Articles21 articles, 2016-04-11 00:01

1 Windows 10: Why These 10 NewFeatures Matter (2.00/3)

At its annual Builddevelopers conference ,held last week in SanFrancisco, Microsoftexecs highlighted newand updated productsand services relevant toits developer audience.

The introductory keynotes on day one startedwith some major news for Windows 10. In July2016, Microsoft will roll out a Windows 10Anniversary Update to bring new features toconsumers and developers alike.

In the eight months since Windows 10 officiallylaunched, Microsoft claims its newest OS hasmore than 270 million active users. It says it aimsto reach one billion of them by the anniversary

date in 2018.

[Will Surface Phone arrive in 2017? Sources aresaying yes.]

Microsoft made Windows 10 generally availableon July 29, 2015, so there's a good chance wecan expect the anniversary update on or aroundthat date. Before it releases this major update,Microsoft will give Windows Insiders the chance totry features being developed as part of theupgrade.

Many of these changes, which include updates toCortana and an early version of the Skypeuniversal app, recently arrived for Insiders as partof Preview Build 14316. Testers will be happy tolearn this build also includes a few key fixes, alsodetailed in Microsoft's blog post.

As with any preview build, 14316 also has a fewbugs worth noting before you download. Largedownloads in Edge may get stuck at 99%completion, turning on Developer Mode maycrash Settings, and the Visual Studio emulator willfail, so Microsoft encourages developers to waitfor this build to hit the Slow Ring beforedownloading.

Here, we take a closer look at some of the

features in Build 14316 you'll likely be mostexcited to try, and one that's on its way. Will yoube downloading the newest preview build? Whichof these features would you most appreciate?

(All images from Microsoft Corporation)2016-04-11 00:00 Kelly Sheridan

2 News

Brought to you by

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortiumenabling collaboration and innovation through anopen source development model.

Learn More

© 2016 The Linux Foundation2016-04-11 00:00 www.linux

3 Security Think Tank: Six alternativestrategies to centralised securitypatching

It is fair to say that the old model of centralisedpatching and its associated processes are

becoming less effective than theywere in the past (if they ever reallywere).

With a number of suppliers using theupgrade/replace method rather than patching , itis much more difficult to follow the process ofidentify-test-pilot-deploy-force (or a variationthereof) that has been commonly followed andautomated.

There are a number of patch managementstrategies that can be considered, either asstand-alone systems or in combination. Note that,in all cases, information security may not ownthese systems, nor are they responsible forapplying patches (that is an IT operations job);but they should have input into the strategy orstrategies adopted.

1. Standardise software, lock devices down andforce upgrades

Use deployment tools built into operating systemsor use applications to do this. The trade-offbetween disruption to business operations andthe time required to apply updates needs to beconsidered, however.

2. Outsource

Make sure patch management (and the time todo it) is part of outsourced IT provision or of anyservice contract.

3. Use the cloud

The cloud may offer a realistic way to manageupdates and patches. With instances beingprovisioned according to demand, cloudproviders can create builds and deploy themwhen required.

As instances are terminated, old builds can beremoved from the service very quickly. The cloudprovider will have to have a very good identify-test-pilot-deploy process, but that is somethingthat can be requested and examined both beforebuying and when using the cloud service.

4. Go BYOD

If your users bring their own devices (BYOD),then it is up to them to upgrade/patch them. Makeit part of the acceptable use policy (AUP) oremployment contract and educate users so theydo it.

5. Risk assessment

Focus on data, applications, systems and devicesthat are critical to your business or that handlesensitive (including personal) information. Use arisk assessment to decide what is critical andthen patch the critical data, applications, systemsand devices as a matter of priority.

6. Use 802.1X , network access control andquarantine

Treat any device that connects to your networkas untrusted. Check devices as they connect toyour network and if they are not running thelatest (or approved) software, do not allow themaccess to the network. Instead, direct them to anetwork where the only option is to upgrade orpatch software.

As devices and applications evolve – andbecome more cloud-centric – organisationsshould be actively thinking about whether theywant to perform patch management, or whethertheir resources could be directed to better useelsewhere.

Adrian Davis is managing director for Europe at (ISC) 2 .

2016-04-10 21:44 Adrian Davis

4 Brexit debate: Why IT pros shouldvote to leave

In the 1990s, in theheyday of IT contracting, Igot an opportunity towork with one of the

offices of the European Union. During my stint, Imet some good people and I enjoyed my time –but felt that the wider institution’s ambitions werenot aligned to most British people.

My continued interest over the years led me tobelieve that the EU not only needs fundamentalreform, but it is actually “unreformable”. So I havetaken time out to make my views heard as theupcoming EU referendum is one of the mostmomentous political decisions in a generation.

It will affect every IT business, household, publicservice and, of course, our economy anddemocracy.

There are five important reasons why I think theBritish economy and IT companies would bebetter off without Brussels. These are:

1. The EU is expensive

Even to an IT person, there are many noughtswith the EU – it costs us £18,000,000,000 peryear, or £350m per week. With that, we couldbuild a lot of infrastructure, such as decent roads,trains or even rural fibre.

EU costs will only go up based on support for theEuro project – especially if the UK economycontinues to thrive against its EU partners. (TheEU demanded an extra £3bn last year alone).

2. Bureaucratic EU regulations cost ourbusinesses £90bn

I run IT outsourcing for small businesses, so Ihave seen first-hand how bureaucraticregulations affect entrepreneurial businesses,such as my own. Even the minutest change cancause chaos for businesses in terms of financialplanning.

Last year, the EU changed VAT rules for thoseselling digital products and services, which meantthat small businesses – some of which had neverhad to register for UK VAT before – had tonegotiate the complexity of EU regulation.

3. IT businesses demand planned migration

Agile IT businesses I meet believe that to have

sustained economic growth, we do needimmigration. We need to hire the brightest andthe best.

But, because of pressure from uncontrolledmigration from the EU, the government is makingit very tough to get individuals from other parts ofthe world.

This stifles our IT sector. Getting programmersfrom India – which is one of the few world marketsable to provide the right kind of cost-effectiveresource – is nigh on impossible.

4. Economic control – better deals

The EU is a club biased towards the dominanteconomies and manufacturing industries ofEurope, such as Germany. Academics like PatrickMinford of Cardiff University suggest that if the UKwere free from the EU’s Common Tariff, we wouldinstantly benefit from free trade and save costsworth 3% of GDP.

5. Kill the tax avoidance

The global multinational companies love the EU,especially the US conglomerates like Amazon andFacebook. Most people think this is because ofthe simplification with the common market – the

truth, however, is rather different.

These type of global company, with expensivelawyers and accountants, can play the Europeanrules to achieve tax avoidance on a massivescale. For example, €9tn flows through theNetherlands (about 10% of the annual output ofthe world economy) to tax havens which arehelping companies such as Facebook pay lesscorporation tax than a small IT consultancy.

Peter Chadha is CEO of London-based businessIT consultancy Dr Pete Technology Experts anddeputy chairman of the London group ofBusiness for Britain , a business groupcampaigning for a ‘leave’ vote in the 2016referendum

2016-04-10 21:36 Peter Chadha

5 Microsoft, HackerRank Launch BingSearch Tool for Programmers

Microsoft andHackerRank havedelivered a new Bingsearch feature thatenables developers toquickly find solutions to

coding queries.

Microsoft and HackerRank , a site that providesprogramming solutions for developers, haveteamed up to launch a new feature for Microsoft'sBing search engine that enables programmers tofind solutions to coding queries directly within thesearch engine.

When coding, programmers often run into issuesthey don’t understand or on which need moreclarity. Sometimes it’s something simple orvaguely familiar; other times it could besomething they’ve never seen before. So they goto programming solution sites like Stack Overflowor cull through search engines to find results thatcan help them out.

The process is not much different from a writerwho runs into a term or usage they may not befamiliar with—they do a search for a definitionand get back to writing. In programming, however,there are typically more steps involved, as well asthe trial and error of finding the right solution.

So, with the new Bing feature, instead ofsearching across multiple Websites, coders cannow find, edit and use coding solutions in real-time without needing an integrated developmentenvironment (IDE), said Vivek Ravisankar, CEO

and co-founder of HackerRank.

“This is one of the most common productivitypitfalls for programmers today,” said Marcelo DeBarros, group engineering manager at Bing, andRavisankar in a jointly penned blog post on thenew search feature. “If you want to improve on orlearn a new algorithm, you search in engines andfigure out which blue link to click. Then, you haveto transfer all of this into your editor. You trial anderror until you find the right solution. If only therewas a way to search a function and immediatelysee the solution in one step. Starting today, youcan.”

The code for the new search feature runs on alive code editor within Bing’s search engine, thepost said. The launch of the new Bing searchfeature for programmers comes on the heels ofMicrosoft's Build developer conference recentlyheld in San Francisco.

“Typically, engineers go to search engines to getanswers on various sites like, Stack Overflow ,Stack Exchange and other blogs,” the post said.“Now, you have a streamlined alternative that willnot only spit out the code solution you need butalso edit the code and play with it in real-time. NoIDE installation required. This will save you

endless time you used to spend going back andforth from search to your code editor.”

The joint Microsoft/HackerRank solution providesprogrammers with a fast, easy way to find usefulsolutions to programming problems.

“In addition to learning how a certainalgorithm/code is written in a given language,users will also be able to check how the samesolution is constructed in a range of otherprogramming languages too—providing aRosetta-stone model for programminglanguages,” De Barros, who is group engineeringmanager for the UX features and shared tools atBing, said in the HackerRank post.

On its Website, HackerRank describes itself as asite for hackers from all over the world to solveprogramming problems in different computerscience domains like algorithms, machinelearning and artificial intelligence, and to excel indifferent programming paradigms like functionalprogramming.

With a tagline of “everything you need to becomea better programmer,” HackerRank providesdevelopers with information to sharpen theirprogramming skills. The site also enablesdevelopers to compete in hackathon competitions

and to collaborate with and learn from thegrowing community of developers that useHackerRank.

However, the company’s bottom-line service is torank programmers based on their coding skills tohelp companies find talented developers andreduce the time it takes to hire engineering staff.

HackerRank has helped more than 1,000companies, including Twitter, VMware, BNYMellon and Pure Storage, discover and hireskilled software developers, and, likewise,connect the millions of skilled developers aroundthe world with companies looking to hire them, thecompany said.

Meanwhile, in other developer-related Bing news,Microsoft released a preview version of its BingMaps V8 (version 8) control, a major update tothe company's mapping platform for Web andmobile applications.

First announced at the Build conference, the newWeb control and its interactive softwaredevelopment kit (SDK) offer new tools fordevelopers looking to incorporate map data intotheir business intelligence (BI) and analyticsapplications. During a Build session , RickyBrundritt, a senior program manager in

Microsoft's Bing Maps Customer Advisory group,said: "About 70 percent of all the apps out therethat are using Bing Maps today are using it forsome sort of business intelligence," includingasset-tracking apps.

2016-04-10 20:17 Darryl K

6 Apple is going all-in on celebritiesto sell new Apple TV

After Cookie Monster ,Taylor Swift , Alison Brieand Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Apple isreleasing a new ad

featuring a couple of celebrities. This time,basketball player Kobe Bryant and actor MichaelB. Jordan are sitting on a couch watching aBryant biopic.

And things don’t go as smoothly as expected.While Bryant is still a young fella, the biopicfeatures his youth, fame and… old days. Bryant’sreaction is as funny as you’d expect.

Once again, Apple is putting the emphasis onSiri. The new Apple TV remote isn’t perfect, butSiri is a good UI addition for this device. For

example, you can say to jump ahead in aprogram so that you don’t have to scroll andscroll and… scroll.

It’s interesting to see Apple working with so manycelebrities to sell its latest devices. You’re goingto watch celebrities with your Apple TV, so Appleis breaking a barrier with this ad and showingcelebrities in front of an Apple TV. But maybeyou’re watching this on a TV? All of this ismetatheater for the TV age.

[Plays Inception music, leaves the room]2016-04-10 20:16 Romain Dillet

7 Autodesk looks to future of 3Dprinting with Project Escher

Like so manyorganizations these days,Autodesk is a company intransition. It was untilrecently a traditionalboxed software companyselling licenses. Today,it’s moving to a subscription model. Yet its ownbusiness model disruption is only part of thestory. As a company steeped in the

manufacturing design process, it’s seeing itscustomers looking to change as well — and itwants to be part of the leap to whatever is comingnext.

Autodesk sees solving problems around 3Dprinting as a way it could add value to itsmanufacturing customers who are lookingfor ways to use this new technology in theproduct creation process. There are in fact a lotof difficult problems to solve around thisapproach and Autodesk is hoping to help bycoming up with some clever solutions andacting as a resource for their customers.

To that end, they have launched Project Escher to help deal with a sticky 3D manufacturingproblem around the limits of a single nozzleapproach to printing complex parts. Thedifficulty is that you can only push so muchmaterial through a nozzle before you reach itsphysical limit, Corey Bloome, hardware lead atAutodesk explained.

The answer to overcoming the single nozzlebarrier is surprisingly simple. You just add more.The devil, however, is very much in the details.Coordinating those nozzles, it turns out, is a verysticky digital problem, one Autodesk is hoping to

help solve with this project.

The challenge is making sure that the nozzlesdon’t crash into each other, which is harder thanit sounds. It’s in fact a complex programmingexercise to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Project Escher is a study of sorts in speeding upthe 3D printing process and providing the fastestoutput possible, to take what once took hours ordays and reduce that timing dramatically. Thatspeed issue has been a real challenge formanufacturers, Keith Kmetz who covers 3Dprinting at IDC, explained.

“Project Escher provides the brains for multipletools to work in tandem, so that multiple sourcesare working on the same object at the same time.This exponentially increases the productivity ofthe entire system by combining the efforts ofmultiple tools to work on one job together. It’sanother way to address the perceived speeddrawback — in this case, via the coordination(the brains) of the software and multiple printingsources,” he said.

The printer manufacturers themselves havestruggled to search for ways to overcome thislimitation, says Kim Losey, product marketingmanager at Autodesk. “Big industrial companies

[have been] spending tens of thousands ofdollars developing 3D printers specific to theirapplications, and if we use our control systems(Project Escher), it allows them to have a morecompelling product to sell [more quickly],” shesaid.

Autodesk is well suited to this task, says TerryWohlers, principal at Wohlers and Associates , afirm that tracks the industrial 3D printing space.“Autodesk sees 3D printing and additivemanufacturing (the terms are usedinterchangeably) as part of a larger digitalmanufacturing ecosystem. The software thatAutodesk sells is a key enabler to that digitalmanufacturing ecosystem,” he explained.

The move might seem like a shift to anotherbusiness from making the software to design theproducts, but Autodesk doesn’t see it that way.They are trying to look around the corner andsee what the future of manufacturing could looklike.

“This is not necessarily a pivot. This is us lookingat the manufacturing business and how we aregoing to play a role with these customers in thefuture as we look ahead a few years and try tocome to market [with products and solutions] to

help them before they become problems,” Loseysaid.

And lest you think perhaps they are too far aheadof the curve, they have designed the underlyingarchitecture to be as flexible as possible, so if thetechnology changes, the software can adapt.

“We design for what we can anticipate and leaveopenings for things we can’t,” Bloome said. Herightly points, the vision gets blurrier, the furtherout you look and they have tried to build inflexibility into this system to compensate for that.

All photos courtesy of Autodesk .2016-04-10 20:16 Ron Miller

8 The open web is not going away

Dries Buytaert ,the founder of Drupal,and Matt Mullenweg , thefounder of WordPress,recently posted calls to

arms (of sorts) in defense of the “open web.”

I, too, am a believer in the open web — a platformthat anyone can hack on powered by standards

(http) and great technology (servers, devices,browsers). It delivers on the promise of theInternet: a world in which everyone is connected,and you can command as much attention as yourcontent deserves (no matter your budget orconnections).

But I agree with them that it is threatened bydominant technology companies such asFacebook, Google and Apple who have aneconomic interest in creating their own “walledgardens” of Internet content that they control andmonetize.

In Facebook’s “walled garden” there is onlyFacebook content posted by your Facebookfriends, so why venture anywhere else? EvanWilliams (founder of Blogger, Twitter andMedium) has gone so far as to say that in thefuture, “individual websites won’t matter.” In thefuture Internet, he believes there will only belarge, closed Internet-company-controlled walledgardens. This is the raison d’etre of his newcompany Medium , a curated walled garden forcontent.

The advantage of services like Facebook andMedium is that they provide a great experiencefor users over the messy Wild West of the open

web. The disadvantage is their content algorithmscontrol what is distributed, and publishers arelimited to the services they choose to build. It’s atrade-off of ease of use and utility over freedomand creativity. Shouldn’t there be a way to haveboth?

There absolutely is, but it will take a lot of effort,time and money — billions of dollars — to build.Unlike Dries, I don’t think this is a problem ofregulation. It’s economics. Until the open webindustry can muster a level of investment in ourtechnology appropriate for our importance, we willbe at a competitive disadvantage to ourcompetitor industries — and a source offrustration for our customers and users.

But in the absence of this, the open web remainsearth’s most powerful communication tool. Moremoney is invested in websites ($190 billion) thanall of digital advertising ($154 billion). ButFacebook, Medium and other closed-distributionplatforms would prefer to command that attentionand budget.

The better Facebook is relative to open web, themore time is spent on Facebook instead of theweb, and the more their business gains at theexpense of other destinations on the Internet. I

like Facebook as much as anyone else, but Ithink it’s important for the open web to thrive, aswell.

For the open web to survive, website owners willneed to be able to create more and morecompelling experiences that can compete with theexperiences walled gardens can provide. But thetruth is, the open web is not keeping up with thewider technology industry. In fact, it’s fallingfurther and further behind.

Here is a small example:

Here in San Francisco for some amazing reasonyou get decent LTE coverage on BART(the subway). More than once I’ve been on thetrain reading Twitter and have had theexperience of clicking the link and having 1) thewebsite be down spewing 503s or 2) the websitebe so horribly unoptimized for mobile that thecontent was impossible to read.

Slow down and think about this for a second:

And the weakest link in the entire stack oftechnology is the BROKEN website at the otherend. A technology that has been around since1989. Hey, open web friends! We’ve been doingthis for 27 years. How is it that we are

increasingly becoming the weakest link in theentire Internet technology stack?

Here’s the problem with the open web —economics:

Open web technology companies includeAutomattic, Acquia, WPEngine and Pantheon (mycompany). Combined, our yearly revenues are $1trillion of market cap relies on this coretechnology. Google, IBM and RedHat’sbusinesses could not exist in their present formwithout Linux, so it’s in their economic interest toinvest in the technology.

How many paid contributors to WordPress andDrupal are there? Maybe a few dozen.WordPress and Drupal lack the corporatesponsors of Linux because our open webcompanies have yet to get to critical mass.

That’s the difference between Linux and the openweb.

I believe the open web is too important, too vitaland too large of an industry (at $190 billion it’sbigger than digital advertising) to wither on thevine. It’s not going away.

But it does need to get better. And not a little

better — a LOT better.

The same expectations you have for modernsoftware (think Gmail, Twitter, Slack) should applyto your company’s website. It should be intuitiveto use and update, and should be fast, stableand scalable.

Creatives, website designers and developersshould all have an amazingly powerful set of toolsthat automate ALL the plumbing and grunt workso they can focus their precious time on creatingamazing fast, responsive, web experiences.

To get there will require billions (not millions) ofdollars of technology investment, combined withthe limitless talents and vibrancy of the amazingopen source web ecosystem.

2016-04-10 20:16 Zack Rosen

9 INNOVATE2016: Silicon Valley needsto address equality or risk beingvilified in the U. S.

Andrew Keen is the author of three books: Cult ofthe Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet IsNot The Answer. He produces Futurecast, and isthe host of Keen On.

2016-04-10 20:16 Andrew Keen

10

Grounddeliveryrobots:Passing fancyor nextwave?

“Every failed on demandstartup will reappear as asuccessful robotics drivenbusiness in five to 10years.” So tweeted

Jeremy Conrad, founding partner of the SanFrancisco-based hardware fund Lemnos Labs ,one recent afternoon.

Conrad apparently means what he tweets, havinginvesting in Marble , a new, San Francisco-basedground-delivery robot that will focus on ground-based last-mile delivery for business, thenconsumer, applications. (Conrad wouldn’t discussthe still-stealth startup’s funding picture, butanother source tells us it’s currently meeting withinvestors.)

He’s hardly alone in thinking that ground robots

will be bringing us everything from canned goodsto copier machines sooner than we think. OnWednesday, Andreessen Horowitz announced ithad led a $2 million investment in Dispatch , acompany whose self-driving ground deliveryrobots look like minibars on wheels.

In fact, Dispatch’s machines look an awful lot likethe robots of Starship , an Estonia-based outfitcreated by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla andJanus Friis, who took the wraps off their still-in-beta machines late last year. The robots, whichalso look like little refrigerators, are designed todelivery goods like groceries – about two bag’sworth – in 30 minutes of less.

In each case, the idea is to save money ondeliveries by cutting out costly humans. Starfish isalso promising to give customers more controlover the delivery process, by empowering them tocall up a delivery only when the timing works, andto be able to track in real time the whereabouts ofthe robots, whose tech includes GPS,gyroscopes, and nine cameras. (As an addedbonus, the robots will produce zero emissions,says Starfish.)

Whether these new ground-based robot couriersrepresent the beginnings of a broader trend or a

series of one-off bets remains a question mark.But we’d bet on the former, despite the attentionand vast amounts of money that aerial droneshave received.

According to CB Insights , VCs plugged $450million into 74 drone deals last year, up fourfoldfrom the $111 million they invested in dronecompanies in 2014. Yet Amazon’s interest alonein drones means it will be difficult for many ofthem to compete on the consumer delivery front.

That’s saying nothing of lingering regulatoryconsiderations. The FAA is expected to issuerules by the end of June for flying unmannedaircraft that weigh more than 55 pounds, but theproposed rules don’t apply to drones that wouldeventually handle consumer delivery becausethey don’t permit drones to fly at night or beyondan operator’s line of sight.

Add to the mix growing concerns over a worldpeppered with annoying drones flying overhead,and much of that investment looks like it could befor naught. (You’d be astonished by quickly howresidents can come together when threatenedwith noise pollution. San Francisco’s denizenshave defeated all heliport and helipad proposalssince the early 1960s, save for a year-old helipad

at a a new San Francisco hospital that’s meantfor carrying children and pregnant mothersfacing life-threatening emergencies.)

Perhaps it’s no wonder that Conrad told us he’s“very bearish on [air] drone delivery,” when wegave him a call last week.

Indeed, though Lemnos Labs helped incubate Airware – a company that raised $30 million recently to sell drone hardware and software toenterprise customers – Conrad goes so far asto call “drone delivery in cities maybe thedumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Even if you canget past the safety issues – and you can’t — theidea of 10,000 drones buzzing around is idiotic.”

Still, consumer-facing ground robots representnew territory for regulators, who aren’t givingthem much consideration yet.

And even if robotic ground couriers are seen byregulators as friendlier than unmanned aerialvehicles – which seems likely, given that theycan’t fall out of the sky, potentially with fatalconsequences – not everyone agrees thatground-based drones are the perfect antidote toflying drones.

“It’s a complicated value proposition,” notes Ben

Einstein, managing director of the hardware-focused seed-fund Bolt . “Certainly, there aresome companies whose problems are really hardto solve with humans and whose unit economicswould make more sense with robots.”

At the same time, says Einstein, “I think a hugepercentage of items will still be delivered the old-fashioned way. The [new ground-based delivery]businesses where there will be a high degree ofrobotics and automation that cause othercompanies to go out of business – I think that’s alittle more on the margin.”

In the meantime, as happened with air drones,many investors are betting first on industrialapplications. In the highest profile bet to date,Amazon in 2012 paid $775 million for KivaSystems, a maker of robots that move itemsaround warehouses.

A younger company, two year-old Fetch Roboticsof San Jose, is similarly producing ground-basedrobots that look like oversize Roombas andfeature autonomous navigation, automaticdistance following (so they can trail behind awarehouse worker who can pile products atop it),and warehouse monitoring and statistics.

Fetch has raised $23 million in funding so far,

and it’s signing up warehouse customers left andright, suggests Rob Coneybeer of ShastaVentures, a seed investor in the company. Thereason, as he noted during a panel discussion inSan Francisco last week: “Their customers lookat this as the equivalent of paying three bucks anhour” for anemployee.

Investors are beginning to contemplate what’snext, though, no matter how futuristic it may allseem right now.

“Obviously,” says Niko Bonatsos, a managingdirector at General Catalyst Partners, groundrobots could “dramatically alter the economics ofservice delivery. If you have a person in the mix,it’s expensive; you need to have [them making] atleast two to three deliveries per hour, or you haveno business.”

There’s “hope that some of these technologieswill take care of a niche part of the servicedeliveries landscape,” he adds. “But it’s earlydays. It’s like talking about self-driving cars a fewyears ago. It’s not going to be next year butseven or eight years down the road.”

For VCs, that means it’s time to start looking.

Photo above courtesy of Starship Technologies

2016-04-10 20:16 Connie Loizos

11 Can Israel build big, sustainablecompanies?

The Israeli start-upecosystem is a well-oiledinvestment machine thathas been turning outcompanies for the betterpart of two decades.

The country has its own homegrown angels likeGigi Levy-Weiss and Eilon Tirosh, venture capitalfirms like Carmel, JVP, Pitango and Canaan,equity crowdfunding firms like OurCrowd andiAngels, and Silicon Valley firms with offices onthe ground like Battery Venturesand Sequoia (that’s not to mention the new waveof Asian investors betting on Israeli start-ups ).

But, for all the “Start-up Nation” fanfare, Google’sacquisition of Waze – Israel’s highest profile start-up exit to date – was valued at just $1.1B. And,while Israel officially has two Unicorn companies on the CrunchBase list (more if you countcompanies like Taboola and WeWork), only ahandful of Israeli companies have actually exited

in the billion dollar range. This is, at least in part,by design.

Yossi Vardi, one of Israel’s most successful angelinvestors, has advised Israeli entrepreneurs to build great products that can, like his portfoliocompany ICQ (which sold to AOL), be acquiredby bigger companies in Silicon Valley.

Eden Shochat certainly knows something aboutearly exits. Facial recognition companyFace.com, which he co-founded, sold toFacebook for a reported $60M after raising just$5 million in investment. But now, as a foundingpartner at Aleph , a $150 million early stage VCin Tel Aviv, his goal is to fund Israelientrepreneurs who want to build globalbusinesses. Some of his portfolio companiesinclude Meerkat, FreightOS and Lemonade.

Recently, I sat down with Eden at WeWork (oneof his portfolio companies) in Tel Aviv where heshared with me his vision for what he and othersrefer to as the “Scale-up Nation,” an Israeliecosystem made of companies that are built tolast, rather than Vardi’s vision of products thatare built to exit. After our meeting, we exchangednotes about the feasibility of building Googlesized companies out of Israel, the impact of

regional violence and how, if at all, Aleph reallydiffers from the older guard of Israeli investors.

2016-04-10 20:16 Zach Abramowitz

12 Buying @Haje: How I got my givenname as my Twitter handle for $250

You’ll never guess howI succeeded in gettingmy first name asmy Twitter handle. Itinvolved a six-monthcampaign that included

some light Internet stalking, badgering staff atTwitter, $250 and a visit to the patent office.

I’m celebrating my 10th anniversary on Twitter. Iwas the 69,103rd person to join the social mediaplatform, which, given that there are now morethan 974 million accounts, puts me in thefirst 0.007 percent or so of people to join.

In addition to being an early adopter, I’m an idiot.I failed to realize how big Twitter was going tobecome in the next decade, and, moreimportantly, what people would be using it for. Iregistered the Internet handle I was using at thetime, rather than my first name, which was pretty

daft, considering that my unusual first nameprobably would have been available.

Before setting off on my quixotic crusade toobtain my new Twitter name, I’d already built upone Twitter account with more than 55,000followers — but that one was focusing onphotography, and I was doing a lot of non-photography stuff. My followers on thephotography account were getting increasinglyimpatient with my non-photographic exploits, suchas inconsequential rants on linguistics , rightingmy journalism pet peeves and creating silly botsto expose racism on Twitter.

In the summer of 2014, I decided it was time to dosomething to try to annoy my photographyfollowers a bit less. To do that, I re-activated myold account and decided to see if I couldn’t get itrenamed to something a bit more recognizable.

Such as, say, my first name.

I typed, fingers-a-trembling, the four characters ofmy name into the Twitter search box, and myheart sank. Not by much — I’m not actually off myrocker. I was unsurprised, but more than abit disappointed, to find that someone hadregistered @Haje, not because his name was“Haje,” but because his first and last names

started with “Ha” and “Je.” Clever. Dammit.

The good news was that the account wasn’t inuse. It didn’t have a profile picture. It had alsonever tweeted a single tweet. Interesting. To me,that indicated that perhaps the person didn’thave much of an interest in Twitter, and that hecould potentially be persuaded to give up hisaccount.

So I crossed my fingers and tweeted at him, whichwas every bit as complicated as you’d imagine(have you ever tried typing with crossedfingers?). There was no response.

I tracked down his LinkedIn profile, and sent himan InMail. Nada.

Finally, through some pretty spectacularlydedicated Internet stalking, I found a couple ofemail addresses for him. My new Twitter handlenow in reach, I emailed him and waited a coupleof weeks. I emailed him again. And again. And,y’know, just one more time. Just in case.

I’m not sure what I’d have said to him if he replied.The plan was to ask nicely, along the lines of“Hey, you’re not using it, would you mind if I did?”But honestly, I thought I’d probably just end upoffering him money to give me the username.

Which was making me nervous, too: It’s againstTwitter ’s rules: “Attempts to sell, buy, or solicitother forms of payment in exchange forusernames may result in permanent accountsuspension,” and Twitter has a history of crackingdown on this sort of thing.

As it turned out, I was never given the chance toflaunt Twitter ’s rules: The chap never replied;after several months, I gave up.

Well, I didn’t give up give up. That would becrazy.

Meanwhile, I was pretty active on the startupscene in London, and through going to a lot ofevents, I had met quite a few Twitter employees.My Bond-villainesque plan was that I could justask one of them to sort me out. All they wouldneed to do is to change the email addressassociated with the account, I’d be able to do apassword reset and boom. Job done. Excellent;what could possibly go wrong?

What could go wrong? Well, quite a few things, asit turned out.

The conversations went an awful lot like this:

“LOL nice try, kid,” came the replies, one after

the other. “I couldn’t if I wanted to, they stoppeddoing that even for Twitter staff years ago.”

Well damn. I do remember Twitter being a bitmore lenient with their handles back in the earlydays (I did successfully procure a couple ofTwitter handles for various uses just by asking),but with the company growing and there being astricter set of rules, things eventually changed.

I suppose I ought to give Twitter credit for havingrules and sticking to them (and my friendsdeserve credit for unceremoniously shootingdown my harebrained idea), but it turns out thatPlan B was a dead-end street. I had failed yetagain, and was no closer to my Twitter handle.Alas.

I feel morally obliged to point out that this is thepoint where people who aren’t verging onobsessive would have given up.

I am, evidently, not one of those people.

Okay, time to try something else. I scoured therules on Twitter regarding under whichcircumstances they might hand over a username,and spotted something in the documentationaround the Trademark policy aroundusername squatting … Which gave me an idea.

I had a plan, which had taken shape when I wasemailing the Keeper of the Handle (as I hadmentally started referring to this mythical,unreachable creature). If they’d gotten in touch,I’d have been happy to pay anything up to $500for my first name as a Twitter handle. Yeah, it’s alot of money, but I rationalized that people spendsimilar amounts on fancy vanity plates on theircars. “I don’t have a car,” I thought. “I totallydeserve a vanity handle.”

Yeah. I know.

Anyway, I decided that this particular vanityhandle actually means something to me. Twitteris a major source of news and entertainment, andI’m building a brand there, so being able to usemy actual name seemed to make sense.(“Whatever you need to do to sleep at night,dude,” I hear you muttering under your breath.)

Anyway. I registered a web domain for my firstname to strengthen my case (in case thetrademark people decided to look anydeeper), then forked over my £170 (around$250) to the Intellectual Property Office,registering my first name as a trademark.

Even if it’s not strictly speaking necessary, I

decided to register it in a category where I had alegitimate claim to a trademark, and where havingone might actually come in handy at some pointbeyond snagging a Twitter handle. As it turnedout, the Intellectual Property Office gave anegative integer of fucks about why I wanted toregister the trademark; from their point of view, aslong as nobody opposes the application, it’s anocean of gravy.

I filed a trademark application in Class 41 :“Education and Entertainment Services.” Seemsfitting, as I’m occasionally educational and(admittedly very rarely) entertaining. Mostimportantly, a trademark search told me therewas nothing even remotely like my name alreadyregistered in this class. There was a good reasonfor that; if someone opposes your trademark,that’s when you need to get lawyers involved, andwhere things can get really expensive reallyquickly.

A few months later, the application was approvedand I was the lucky owner of trademarkregistration number UK00003077635; Class 41.

Haje™. Catchy.

Anyway, armed with my trademark, I put on myfinest suit, combed my hair, ate a couple of

breath mints and contacted Twitter ’s customersupport. Of course, given that Twitter ’s supportteam is a web form , there’s no way for them toknow what I was wearing, but damn it, this was abig moment.

I sent them a link to the approved trademarkapplication, and the ball was rolling.

About a week later, I received an email sayingthat I could either create a new account or movethe username to an existing account. Holy actualbingo jackpot home-run slam-dunk, Batman.

The actual name change was a huge anti-climaxafter all that; I went into a meeting for work, andwhen I came out I noticed that I had been loggedout of Twitter. To log back in, I needed to do apassword reset, and there it was: my name, with alittle at-symbol in front of it. I don’t know what Iwas expecting, but it dawned on me that I wasexpecting nothing: Even after spending themoney, I didn’t really expect my plan to work. Ifigured I would get a good story out of theattempt, but actually succeeding? That is a prettyalien world I hadn’t considered.

I’ll forgive you for thinking, “What the hell is wrongwith this guy? Who pays $250 to register atrademark to get a name on a website?” I’ll even

agree with you: It’s a spectacularly vain and dumbthing to be doing.

And yes, I’m ludicrously aware that actually caringthis much about Twitter and the way I’m portrayedon the platform makes me come across as acomplete and utter wanker. But I’m sort of OK withthat. In fact, I had business cards made in theexact correct shade of Twitter Blue, containingonly my Twitter handle. No right-thinkingindividual would do that, and I’ve never been ableto give anybody my business card withoutapologizing for it at the same time.

And yet… Can you think of any other way ofhanding over your contact details, a shortbiography and context about who you are, all infive characters?

By the way, if you’re still reading this, 2,000 wordslater, you’re the last person to criticize me for myTwitter addiction: You’re obviously an unusuallybig fan of the platform, so you may as well giveme a follow. You know where to find me.

2016-04-10 20:16 Haje Jan

13 CW@50: Storage – From punchedcards to flash and the cloud

The relationship of storage to thearchitecture of computing is allabout capacity, latency andthroughput. In other words, howmuch data can be kept, how quickly it can beaccessed and at what rate.

Since the launch of Computer Weekly in 1966,the world of storage has gone throughtransformations as remarkable as aviation’sprogression from the Wright brothers tosupersonic flight.

And just as the pioneers of flight would recognisethe fundamentals of today’s aircraft in basicdesign, from the viewpoint of 1966, the speedsand magnitudes of storage now would seemutterly alien.

In the 1960s, the key methods of data storagecentred on two media: paper and cardboard, andmagnetic media.

Magnetic tape and even the spinning hard drivehad already been invented for data, but punchedcards and paper tape were used to run programs

and store data in most of the nation’sdatacentres.

Punched cards – which dated back to textile andfairground organ applications from the 19thcentury and beyond – were usually the IBM-derived standard 7 3 / 8 in x 3 1 / 4 in with 80columns and 12 rows (0-9 and 11 and 12),although there were variants of card size andcolumn width from other computer makers, suchas the UK’s ICL .

Data was represented by punched holes in eachcolumn that were read by shining a light on thecard. Initially, combinations of punched holes hadrepresented analogue forms of information, butas the 20th century progressed, they came torepresent binary data. Information about the dataset – metadata – was represented in rows 11 and12 and sometimes in unused columns.

One IBM card held 72 x 10 bits. State-of-the-artpunched-card hardware in 1966 was the IBM2540 (a peripheral to the System/360 mainframe), which could read 1,000 cards per minute(giving a throughput of 720Kb per minute; writespeed/cards punched was 300 per minute) andan input hopper that held 3,100 cards. That isjust over 2MB of capacity, but that was

theoretically infinitely scalable as long as therewas a human available to unload and reload thehoppers.

2016-04-10 18:51 Antony Adshead

14 Celebrity threesomesuperinjunction shows disparitybetween law of the land and law ofthe web

The idea of an injunctionto prevent newspapersfrom publishing certainstories are nothing new,far from it. But in recentyears, a new breed of

superinjunction has been born. These not onlyprevent the publishing of stories, but can alsoblock the publishing of the names of thoseinvolved. Some superinjunctions are such thateven reporting the existence of thesuperinjunction is prohibited.

In recent weeks, a celebrity couple took out asuperinjunction to prevent the press frompublishing details of an alleged affair (well, athreesome if we cut to the chase). The gaggingorder prevented news outlets in the UK referring

to the couple as anything other than the initialsPJS and YMA (not their actual initials, by the way)and the other participants in the alleged ménageà trois as AB and CD. But today a Scottishnewspaper took the decision to reveal the namesof the couple -- but it could only do so in its printedition, because of the way laws written for theprinted press have been awkwardly applied to theweb.

The case is something of a legal minefield. Justas the press in England is not able to publish thenames of those involved, it is also not permittedto provide clues or hints that could enablereaders to determine their identity. This meansthat British newspapers cannot even name theScottish newspaper that draws back the curtain.In fact, the newspaper in question is not legallyable to publish the same information online as itcan in its print edition simply because it could beaccessed in England.

If this seems like insanity to you, you are far frombeing alone. If you're reading this in the States --or even if you are in the UK -- you are probablyalready aware of the couple at the center of thecase. It has been covered by the NationalEnquirer (yes, I know...) and there has beenintense speculation on Twitter in recent weeks.

For the risk of being sued, newspapers reportingthe fact that the gagging order has been ignoredin some parts of the UK must refer to thepublication in question indirectly: 'a Scottishnewspaper', very much like referring to 'theScottish play' instead of risking saying 'Macbeth'in a theater.

It is madness.

The Scottish newspaper's website includes aneditorial piece which says:

Of course, it takes just a few seconds of your timeto discover the people involved if you areinterested. But something interesting ishappening. While Twitter has been abuzz withspeculation about who the celebrity couple mightbe, there is also an element of self-censorshiptaking place. One user posted a photograph ofthe newspaper article in which the couple wasnamed, but after taking advice from another newsoutlet, opted to delete the tweet:

But as the newspaper says;

The paper is quick to point out that the decisionwas taken as a demonstration of support offreedom of the press:

It's crazy to think that the couple involved couldpossibly have thought that the story could bestopped in its tracks using a court order. Ifanything it has served only to drag things on forlonger than might otherwise have been the case.Left to run its natural course, the story probablywould have burned out and been forgotten in amatter of days. As it is, it has been dragged outfor weeks, and it has been brought to globalattention.

It has also highlighted an important differencebetween how the law applies to land-basednewspapers, and how it applies to the globalinternet. While newspapers in England may havebeen effectively censored, the same cannot besaid of internet users.

And if you're wondering why we're neither namingthe celebrities nor linking to the Scottishnewspaper we're taking about, there are a coupleof reasons. Firstly, this is not a celebrity gossipsite, so this is not the place to discuss A-listers'bedroom antics. But secondly, as stupid as it maybe, we're playing it safe. Our pockets simplyaren't as deep as those of the couple involved.There is the fact that a) BetaNews is based in theUS and, b) I'm writing this from Scotland, but is itworth the risk? Really?

Photo credit: Tashatuvango / Shutterstock2016-04-10 19:50 By Mark

15 Google glitch translates 'RussianFederation' into 'Mordor'; it has aring to it

As a fan of Cossackdancing, Eastern Blocarchitecture, vodka andpervasive governmentoppression, Sneak lovesRussia.

And while he accepts that Siberia is a vast andmostly empty land mass, capable of killing theunwary in numerous ways, he would not liken it toMordor, the dark, ash-covered, orc-infested landin the south-east of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

But, according to multiple reports, the all-seeing,all-knowing Sauron Google believes that Russiais in fact Mordor. Or more accurately a bug in theGoogle Translate tool translated the Ukrainianword for 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'.

Not content with effectively calling Russia a nationof twisted, down-trodden creatures ruled by a

brutal dictator, Google Translate went one stepfurther by translating 'Russians' into 'okkupanty'meaning ‘occupiers' in Sneak's second language,that being English. C++ is his mother tongue.

Then to pour a granary of salt into the virtualwound, Google translated the surname ofRussian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov into theRussian for 'sad little horse', according to TheTelegraph. Sneak thinks that's rather cute in aslightly Eeyore way. Yes he knows Eeyore is afictional donkey. Please don't write in.

Now, that noise you're hearing is Sneak's ironyalarm going off at full pelt, given that Ukraine isnot exactly having the best time with Russia andpro-Russian rebels at the moment, particularly asin 2014 Russia annexed the Crimea region fromUkraine, simply because it could.

Google has apologised for the error and blamedthe automated aspect of Translate, but Sneak isnot convinced that it was a bug and, to indulgethe conspiracy theorist in him, believes that adisgruntled pro-Ukraine programmer decided totweak Google Translate to offer this slight atRussian users.

Back in his early years as an IT chap at NorthernRock, Sneak ended up dating a lovely Russian

systems analyst called Natasha. She had amononym.

Next thing he knew she disappeared one eveningafter a heady mix of vodka and Kerplunk! anddisappeared with Sneak's server room key card.Then the banking crisis happened, NorthernRock went under and Sneak took indefinite sickleave.

The moral of the story is that annoying theRussians might not be wise, otherwise the road toGoogle's Mountain View HQ could end up beingblocked by Soviet-era tanks with president Putinstraddling a turret, topless and declaring "Youshall not pass" to befuddled Google engineers.

Or perhaps they will take it in good humour. Afterall as the video below explains: Russians love toboogie.

07 Jan 20162016-04-10 17:22 www.v3

16 Google Fiber free service ends inKansas City

Google has decided to stop the free tier of its

Fiber service that it wasoffering to Kansas City.The tier that was justdropped allowedcustomers to pay a one-time construction fee and

from then on receive a free 5Mbps connection.New customers switching to Google Fiber willhave to settle for a $50/month tier which givescustomers 100Mbps.

Kansas City-based subscribers have beeninformed by Google that they can keep the freeoption until May 19. The tier will remain availableto customers in Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.

The free offering looks like it was just a limitedtime offer while the service was getting off theground. Google doesn't plan to ever offer the tierin Atlanta and other new destinations. The techgiant also just partnered up with the USgovernment to bring free Google Fiber toresidents in public housing. That initiative is notaffected by the removal of the free tier.

Google Fiber still offers its trademark 1Gbpsconnections, for which customers have to pay$70/month or $130/month (includes TV). Towardsthe end of March, Google also announced Fiber

Phone, which costs $10/month and includesfeatures such as caller ID, call forwarding, andvoice mail.

Source: Google via Engadget | Image via Google2016-04-10 16:54 Paul Hill

17 Android Marshmallow starts rollingout to the Sony Xperia Z2, Z3 andZ3 Compact

Towards the end of thelast year, Sony beganrolling out AndroidMarshmallow to betatesters in certaincountries. Later, thelatest devices from the Xperia Z series such asthe Xperia Z4 and Z5 started receiving the finalupdate. However, the older ones such as the Z2and Z3 were not included in the rollout. Now,users of these devices have reported that theyare being notified to download the update over-the-air.

According to a report from the Xperia Blog, thebuild which is being seeded as the final onecarries the same version number as the recent

beta version. The update is currently being rolledout to the Xperia Z2 (D6503), Xperia Z3 (D6603)and Xperia Z3 Compact (D5803), which are thesingle sim LTE variants of these smartphones.

It isn't clear when the regional or dual-simvariants of these devices will start receiving theupdate, but it could take some time, as thoseweren't part of the Marshmallow beta program.Other than the usual Marshmallow features,Sony's build now includes the improved Camera2.0 experience and Android's February securityupdate.

If you have one of the supported Xperiasmartphones and have installed the latest updatethat is rolling out, do let us know about yourexperience and any new features that you mighthave come across in the comments.

Source: Xperia Blog via Android Authority2016-04-10 15:20 Shreyas Gandhe

18 LinkedIn Donates Dr. Elephant,MapR's Drill 1.6: Big Data Roundup

This week in big data saw plenty of news on theAI front, plus a new big data technology open

source contribution fromLinkedIn, updates fromMapR, and a newpartnership between acouple of giants -- IBMand SAP. Plus, Time hascreated a new calculator

from a public data set that lets you look at howyour salary stacks up against others in yourprofession based on age and gender.

But let's start with LinkedIn, which has incubatedmuch data science technology and talent inrecent years, from data scientists that have goneonto companies like Salesforce, Jawbone, andConfluent (Apache Kafka). This week LinkedIncontributed another incubated technology toopen source.

Dr. Elephant offers performance monitoring forApache Hadoop and Apache Spark. Thetechnology automates gathering and analyzingmetrics for all the flows, providing information tohelp team members tune them to improveoperations.

Automating the tuning is important at LinkedInbecause the company runs about 100,000Hadoop and Spark jobs every day, and users

have different levels of experience with Hadoop,according to Akshay Rai, posting about thecontribution of Dr. Elephant to GitHub this week.

"It is more important to optimize for the time ofthese people than just for the hardwareresources they use," he wrote. Dr. Elephant wascreated to improve developer productivity andincrease cluster efficiency by making it easier totune Hadoop jobs. Rai said that Dr. Elephant ispopular at LinkedIn and people love its simplicity.It solves about 80% of problems through simplediagnosis -- like a doctor.

Hadoop distribution company MapR announcedthe availability of Apache Drill 1.6 as part of theunified SQL layer for the MapR Converged DataPlatform via tighter integration with MapR-DB.This improves the flexibility of reporting andanalytics on JSON data stored in MapR-DBtables, delivering faster insights from operationaldata, the company said in a statement.

Apache Drill is a distributed SQL engine thatenables data exploration and analytics on non-relational datastores, letting users query withstandard SQL and BI tools without the need forcreating schemas. Version 1.6 of Apache Drill onthe MapR Converged Data Platform offers a new

MapR-DB document database plugin, enhanceperformance and scale, and optimization forTableau and other BI tools.

On the AI side of the house, Salesforce this weekquietly acquired MetaMind , a company workingon deep learning for automated imagerecognition. Big technology companies fromFacebook to Google to IBM to Hewlett PackardEnterprise are developing or acquiringtechnology and talent that adds artificialintelligence, deep learning, and machine learningto their arsenals. This is not the first AI acquisitionfor Salesforce, and the company has also beenhiring some top talent in data science and deeplearning development in recent years.

Facebook this week also introduced a technologycalled automatic alternative text , designed tohelp the visually impaired community experiencethe social network in the same way that sightedusers enjoy it. The technology uses objectrecognition technology to generate a descriptionof a photo.

Learn to integrate the cloud into legacy systemsand new initiatives. Attend the Cloud ConnectTrack at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Registernow!

Meanwhile, IBM and SAP announced that theyare taking their relationship to the next level.Where they used to have their technologiesrunning side-by-side, they now will collaborate ontheir offerings and establish co-locations inWalldorf, Germany, and Palo Alto, California.There are six areas for collaboration that thecompanies will focus on, and among them isputting SAP's HANA Enterprise Cloud platformand applications onto IBM's infrastructure andsoftware to run as a private cloud service. AndIBM, which has staked much of its future businesson cognitive computing and analytics with IBMWatson, plans to develop such solutions for SAPS/4Hana as part of the expanded partnership.There are several other planned collaborationsas well.

Time (magazine) has taken data from IPUMS-USAand created an interactive calculator that mayjust make you feel terrible , depending on yourgender and your age. Plug in your profession,your age, and your gender, and find out howmuch you make vs. your counterpart of anothergender and the same age. If you are a 40 yearold female in the category of "ComputerScientists and Systems Analysts/Network systemsAnalysts/Web Developers," for instance, you'dmake 25% more if you were a man. For

"Mathematical science occupations (all others)" ifyou are a 40 year old woman your malecounterpart makes 36% more than you do. Thepay gap gets bigger the older you are for mostprofessions, it appears.

2016-04-10 11:06 Jessica Davis

19 Weekend tech reading: InsideWoW's most popular privateserver, EU: links don't infringecopyright

Inside the WoW serverBlizzard wants to shutdown World of Warcraftwas a culturalphenomenon. It made athunderous impact onthose who played it backin 2004, and even for a few expansionsafterwards -- I joined during the Burning Crusade,losing over 100 days of my life to Azeroth andOutland. In that time I made friends whom I seeyears later, explored a seamless world andstoked my passion for PC games. To play WoWin its glory days was to feel part of some greatmovement in gaming. Small wonder that peoplewant to relive the past. PC Gamer

Fingerprints to be tested as 'currency' Startingthis summer, the government will test a system inwhich foreign tourists will be able to verify theiridentities and buy things at stores using only theirfingerprints. The government hopes to increasethe number of foreign tourists by using thesystem to prevent crime and relieve users fromthe necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. Itaims to realize the system by the 2020 TokyoOlympic and Paralympic Games. The Japan NewsWhat has IBM Watson been up to since winning'Jeopardy!' 5 years ago? In February, Watson,IBM’s cognitive computing system, marked itsfive-year anniversary of defeating two Jeopardy!champions. "We were mainly interested in usingJeopardy! as a playing field upon which we coulddo some science," Dr. Chris Welty later saidabout Watson's appearance on the game show.Inverse

The most immersive pinball machine: ProjectSupernova Over at [Truthlabs], a 30 year oldpinball machine was diagnosed with a major flawin its game design: It could only entertain oneperson at a time. [Dan] and his colleagues set outto change this, transforming the ol’ pinball legend“Firepower” into a spectacular, immersive gamingexperience worthy of the 21st century. A major

limitation they wanted to overcome was screensize. Hackaday

What went wrong with Quantum Break on PC?Quantum Break has arrived on the PC and tosuggest that the results are disappointing wouldbe a massive understatement. PC gamers are leftout in the cold with another high profile releasefailing to deliver expected levels of performance,features and customisation. As things stand, itsimply isn't possible to achieve a smooth frame-rate on any PC hardware configuration andthanks to the profound limitations imposed ongamers by the Universal Windows Platform,there's no way to fix it. Eurogamer

Internet hyperlinks do not infringe copyright, EUcourt advised A link to a website which publishesphotos without authorisation of the author doesnot in itself constitute a copyright infringement, anadviser to Europe's top court said on Thursday.The opinion, by the European Court of Justice'sadvocate general, is not binding but the courtnormally follows such advice. Reuters

Are we living in a computer simulation? If you, meand every person and thing in the cosmos wereactually characters in some giant computer game,we would not necessarily know it. The idea that

the universe is a simulation sounds more like theplot of "The Matrix," but it is also a legitimatescientific hypothesis. Researchers pondered thecontroversial notion Tuesday at the annual IsaacAsimov Memorial Debate here at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History. Scientific American

Over 135 million modems vulnerable to denial-of-service flaw More than 135 million modems aresaid to be vulnerable to a flaw that can leaveusers cut off from the internet -- just by someoneclicking on a trick link. The vulnerability, found ina modem used in millions of US households, canallow an attacker with access to the network toremotely reset the device, which wipes out theinternet provider's settings and causing a denial-of-service attack. ZDNet

Senate bill draft would prohibit unbreakableencryption A draft version of a Senate bill wouldeffectively prohibit unbreakable encryption andrequire companies to help the governmentaccess data on a computer or mobile device witha warrant. The draft is being finalized by thechairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,Sen. Richard Burr, R-N. C., and the topDemocrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.AP

Phone-based laser rangefinder works outdoorsThe Microsoft Kinect was a boon to roboticsresearchers. The cheap, off-the-shelf depthsensor allowed them to quickly and cost-effectively prototype innovative systems thatenable robots to map , interpret, and navigatetheir environments. But sensors like the Kinect ,which use infrared light to gauge depth, areeasily confused by ambient infrared light. Evenindoors, they tend to require low-light conditions,and outdoors, they’re hopeless. MIT

Handheld 3D printing BioPen can 'draw' humanstem cells for cartilage repair A team of Australiansurgeons and researchers has developed a 3Dprinting pen that allows surgeons to draw andsculpt customized cartilage implants made fromactual human stem cells during the live surgery.Dubbed the ‘BioPen’, this lightweight, handhelddevice gives surgeons unprecedented control asit 3D prints a mixture of hydrogel bioink andhuman stem cells directly into the patient's body...3ders

NoScript and other popular Firefox add-ons openmillions to new attack NoScript , Firebug, andother popular Firefox add-on extensions areopening millions of end users to a new type ofattack that can surreptitiously execute malicious

code and steal sensitive data, a team ofresearchers reported. Ars Technica (also,Researchers help shut down spam botnet thatenslaved 4,000 Linux machines )

My biggest regret as a programmer A little over20 years ago I was at a crossroads. My secondcompany was petering out when our 5 years ofbuilding Deltagraph for the publisher ended (theywanted to move into the nascent internet space).At that point I had 13 years experience as aprogrammer but also 9 years or so experiencerunning a company (at the same time). TheCodist

Airbus, Siemens to cooperate on electric planeproject European plane maker Airbus Group SEand German industrial conglomerate Siemens AGsaid Thursday they are joining forces to work onelectric aircraft technology. The companies saidthey would pool about 200 engineers todemonstrate by 2020 the possibility of usingelectric or hybrid-electric technologies on aircraft.WSJ

2016-04-10 11:00 Matthew DeCarlo

20 Torvalds prepared to spend next25 years helping Linux conquerthe desktop

The phrase "year of theLinux desktop" has beenaround for well over adecade but has becomemore of a meme ratherthan a statement of fact.

Without a doubt, Linux has seen much successon mobile devices, including smartphones andtablets, as well as servers, network appliancesand the emerging "internet of things" devicecategory. However, despite Microsoft stumblingwith Windows Vista and Windows 8.x, Linux failedto capitalize on these moments of weakness.

In a recent interview with CIO, Torvalds cited thatthe "desktop hasn't really taken over the worldlike Linux has in many other areas". However, heremained positive about the prospects of Linuxon the desktop, and said:

User interfaces can be a challenge to design andbuild. Even companies like Microsoft, with manyyears of experience, have made poor designchoices including the removal of the traditionalstart button and menu from Windows 8. Over the

years, various Linux distributions have copied thecontemporary Windows desktop interface of theday but have failed to take off.

However, success on the desktop need not be azero sum game. This week we saw Microsoftembrace the Bash shell in Windows 10 , inpartnership with Canonical, which will enableusers to access to a number of Ubuntu binarieswithout switching to a separate Linuxenvironment. If success is measured only by theoperating system installed on a desktop machinethen Linux will have its work cut out for it.

If we look through an alternate lens, Linux mayend up seeing more success as we head towardsa future where hybrid and converged solutionsare increasingly offered. Canonical's failedambition to crowdsource an Ubuntu-poweredsmartphone offering a full desktop PC experiencemay have been ahead of its time but serves asan indication of things to come.

Source: CIO via Betanews | Ubuntu devicesimage via Ubuntu

2016-04-10 04:54 Boyd Chan

21 'Mumblehard' malware turnsthousands of Linux servers intospam botnet -- ESET shuts it down

Linux-based operatingsystems are rock solid --reliable and secure -- butnot infallible.The Mumblehardmalware, for instance,targets servers runningthe open source kernel, installing a backdoor,and then turning them into part of a powerfulspam-focused botnet. Surprisingly,Mumblehard was rather widespread, infecting4,000 Linux-powered servers.

Of course, had administrators patched thesystems appropriately, there is a good chancethat some of them would have avoided infection. Isay this, because ESET found that somemachines were infected through known exploits,in things like WordPress. Thankfully, ESETsuccessfully terminated the botnet on February29th, 2016 by taking control of the home IP.

"ESET researchers observed a reaction from theoperators of the botnet about a month after wepublished our paper. In our report we mentioned

how we had registered a domain name acting asa C&C server for the backdoor component inorder to estimate the botnet size and distribution.The malware authors apparently responded byremoving the unnecessary domains and IPaddresses from the list of C&C servers includedin the malware and keeping only the one that wasunder their control", says ESET.

The security company further says, "with only oneIP address acting as the C&C server for theMumblehard backdoor and no fallbackmechanism, a takeover of that IP address wouldsuffice to stop the malicious activities of thisbotnet. We decided to take action and contactedthe relevant authorities to make things happen".

ESET did not act alone, but rather as acollaboration with both the Cyber Police ofUkraine and a company called CyS Centrum LLC.By taking control of the IP address to which theinfected machines would connect, they were ableto effectively terminate the botnet. It also allowedthem to analyze the data being sent using a"sinkhole".

Slowly but surely, fewer machines are pinging theserver as they are probably being patched. Withthat said, other machines are still infected -- the

infection is just benign. In theory, if the criminalswere to somehow magically regain control of theIP address -- not likely to happen -- the evil couldresume.

If you have a fear that your servers are impacted,you should look into cleaning it ASAP. ESETshares the following GitHub landing to learn moreabout detection here.

Photo credit: Gunnar Assmy / Shutterstock2016-04-10 03:02 By Brian

Total 21 articles. Generated at 2016-04-1100:01