Hangouts may not be a dead app walking after all.It sure seemed like the social app’s days were numbered after Google’s splashy rollout of Allo and Duo, its new fancy, AI-driven messaging and video chat apps. But a Google spokesperson confirmed an earlier report that Hangouts is staying put in the company’s portfolio of mobile and desktop apps.“Hangouts will remain a standalone product,” the spokesperson told Greenbot.+ ALSO: See what has gone on at Google I/O 2016 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco Systems has fixed four denial-of-service vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to cause Web Security Appliance devices to stop processing traffic correctly.The Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA) is a line of security devices that inspect Web traffic going in and out of an organization in order to detect malware, prevent data leaks, and enforce Internet access policies for users and applications. The devices run an operating system called Cisco AsyncOS.One of the four DoS vulnerabilities fixed Wednesday by Cisco stems from how the OS handles a specific HTTP response code. An attacker could send a specifically crafted HTTP request in order to consume the entire memory of an affected device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Welcome to Google summer camp!Google’s annual I/O developer conference and general “give us this news cycle” event usually takes place in downtown San Francisco, but the company has opted for its own back yard this time around. Enjoy this collection of the woodsy sights of Google I/O 2016.RELATED: Follow all the stories coming out of Google I/O 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The biggest announcements from Google I/O 2016Wednesday marked the beginning of Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer’s conference where we get a sneak peek at everything the company has been working on over the past few months.Per usual, a number wide-ranging and intriguing announcements were made during the Google I/O keynote, an event that included both compelling hardware and software developments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To use a long-forgotten metaphor, cloud deployment is moving forward at internet speed at many enterprise organizations. According to ESG research, 57 percent of enterprise organizations use public and private cloud infrastructure to support product applications/workloads today, and an overwhelming majority of organizations will move an increasing number of applications/workloads to cloud infrastructure over the next 24 months (note: I am an ESG employee).Now, no one would argue the fact that cloud computing represents a different compute model, but it is really based upon the use of server virtualization for the most part. And since a VM is meant to emulate a physical server, many organizations approach cloud security by pointing traditional security processes and technologies at cloud-based workloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Information-centric networking (ICN) ticks many of the requirements boxes for 5G, driven by the proliferation of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). But what are those issues that ICN improves over the current internet? And how does it do it?Today’s internet has seen significant changes. With forecasts for 2020 predicting 50 billion IoT devices, the scale of connectivity is ever increasing with nearly every computing device today providing some form of connectivity option.This will have a tremendous impact on the size of IP routing tables. This is not a problem in your typical home router on the edge of the internet. But as you move up to the core (into the so called Default Free Zone), the nodes in this part of the network literally need to store the whole internet in their routing tables. This is driving up memory costs in each IP router, as well as increasing processing complexity and power consumption. Even in SDN-enabled environments, this trend can be observed through increasing flow matching tables (growing similarly as the IP routing tables in the traditional internet), leading to an arms’ race between vendors for ever larger and costly table memory.To read this Continue reading
Economic uncertainty is still putting a damper on some network spending, and that won't change in the next few months, Cisco Systems said Wednesday.The dominant networking vendor reported slightly higher sales for the three months ended April 30 but said enterprises remained cautious about replacing LANs that still work. That continues a trend the company identified in February, the last time it posted financial results.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 15 more useful Cisco sites
At that time, Cisco cited January's stock-market fluctuations. Stocks have regained ground since then, but orders for campus network gear haven’t rebounded, CEO Chuck Robbins said Wednesday. Overall switching revenue was down 3 percent in the quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The need for speed in the software development cycle has given rise to a number of valuable automation tools for developers. Chief among these tools are those aimed at facilitating the continuous integration and continuous delivery of software projects. Through these CI/CD tools, development teams can keep software up-to-date and quickly put it into production.Jenkins is among the best-known CI/CD systems, and it is fast becoming the engine for devops, managing the dev side. A key benefit of Jenkins is the wealth of plug-ins developed for it, providing capabilities that range from extending the number of version control systems Jenkins supports to accommodations for IBM mainframes. Spun out of the Hudson project first launched by Sun Microsystems, Jenkins recently hit Version 2, with improvements to its usability and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Forget that bass; in the digital world, it’s all about that bandwidth. You’re paying your ISP for a given amount of bandwidth, but it’s up to you to manage how it’s consumed. Whether or not you have a data cap—and even if your data cap is high enough that you never bang into it—simply letting all the devices on your network engage in a battle for supremacy is a recipe for problems.You could experience poor video streaming, choppy VoIP calls, or debilitating lag in your online gaming sessions. And if you do have a data cap (and yes, they are evil), blowing through it can hit you in the pocketbook, expose you to throttling (where your ISP drastically, if temporarily, reduces your connection speed), or both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- With much of what Google announced during the first day of its I/O developer conference focused on helping users answer questions before they even think of them, artificial intelligence is proving critical for the company's strategy.
"Google is betting the farm on artificial intelligence (A.I.) and they need to because Microsoft and Facebook aren't too far behind," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. "A.I. will determine the next-generation experience with all electronics. It essentially predicts what users want before they know they do. A.I. is the next big frontier, and Google has always been a pioneer in A.I."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Do you think the Internet of Things (IoT) will be the Next Big Thing? It can’t be. Not until we get past the real Next Big Thing: IPv6.Without the extensive global adoption and successful deployment of IPv6 as the primary version of the Internet Protocol, the IoT won’t be possible. In fact, the future of the Internet itself is at stake. Here are the five reasons why:1. The IoT will need more IP addresses than IPv4 can provide.According to Gartner’s estimate, by 2020 there will be more than 26 billion IoT devices connected to the Internet. Cisco is thinking even bigger; it has projected that there will be more than 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Implementing cutting-edge technology is a concept no longer relegated to IT departments. And HR is no exception. In fact, 92 percent of HR workers cited in a recent study are currently using some type of HR analytics system. However, there is still a growing gap between the early adopters, and the more traditional departments that are slower to change, according to Steffen Maier, co-founder of Impraise -- a company that provides real-time employee feedback for HR -- and Tom Haak, partner at Crunchr -- a company that uses data analytics to create meaningful employee data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Victims of the widespread TeslaCrypt ransomware are in luck: Security researchers have created a tool that can decrypt files affected by recent versions of the malicious program.Surprisingly, the TeslaCrypt creators themselves helped the researchers.TeslaCrypt first appeared in early 2015 and stood out by targeting game-related user content, such as save files and custom maps, in addition to personal documents and pictures -- 185 different file extensions in total.The program had some moderate success in the beginning, earning its creators $76,522 in less than two months. However, in April 2015, researchers from Cisco Systems discovered a flaw in the ransomware program that allowed them to create a decryption tool for some of its variants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"We are moving more and more towards a place where one-to-one relationships are going to be more the norm, even at mass scale," said Andy Markowitz, general manager of GE's performance marketing lab during a panel discussion at CES 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
This VR headset from HooToo averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 280 customers (read reviews). With a regular list price of $89.99, the 78% discount puts it at just $19.99. Load a film onto your phone, and then slide it into the headset to begin watching. Once strapped in, you can adjust the focal and pupil settings to get the perfect 3D image and protect against eye strain. The headset has been designed to maximize comfort by having a soft sponge casing around your eyes to lighten pressure on your face. Compatible with apps from the Apple App and Google Play Stores. Experience VR now on your own phone -- click over to Amazon to learn more and explore buying options.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Continuing his bid to woo Indian customers and developers, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook on Thursday said the company was setting up a new development center for its Maps product in Hyderabad in south India.Apple earlier on Wednesday announced it would set up by early next year a facility in Bangalore to focus on helping developers on best practices and to improve the design, quality and performance of their apps on the iOS platform.Cook is on his first visit to India where the company saw a 56 percent year-on-year growth in iPhone sales in the first quarter even as its global iPhone sales and overall revenue dropped.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has taken a big leap forward with the speed of its machine learning systems by creating its own custom chip that it's been using for over a year.
The company was rumored to have been designing its own chip, based partly on job ads it posted in recent years. But until today it had kept the effort largely under wraps.
It calls the chip a Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, named after the TensorFlow software it uses for its machine learning programs. In a blog post, Google engineer Norm Jouppi refers to it as an accelerator chip, which means it speeds up a specific task.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The notion of online privacy has been greatly diminished in recent years, and just this week two new studies confirm what to many minds is already a dismal picture.First, a study reported on Monday by Stanford University found that smartphone metadata -- information about calls and text messages, such as time and length -- can reveal a surprising amount of personal detail.To investigate their topic, the researchers built an Android app and used it to retrieve the metadata about previous calls and text messages -- the numbers, times, and lengths of communications -- from more than 800 volunteers’ smartphone logs. In total, participants provided records of more than 250,000 calls and 1.2 million texts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here