Новости за 22.07.2016

Wait, what?

If this rumor about Verizon buying Yahoo for $5B is true, we have an honest to goodness schadenfreude moment for me as someone who remembers the days of the Buddy List, giant banner ads (which is actually still common at Yahoo Mail for some reason), and those plastic discs they might still sell at Walmart for gaining “high-speed Internet” access.

As you may know, Verizon also owns AOL. Those three letters, combined with the Yahoo exclamation mark, create some vivid memories. Читать дальше...

Microsoft this week said that consumer subscriptions to Office 365 topped 23 million, signaling that the segment's once prodigious year-over-year growth had slowed significantly.

AMD emerged as a serious threat to Intel in servers more than a decade ago, but after a series of missteps and bad chips, the company's server business is hanging on by a thread.

Verizon's continuing its ongoing mission to pare down the number of customers on unlimited data plans by migrating them to ones with hard limits. Recently, the company came up with a way to get rid of its biggest data hogs.

Microsoft will preview a new service today that lets enterprises mine data that Windows collects, including software usage statistics, to accelerate adoption of Windows 10.

Tinder users beware. The popular dating app generally doesn’t verify most user accounts, but that hasn’t stopped spammers from pretending to offer the service.

European Union plans to extend export controls on so-called "dual-use" technologies to include cyber-surveillance tools could put the brakes on sales of smartphones.

If you're expecting widespread availability of gaming desktops with AMD's Zen chips by year-end, don't hold your breath.

With Pokémon Go currently enjoying, what I would call, a wee-bit-o-success, now seems like a good time to talk about a few things people may not know about the world's favorite new smartphone game.

As the U.S. heads toward an especially contentious national election in November, 15 states are still clinging to outdated electronic voting machines that don't support paper printouts used to audit their internal vote counts.

Cybersecurity has always been a horizontal technology practice that’s roughly the same across all industry sectors. Yes, some industries have different regulations, use cases or business processes that demand specific security controls, but overall every company needs things like firewalls, IDS/IPS, threat management gateways and antivirus software regardless.

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  

15% off Google OnHub AC1900 Wireless Wi-Fi Router

The OnHub AC1900 wireless router from Google and TP-LINK is designed to make even the more complicated home networks run fast and efficiently. It supports over 100 devices at one time, providing speeds of up to 1900mbps. It's unique circular design with 13 antennas provides up to 2,500 square feet of reliable coverage. Streaming a movie or downloading large files? OnHub lets you manage speeds to specific devices or give a boost where/when needed. Читать дальше...

How far should a leader seek to change public opinion, to get out in front rather than follow? Lincoln famously said, “Public sentiment is everything,” but the quote concludes with, “He who moulds public sentiment… makes decisions possible.” It’s an enduring debate in the hinterland of academia where engineers seldom tread.

Fraud is a $1 trillion annual problem worldwide. With rapid growth in ecommerce and online banking over the past decade, fraudsters are increasingly shifting to using computers and smartphones to commit fraud. One technology that helps companies and governments spot fraud—and sometimes stop it before it starts —is device fingerprinting.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are already proliferating in the enterprise. However, many business leaders don't realize they're leveraging technologies that rely on AI, according to a new study by natural language generation (NLG) specialist Narrative Science. Despite the confusion, adoption is imminent.

Earlier this year, Cisco’s Talos division reported significant image-processing bugs to Apple, one of which could allow attackers to inject malware or remotely execute code via “iMessages, malicious webpages, MMS messages, or other malicious file attachments opened by any application.” These flaws were patched in Apple’s current operating systems in its July 18 update. Some media outlets immediately dubbed this Apple’s “Stagefright,” referring to a severe Android flaw discovered a year ago that... Читать дальше...

In a survey, cloud security broker vendor CipherCloud found that 86 percent of cloud applications used at workplaces are unsanctioned. That's a pretty big percentage. Obviously, the security vendors have an incentive to raise such fears about shadow IT, so take this claim with much salt. However, the issue merits attention.

Japan Airlines (JAL) has developed new training applications for engine mechanics and flight crew trainees using the Microsoft HoloLens virtual reality headset.

Mozilla yesterday said it will follow other browser markers by curtailing use of Flash in Firefox next month.

It turns out that a couple of purchases on iTunes helped to bring down the mastermind behind KickassTorrents, one of the most popular websites for illegal file sharing.

In 1998, Congress raised the H-1B cap and then set some controversial H-1B visa rules. It prohibited the largest users of H-1B visa -- firms employing 15% or more visa workers -- from displacing U.S. workers. They also are required to make a "good faith" effort to recruit a U.S. worker for a position.

Ants figure out details related to the size of their colonies by bumping into fellow ants while they randomly explore. But the ants don’t have to traverse the entire colony to know how many fellow ants they’re living with. The insects can figure it out through the number of nearby encounters they have.

Security researchers have released tools this week that could help users recover files encrypted by two relatively new ransomware threats: Bart and PowerWare.

Pokémon Go has launched in Japan with a new revenue stream -- corporate sponsorship from McDonald’s.