must be matched to the organization's needs. So how do you decide?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• VA hospitals adopt 3D printers to create custom prostheses

  16-03-2017 20:11
  
  Five Veterans Affairs hospitals have been given 3D desktop printers, materials and training by Stratasys to enable the development of custom orthotics, prostheses and anatomical models.
  The five "core" hospitals received the Stratasys Mojo 3D printers, which were then integrated into a collaborative network that allows doctors and researchers to leverage 3D prints for medical training and patient care.StratasysA 3D-printed hand model used for procedural planning and training.To read this articl
  
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• Opera really wants you to use ad blocking, considers making it a default feature

  16-03-2017 20:06
  
  Two-thirds of Opera users still don’t use native ad blocking, according to the browser developer—so the company may turn on the feature by default.
  A year ago, Opera announced that it was testing a browser with ad blocking built in, rather than relying on the plugins that other browser makers use. That version went into general release last May—and yet, only a minority of users actually enabled the feature. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click
  
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• BrandPost: The State of Outsourcing and Operations 2017, Part 2

  16-03-2017 19:32
  
  As organizations struggle to keep up with the disruptive shifts of digital transformation, service delivery models are evolving fast toward centralization and greater use of automation, according to the HfS/KPMG 2017 State of Outsourcing and Operations.While there is growth across the board in all types of service delivery models, the study found that there is a drive toward full Global Business Services (GBS) and a spectrum-wide move away from decentralized models. For example, 11% of organizat
  
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• Microsoft quietly promotes Creators Update in Patch Tuesday update

  16-03-2017 19:28
  
  Microsoft this week began a low-key promotion for the next Microsoft Windows 10 feature upgrade after issuing the month's Patch Tuesday updates.
  Once Windows 10 applied the March 14 cumulative update, the "Update & security" section of the Settings panel displayed text reading, "Good news! The Windows 10 Creators Update is on its way. Want to be one of the first to get it?"[ Related:Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ]
  The accompanying link was anti-climactic: The page simply told u
  
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• Trump budget would fund border wall, but slash science and research

  16-03-2017 19:20
  
  President Donald Trump's federal budget outline released Thursday represents a major shift in U.S. priorities. It would increase defense spending, boost immigration enforcement and include in seed money for a wall along the southern border.
  It does all of that, in part, by cutting science funding.[ Further reading:The march toward exascale computers ]
  Science and technology groups are warning that U.S. leadership will suffer if the budget, which would cover the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, i
  
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• 31% off Luma 3-Piece Whole Home Mesh WiFi System - Deal Alert

  16-03-2017 19:20
  
  Regardless of your home’s size or shape, these 3 powerful Luma devices work together to create an extremely fast, ultra-secure surround WiFi network that’s customized for your home. No more fiddling with extra WiFi extenders to manage dead spots and weak zones. Luma puts you in control. With a few simple taps, you can pause the internet, filter what your kids are looking at online, or set house rules for your network. Luma also secures your devices and neutralizes threats, keeping yo
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How Canonical makes money from Ubuntu

  16-03-2017 18:43
  
  Among enterprise Linux distributions — SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ubuntu — Ubuntu has the shortest life-cycle. SLES offers maintenance updates for 8-10 years, with extended support for 11-13 years. RHEL is supported for 10 years and then there is extended support. Ubuntu’s long-term support (LTS) edition is supported for only five years.
  Despite Ubuntu LTS's short life-cycle, many customers use it, especially in the cloud (AWS or Mi
  
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• Pricing and availability announced for the G6, but carriers make it unnecessarily confusing

  16-03-2017 18:39
  
  LG’S G6 was easily the hottest phone to come out of MWC, but the company was tight-lipped about when it was releasing and how much it would cost. With pre-orders set to begin tomorrow, however, we have a clearer picture of LG’s plans for its launch.
  First the good news: Anyone who orders a G6 before April 30 will be able to get a free Google Home, effectively saving $130. That’s a pretty sweet launch deal, even if you already have a Google Home. We hear they make great gifts,
  
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• Adobe Reader, Edge, Safari, and Ubuntu fall during first day at Pwn2Own

  16-03-2017 18:18
  
  Bug hunters have gathered again to test their skills against some of the most popular and mature software programs during the Pwn2Own hacking contest. During the first day, they successfully demonstrated exploits against Microsoft Edge, Apple's Safari, Adobe Reader, and Ubuntu Desktop.
  The Pwn2Own contest runs every year during the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada. It's organized and sponsored by the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), an exploit acquisition program operated by Trend
  
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• AMD's Radeon memory business is slowing down

  16-03-2017 17:55
  
  AMD's Radeon memory business has slowed down, with fewer products available in the U.S. and no new product releases since the introduction of the Polaris GPUs last year.Products are not being sold by key partners like Newegg, Best Buy, or TigerDirect, and some products are out of or almost out of stock at Amazon.com. Some Radeon DRAM is still being carried on Walmart's website and at specialist tech retailers at discounted prices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click h
  
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• KI binnen vier jaar cruciaal voor concurrentievermogen

  16-03-2017 17:28
  Ruim acht op de tien bedrijven wereldwijd beschouwt kunstmatige intelligentie als essentieel voor hun concurrentievermogen en de helft daarvan beschouwt het als een transformatieve ontwikkeling. Zeven op de tien zetten KI op dit moment in voor IT-taken. Eenzelfde deel denkt echter dat de grootste impact ervan in 2020... lees meer
  
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• 75% off Etekcity 4 Pack Portable Outdoor LED Camping Lantern with 12 AA Batteries - Deal Alert

  16-03-2017 16:53
  
  Whether used for camping, trick or treating, or power outages, this lantern will provide up to 12 hours of bright omnidirectional LED lighting to see your surroundings. When the battery power of the lantern runs low, the brightness will dim to an energy saving mode to provide longer lasting illumination (up to 4 hours of low power usage). It's lighter, brighter and more portable than most flashlights while still featuring the rugged durability to withstand the outdoors. The military grade exter
  
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• Google to ship Project Soli gesture development kits later this year

  16-03-2017 16:03
  
  Google will start shipping development kits for its Project Soli wireless gesture recognition technology later this year.Project Soli involves a millimeter-wave radar chip that can detect "very fine" gestures with fingers and hands. It can then be used for playing games using hand gestures on mobile devices, computers, and electronics.The technology has the potential to get rid of controllers and input devices. Its biggest impact could be in virtual and augmented reality. When using VR headsets,
  
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• BrandPost: Veritas delivers Global Visibility to Combat Today’s Extreme Data Growth and Complexity

  16-03-2017 15:32
  Organizations are struggling with two competing forces: demand for uncompromising information protection and access and the exponential increase in data growth and sprawl. As organizations fight these challenging trends the stakes are growing higher than ever.  The expectation of today’s IT organization is triple 9’s in performance and resiliency and at the same time absolute prevention of information crisis or theft.  But how do you avoid a crisis when you don’t und
  
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• CBRS Alliance: Shared spectrum services 'a near-term opportunity'

  16-03-2017 15:21
  
  The CBRS Alliance, which promotes LTE services in the shared 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band, is riding high after signing up all of the Big 4 U.S. carriers, plus Samsung, and then seeing a slew of CBRS activity at the recent Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.
  Neville Meijers, VP of business development at Qualcomm Technologies and chairman of the board for the CBRS Alliance, says “there’s a lot of interest in the combination of unlicensed and shared spectrum&rd
  
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• BrandPost: Is Data Access More Important than Data?

  16-03-2017 15:04
  
  There is no denying that data is invaluable. It underpins everything we do, especially being in the digital age. If anything happens to any of our servers we use backup copies to restore lost data. We use data to make decisions; some simple and others life changing e.g. using data to develop cures for illnesses. We use data to bring to market new applications. We use data to enable us to move forward.
   Some businesses are literally built on data – e.g. Facebook (worth $328 billion) a
  
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• Cisco security advisory dump finds 20 warnings, 2 critical

  16-03-2017 14:55
  
  It’s a bad week for all things network security as Cisco spewed out 20 Security Advisories and Alerts – two critical and three high-impact – that customers should be aware of and implement patches where they can.
  Cisco, like other big enterprise vendors, regularly issues security warnings but 20 in one day is an unusual amount for the networking giant. Others like Microsoft and Oracle issue tons of security bulletins monthly mostly without much fanfare – for example Micr
  
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• Raspberry Pi roundup: Pi Day, Remembrances of Pis Past, competitor corner, STEM and SKULLS

  16-03-2017 14:43
  
  Since we’ve just had a Raspberry Pi anniversary, you might think that it’s excessive to trumpet another Pi-related holiday just one week later, but, well, Tuesday was Pi Day, this is the internet, and I’m afraid that’s just the way these things go.
  OK, so Pi Day isn’t, strictly speaking, a Raspberry Pi thing – around these parts, it’s more of a pie-in-the-face thing – but that didn’t stop the Raspberry Pi community from getting in on the act
  
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• Baseball games are finally coming to streaming TV

  16-03-2017 14:14
  
  Heads up, baseball fans. With the major league season just weeks away, there’s good news if you want to watch your favorite teams without forking over big bucks to big cable.Sling TV and the soon-to-launch YouTube TV have broken the stranglehold of MLB.TV and various regional sports networks over broadcast rights and will be streaming major Major League Baseball games in a number of markets this season.Sling ready for opening day
  Sling TV will be streaming games by opening day, the company
  
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• Robotiseren om te digitaliseren?

  16-03-2017 13:37
  Door Ron van Kemenade – Elk zichzelf respecterend bedrijf heeft een digitaliseringsstrategie. Maar welke lading die vlag dekt, is niet altijd even duidelijk. Het kan betekenen dat er processen worden geautomatiseerd, dat een groter aandeel van online verkopen wordt nagestreefd, of dat er hele nieuwe producten en... lees meer
  
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• 10 offbeat trackers and wacky wearables

  16-03-2017 13:11
  
  10 offbeat trackers and wacky wearables Image by CIOAre you feeling worn out by wearables? Can’t stand the thought of strapping yet another heart-rate-sensing, step-counting, sleep-tracking watch around your wrist? I feel your pain. As someone who frequently reviews activity trackers, I don’t often see bold new features in mainstream devices. But if you look closely at small startups around the globe, you’ll start to notice some cool, slightly crazy, definitely out-there device
  
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• Pwnie Express eases security remediation with a risk-assessment tool

  16-03-2017 12:36
  
  Pwnie Express is adding a tool that ranks the risks its security service finds on customer networks and makes it easier to remediate them.
  The new feature of the company’s Pulse service assesses potential vulnerabilities that its sensors detect in customers’ networks and issues a grade in each of four categories. This Device Risk Scorecard points out problems, prioritizes them by urgency and tells how to fix them.
  The scorecard looks at wireless infrastructure configuration, client
  
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• Expert: Apple may have deployed unauthorized patch by mistake

  16-03-2017 12:23
  
  Last month, reports came out that Apple accidentally installed a fake firmware patch on internal development servers. That's a lesson to all companies to be careful about where they get their patches.
  What may have happened is that an Apple employee installed a patch shared by the hardware vendor's employee, instead of using the official release of the patch, said Chris Nietzold, senior platform engineer at security appliance manufacturer MBX Systems.
  "They procured the firmware from an unoffic
  
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• Want good cyber insurance? Read the fine print

  16-03-2017 11:58
  
  One of the main reasons to buy insurance is to prevent the cost of an accident or other disaster from breaking the bank. But what if simply buying insurance threatens to break the bank?
  That scenario is starting to worry some organizations, for several reasons.
  First is the simple but powerful market force of supply and demand. More and more organizations, spooked by regular stories of catastrophic breaches – such as the compromise of more than 1.5 billion Yahoo! accounts, which took down
  
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• How to get started as an IT consultant

  16-03-2017 11:52
  
  For the ambitious IT professional, there are a number of ways to take advantage of today’s hot job market. You could patiently climb the ladder at your organization or jump to an attractive opportunity at another company … or you can go into business for yourself as a consultant.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Fragmentation: the silent killer in security management

  16-03-2017 11:46
  
  Closing the gapImage by James HoToday’s detection deficit between attackers and defenders is near an all-time high – and the gap is only getting wider. While many factors contribute to this deficit, among the top is the fragmentation of people, processes, and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Google makes AI talent play with Kaggle buy

  16-03-2017 11:23
  
  If you're a company entrenched in an arms race for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, you could do worse than tapping into a pool of thousands of data scientists to augment your digital products and services.
  That's the pole position Google holds after acquiring crowdsourcing platform Kaggle last week for an undisclosed sum. Some 600,000 professional data crunchers use Kaggle to build prediction models for such heady challenges as cancer detection and heart disease diagnoses. And e
  
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• Smackdown: Office 365 vs. G Suite management

  16-03-2017 11:00
  
  When you choose a productivity platform like Microsoft’s Office 365 or Google’s G Suite, the main focus is on the platform’s functionality: Does it do the job you need?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Get ready for the Windows 10 Creators Update

  16-03-2017 11:00
  
  Sometime this spring, probably in April, Microsoft will release the Creators Update, one of the two major updates to Windows 10 that will roll out this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Android switches to native Java 8 support

  16-03-2017 11:00
  
  Android's mobile application build system will natively support Java 8 features going forward, with Google deprecating the Jack toolchain.
  Jack has served as a toolchain to compile Java source code into Android dex byte code, with Java providing the basis of Android development. But now, Google wants to support Java 8 features directly in the current javax and dx set of tools.[ Android is now ready for real usage in the enterprise. Read InfoWorld's in-depth guide on how to make Android a seriou
  
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• 10 steps to becoming a horrible IT boss

  16-03-2017 11:00
  
  It’s legendary: A CIO promotes his best developer into a management role, losing an excellent programmer and gaining a bad manager.The art of management isn’t so much about assembling a dream team, helping others be successful, or solving technical problems. It’s about aligning everything you do in service of the business—the business of yourself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Working while female

  16-03-2017 10:29
  
  I was scrolling through my Twitter feed late the other night when I stumbled on this Tweet from Philly writer, movie and TV critic and podcaster Martin Schneider:Martin R. Schneider via TwitterYou can read the entire thread here, but in a nutshell, Schneider and his former co-worker and current best friend Nicole Hallberg inadvertently switched names at work -- they shared an Inbox; Schneider didn't realize he was interacting with clients using Nicole's email signature and wondered why previousl
  
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• AMD reveals Ryzen 5 prices as it sidesteps performance questions

  16-03-2017 03:00
  
  As AMD reveals its Ryzen 5 prices and release date, the company marks an important transition: After launching its eagerly awaited Ryzen 7 chip for high-end PCs, AMD hopes to parlay that goodwill into mainstream success.
  AMD said it will ship its Ryzen 5 desktop processors on April 11, the same day it will begin accepting its first orders for the chip. All of the four new Ryzen 5 chips will be priced at less than $250, the same price range that Intel currently offers for its own
  
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• US faces limits in busting Russian agents over Yahoo breach

  16-03-2017 02:20
  
  In a rare move, the U.S. has indicted two Russian government agents for their suspected involvement in a massive Yahoo data breach. But what now?
  Security experts say Wednesday’s indictment might amount to nothing more than naming and shaming Russia. That’s because no one expects the Kremlin to play along with the U.S. indictment.
  “I can’t imagine the Russian government is going to hand over the two FSB officers,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief of security strategy
  
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• Carry-on bag promises to hold garments, gadgets and charger

  16-03-2017 00:35
  
  I’m always on the lookout for cleverly designed business travel bags. And Genius Pack makes several styles that fit the bill. Genius Pack bags typically include special compression pockets for dirty laundry, pockets for optional USB chargers and micro umbrellas -- even dedicated pockets for undies and socks.
  Among the company’s more recent efforts is the Genius Pack Carry-On Duffle with Integrated Suiter, currently $178. As the name suggests, it’s a duffle bag. But o
  
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