Andy Patrizio
Author Archives: Andy Patrizio
- Home → Author's archive:
Andy Patrizio
0
Microsoft touts the Edge browser’s battery-friendly traits
Microsoft already has laid claim to its Edge browser being the most battery-efficient Web browser available on Windows 10, and now with the Creators Update, Microsoft touts even further gains in energy efficiency.According to Microsoft’s own tests, Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 Creators Update uses up to 31 percent less power than Google Chrome, and up to 44 percent less than Mozilla Firefox. Before you dismiss it as rather convenient that they did their own tests, they did make the methodology available and provided open-source testing tools for download, so you can run the tests yourself. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft rumor: New Surface device that runs Windows Cloud
Microsoft has an event planned for May 2 believed to be focused on the education market, which has long been an Apple stronghold. It’s likely new hardware will be introduced, and some Microsoft watchers believe it will be the launch for a Windows Cloud device.Windows Cloud is rumored to be Microsoft’s answer to Google Chromebooks. It’s essentially the old Windows RT OS that failed spectacularly a few years back, except now it’s built on Windows 10 and runs apps only from the Windows Store, both Win32 apps and Universal Windows Platform Apps. RT flopped mostly because there were no apps for it and developers didn’t rush out to make any apps for it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Security researcher blasts Tizen: “May be the worst code I’ve ever seen”
Samsung has had enough struggles with Tizen, the open source operating system it is positioning as an alternative to Android. But now Tizen is being blasted by a security expert for being full of egregious security flaws and sloppy programming. Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman, who heads the research department for Equus Software, spoke at Kaspersky Lab's Security Analyst Summit and later to Motherboard, the tech site run by Vice.com. Neiderman said Tizen's code "may be the worst code I've ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Security researcher blasts Tizen: ‘May be the worst code I’ve ever seen’
Samsung has had enough struggles with Tizen, the open-source operating system it is positioning as an alternative to Android. But now Tizen is being blasted by a security expert for being full of egregious security flaws and sloppy programming.Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman, who heads the research department for Equus Software, spoke at Kaspersky Lab's Security Analyst Summit and later to Motherboard, the tech site run by Vice.com. Neiderman said Tizen's code "may be the worst code I've ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Security researcher blasts Tizen: ‘May be the worst code I’ve ever seen’
Samsung has had enough struggles with Tizen, the open-source operating system it is positioning as an alternative to Android. But now Tizen is being blasted by a security expert for being full of egregious security flaws and sloppy programming.Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman, who heads the research department for Equus Software, spoke at Kaspersky Lab's Security Analyst Summit and later to Motherboard, the tech site run by Vice.com. Neiderman said Tizen's code "may be the worst code I've ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Major zero-day flaw found in Microsoft Word
McAfee security researchers are warning of a new zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Word being exploited via attached .rtf files since at least January.The exploit allows a Word document to install malware onto your PC without you ever knowing it, giving the attackers full access to your machine. According to McAfee, the exploit works by connecting to a remote server controlled by the hackers, which will download a file that runs as a .hta file, a dynamic HTML file that is used in Word. Security firm FireEye also noted similar malicious .rtf files in its own alert. Both firms say the flaws are within Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology and affects all versions of Office, including Office 2016 for Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Major zero-day flaw found in Microsoft Word
McAfee security researchers are warning of a new zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Word being exploited via attached .rtf files since at least January.The exploit allows a Word document to install malware onto your PC without you ever knowing it, giving the attackers full access to your machine. According to McAfee, the exploit works by connecting to a remote server controlled by the hackers, which will download a file that runs as a .hta file, a dynamic HTML file that is used in Word. Security firm FireEye also noted similar malicious .rtf files in its own alert. Both firms say the flaws are within Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology and affects all versions of Office, including Office 2016 for Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft buys open-source container developer Deis
Microsoft today announced it is acquiring Deis, a company that has been building open-source tools for rapid and easy creation and management of applications on Kubernetes, the open-source container cluster manager for automated deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. This is not Microsoft’s first foray into containers. It announced plans to work with Google, which created Kubernetes before turning it over to a consortium, back in 2014. In February of this year, Microsoft made Kubernetes generally available on its own Azure Container Service.+ Also on Network World: Containers: IT history seems to be repeating itself + Containers are an alternative to virtual machines in that they let organizations build, deploy and move applications to and from the cloud without a full virtual machine. Containers have a much smaller footprint and thus take up fewer resources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Privacy settings may be the Creators Update’s biggest change
From the time it launched, Windows 10 has been the source of controversy over its aggressive monitoring of user activity, and I readily admit to fanning those flames at the start. A cottage industry of utilities has sprung up that will turn off all of the offending features in one fell swoop, which has quieted a lot of people, me included.RELATED: 11 hidden tips and tweaks for Windows 10 With the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has made a major change in the nature of its data collection in the OS and has revealed a great deal of information on the telemetry that it gathers from your system. It is documented in a lengthy blog post by Windows chief Terry Myerson.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft Surface beats Apple iPad in JD Power tests
History repeats itself as Microsoft, late to the tablet party and needing a few revisions to make Surface a success, has beaten all of its tablet rivals in the JD Power 2017 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study. It's the first time Microsoft has topped the charts since the survey was first introduced by JD Power.Overall, Microsoft scored 855 out of a possible 1,000 points, narrowly beating Apple with 849 and Samsung with 847. JD Power said Microsoft was the top performer in three areas: pre-loaded applications, internet connectivity and availability of manufacturer-supported accessories. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft shutters CodePlex in favor of GitHub
Microsoft announced on Friday it is shutting down CodePlex, its code hosting site for open-source projects, in favor of the more widely used GitHub. The move is something of a formality, since Microsoft has already been transitioning its open-source projects to GitHub for some time and you never hear about CodePlex any more. The company has had problems with the site, with spammers hitting it in 2015 seeking to take advantage of the CodePlex.com domain to boost their illicit activities. And Microsoft admits over the past few years, it has watched many CodePlex projects migrate to GitHub. Brian Harry, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, wrote in his blog announcing the closing of CodePlex that there has been a substantial decrease in usage. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Do you own your social media contacts or does your employer?
Who among us hasn't taken a contact list when they left a job? Whether you leave voluntarily or involuntarily, one of the things you pack up is your Rolodex, or the modern equivalent, to take with you to the next job. It's pretty much standard.But what if you are a public figure and have a sizable social media following? Can you keep your millions of Facebook and/or Twitter followers? That issue has not been hashed out, but it might be in Dallas.+ Also on Network World: Facebook working with fact-checkers to weed out fake news + The Blaze, a news network established by talk show host Glenn Beck, is in the midst of parting company with its highest profile on-air talent aside from Beck. The company is severing ties with Tomi Lahren, a hotheaded 24-year-old whose on-air blasts of "snowflakes" and Black Lives Matter have made her a rising star in conservative circles.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft signs off on Windows 10 Creators Update final code
After a few more test builds in recent weeks, Microsoft has officially signed off on Build 15063 as the final code for the Windows 10 Creators Update and is making it widely available for download. Build 15063 was released last week to Windows Insiders for testing, and it seems this build is the RTM build that will be sent out to the general public next month. While Microsoft hasn't said anything official yet, the official Windows 10 Update Assistant tool is listing Build 15063 as the Creators Update. Microsoft released an Update Assistant last year for the Anniversary Update. This new version was leaked to the internet by Microsoft tipster Walking Cat (a fairly reliable source of news on Microsoft), so a lot of people, including Windows bloggers, have it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Windows Insider Program surpasses 10 million users
Microsoft announced that the Windows Insider Program—its global community of testers who run interim builds of Windows 10 and serve as beta testers/guinea pigs for what might be an unstable build on their personal machines—has passed the 10 million mark.It's taken a while to get here after a fast start. The program launched in September 2014 with the modest hopes of getting 400,000 enthusiasts on board. Instead, it hit 1 million after a few weeks. Back in August 2015, the number stood at 6 million people, and less than a month later Microsoft said it was up to 7 million.RELATED: 11 hidden tips and tweaks for Windows 10 Then things got quiet. Clearly an 18-month lag between the 7 million and 10 million mark means things plateaued, and perhaps Microsoft didn't want to admit it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Hadoop fails to live up to the promise and the hype
Hadoop, the open source big data framework first developed at Yahoo for analyzing large data sets, is a total failure that costs too much and is too much of a headache to implement, say people in the field. In a lengthy and in-depth piece on Datanami, big data experts describe Hadoop as too primitive for any kind of complex processing work or interactive, user-facing applications. At best, it's a batch process job, which is how Hadoop started out. It doesn't seem to have grown beyond it. “I can’t find a happy Hadoop customer. It’s sort of as simple as that,” Bob Muglia, CEO of Snowflake Computing, told Datanami. Snowflake develops and runs a cloud-based relational data warehouse product. “It’s very clear to me, technologically, that it’s not the technology base the world will be built on going forward.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Now WikiLeaks threatens to disclose software vulnerabilities
Earlier this month, the notorious info leaker WikiLeaks published a batch of documents from the CIA detailing how the CIA has developed several tools to crack, break into or infect all kinds of devices—from PCs to Smart TVs—even if they are not connected to the internet. At the time, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange promised that the site would work with the affected tech companies to give them exclusive access to the technical details of those exploits and would not go public with the exploits and back doors. However, it wasn't until this week that WikiLeaks got in contact with the listed tech companies, such as Microsoft, Apple and Google, according to Motherboard, the tech site run by Vice. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Motherboard said WikiLeaks has made demands on the initial contact with firms but didn't share any of the alleged CIA codes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Now WikiLeaks threatens to disclose software vulnerabilities
Earlier this month, the notorious info leaker WikiLeaks published a batch of documents from the CIA detailing how the CIA has developed several tools to crack, break into or infect all kinds of devices—from PCs to Smart TVs—even if they are not connected to the internet. At the time, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange promised that the site would work with the affected tech companies to give them exclusive access to the technical details of those exploits and would not go public with the exploits and back doors. However, it wasn't until this week that WikiLeaks got in contact with the listed tech companies, such as Microsoft, Apple and Google, according to Motherboard, the tech site run by Vice. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Motherboard said WikiLeaks has made demands on the initial contact with firms but didn't share any of the alleged CIA codes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Windows 10 Creators Update: Microsoft removes, depreciates features specific to IT professionals
Microsoft is in the process of finalizing the Windows 10 Creators Update, preparing new builds for what will eventually become Release Candidates (RC). Windows Insiders could get the first RC as early as next week, while the final version is expected to roll out to all Windows 10 users starting in April. With the change in strategy, Microsoft is shipping much more ambitious new functionality in its updates. It is delivering the equivalent of what it used to call Service Packs, minus the cumulative bug fixes, at a rate of one to two every year. RELATED: 11 hidden tips and tweaks for Windows 10 The Creators Update, so named because it's targeting creative professionals above all, has a wide range of new features, such as: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Samsung announces competitor to Siri, Cortana
The field of personal digital assistants is only getting more crowded, with Samsung's new entry Bixby joining the fray. The Korean electronics giant announced the new assistant ahead of the Galaxy 8 smartphone, where it will make its debut. Bixby was thought to be the product of Viv, an AI assistant created by the same team that created Siri before Apple acquired it. Samsung acquired the Viv team last year. But Bixby is a new product from Samsung and intended to be a little different from the typical digital assistant. + Also on Network World: Virtual assistant faceoff: Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant and Siri + While Bixby will do most of the typical digital assistant functions found in Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, it also adds three new elements: context awareness, cognitive tolerance and completeness. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
0
Microsoft ends updates for Windows 7/8.1 on new processors
As it promised, Microsoft has stopped issuing updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users whose PCs run Intel's seventh-generation processors (codename Kaby Lake), AMD's seventh-generation processors (Bristol Ridge), and Qualcomm's 8996 processor or newer. It's also likely that AMD's new Ryzen processor is included in that list. Bristol Ridge is a slightly older processor made on an older core design.Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended on January 2015, but extended support—in other words, patches—is supposed to continue until January 2020. Support for Windows 8.1 runs through next year and support ends in 2023. However, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs running these new CPUs will not scan for updates or download them from Windows Update. Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users with new processors who run the Windows Update tool get one of two messages. The first is straightforward: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here