The Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone's demise has been swift: Introduced in early August, the phablet is now off the market due to it being a fire hazard.
Early reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 phablet were generally positive. Headlines described the latest Apple iPhone 7 rival as a "Pricey phablet made for power users" and "an excellent phone for the high-price market." But batteries that burn too hot and burst into flames have resulted in much less glowing headlines and a full-fledged business disaster for Samsung, which has now issued a recall of both the original and replacement Note7 phones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MIT-CHIEF, a not-for-profit student group that promotes cooperation between the United States and China in technology and innovation, is readying its annual conference with a focus on machine learning, new materials and more.The MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (CHIEF) Annual Conference, to be held Nov. 12-13 at MIT, will feature 6 panels and 6 keynote speeches that in addition to the topics cited above, will hit on energy, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and autonomous driving. Speakers will include those from academia and industry, including venture capital firms, and represent outfits such as Microsoft, Stanford University and AutoX.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While people still have a really hard time telling the difference between legit and phishing emails, at least there is enough awareness of the phishing threat that many people will err on the side of caution when it comes to clicking on links.This was one finding from Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab in a study titled "Quantifying Phishing Susceptibility for Detection and Behavior Decisions" that published recently in the journal Human Factors.MORE: New tech can help catch spearphishing attacksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While people still have a really hard time telling the difference between legit and phishing emails, at least there is enough awareness of the phishing threat that many people will err on the side of caution when it comes to clicking on links.This was one finding from Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab in a study titled "Quantifying Phishing Susceptibility for Detection and Behavior Decisions" that published recently in the journal Human Factors.MORE: New tech can help catch spearphishing attacksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Level 3 Communications has cited an unspecified "configuration error" as the root cause of its nationwide network outage on Tuesday.Here's the statement issued by the Broomfield, Colo., service provider:
On October 4, our voice network experienced a service disruption affecting some of our customers in North America due to a configuration error. We know how important these services are to our customers. As an organization, we’re putting processes in place to prevent issues like this from recurring in the future. We were able to restore all services by 9:31 a.m. Mountain time.
Social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter erupted on Tuesday morning with inquiries and complaints about the outage from Level 3 customers, as well as customers of other big carriers like AT&T and Verizon that were affected by the outage. Speculation for the outage ranged from possible fiber cuts to more outlandish theories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Level 3 Communications has cited a "configuration error" as the root cause of its nationwide network outage on Tuesday.Here's the public statement issued by the Broomfield, Colo., service provider:
On October 4, our voice network experienced a service disruption affecting some of our customers in North America due to a configuration error. We know how important these services are to our customers. As an organization, we’re putting processes in place to prevent issues like this from recurring in the future. We were able to restore all services by 9:31 a.m. Mountain time.
(UPDATED on Oct. 14, 2016) Level 3 got more specific with customers, issuing a Reason for Outage (RFO) Summary (shared by a Network World reader) headlined "Repair Area: Human Error Occurrence" and that read in part: "Investigations revealed that an improper entry was made to a call routing table during provisioning work being performed on the Level 3 network. This was the configuration chane that led to the outage. The entry did not specify a telephone number to limit the configuration change to, resulting in non-subscriber country code +1 calls to be releaed while the entry remained present. The configuration adjustments deleted this entry to Continue reading
Social networks exploded Tuesday morning with customer inquiries and complaints because of a Level 3 Communications network outage across the United States.Though by noon, reports had started spilling out that service was returning in certain spots.MORE: 2016 Technology Industry GraveyardIt appears the outage started around 11AM EST, and according to the outage tracker Downdetector, hot spots on a heat map appear particularly colorful up and down the east coast and in California. Reports also surfaced of outages at Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and other service providers, possibly because of their use of Level 3 infrastructure, a major Internet backbone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas and Washington account for more than half of the $255 billion in corporate R&D paid for and conducted in the United States, according to the National Science Foundation. California alone accounted for 30% of the funding.
As with so many government reports, the data in this report is actually based on information a few years old due to the collection and analysis process, so in this case we're talking 2013. You can get into the gory details in the new report from the NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
MORE: Microsoft puts AI front and center with research overhaulTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"Do you like movies?"That was the ice-breaker laid on me by Pilot Analytics CEO and Founder Alan Xie as he caught me spying his start-up's space at last week's HUBweek Demo Day event in Boston, trying to figure out what the heck the company did.Being on a shoestring budget, the recent Harvard University grad and his colleagues decided to forego a more elaborate booth set-up, instead relying a a couple of laptops, some basic branding in the form of cardboard cutouts and their story. This outfit has a system for crunching numbers to help movie studios better gauge how much they might make on a movie, no matter how awful it sounds. Factors such as genre, cast and geographical viewing markets all play roles, of course.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wednesday was a big day for goggles in my life: I spent the afternoon at Harvard University's Innovation Labs, where hundreds of people tried on the latest virtual and augmented reality headsets, then I watched the Boston Red Sox on TV that night as they donned ski goggles meant to keep champagne from spraying into their eyes as they awkwardly celebrated winning the American League East title despite blowing a game to the Yankees in the bottom of the 9th inning.Coincidentally, the Red Sox baseball team was among the exhibitors showing off their virtual reality application, which enables fans to step into the batting cage to get a feel for what it's like to be up close to David Ortiz while he's hitting or David Price while he's pitching. The Sox offer their Samsung Gear VR experience both at Fenway Park and at community events, such as this Hubweek event that took place at Harvard Innovation Lab.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has announced the formation of its AI and Research Group, which it says will help the company democratize artificial intelligence use across individuals and organizations.The group unites Microsoft Research, which has been its own unit since 1991, with more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers working on the company’s artificial intelligence products. 20-year Microsoft veteran Harry Shum will lead the group as executive vice president, and the group is hiring.MORE: Microsoft research on why Micro Datacenters really matter to mobile's futureTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dangerous celebritiesIntel has reeled off the 10th annual McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities list based on likelihood of getting hit with a virus or malware when searching on the celebs’ names. “Consumers today remain fascinated with celebrity culture and go online to find the latest pop culture news,” said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at Intel Security. “With this craving for real-time information, many search and click without considering potential security risks.” Last year, DJ Armin van Buuren was #1.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dangerous celebritiesIntel has reeled off the 10th annual McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities list based on likelihood of getting hit with a virus or malware when searching on the celebs’ names. “Consumers today remain fascinated with celebrity culture and go online to find the latest pop culture news,” said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at Intel Security. “With this craving for real-time information, many search and click without considering potential security risks.” Last year, DJ Armin van Buuren was #1.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wyoming’s 250-person Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) group knew it had a good thing in its Enterprise Extensible Code Library, but it chose to keep things under wraps outside of the state until last week when members of that team attended an annual confab for state government CIOs.It was at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) convention in Orlando that the ETS code library project was honored with a Recognition Award for Enterprise IT Management Initiatives, and the inquiries from other states and organizations started streaming in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While some of the scariest IoT hacks envisioned – those involving hijacked medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps – have yet to surface in the real world, those in the medical and IT security fields are not letting down their guard. They’ve seen enough ransomware and other attacks on healthcare outfits of late to know they are major cyberattack targets.The reality is that more medical devices are becoming connected ones, and that’s increasing the security threat surface, said panelists this past week at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge, Mass.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While some of the scariest IoT hacks envisioned – those involving hijacked medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps – have yet to surface in the real world, those in the medical and IT security fields are not letting down their guard. They’ve seen enough ransomware and other attacks on healthcare outfits of late to know they are major cyberattack targets.The reality is that more medical devices are becoming connected ones, and that’s increasing the security threat surface, said panelists this past week at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge, Mass.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructures.Acknowledging a growing national dependency on the internet of things, be it in the medical, utility or transportation fields, Silvers says IoT has his department’s full attention. And a straightforward undertaking it is not, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructures.Acknowledging a growing national dependency on the internet of things, be it in the medical, utility or transportation fields, Silvers says IoT has his department’s full attention. And a straightforward undertaking it is not, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you can't make it to the annual Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard University on Thursday night to celebrate the most unusual and imaginative breakthroughs in science, you can follow along online instead.That includes right here, we're we've embedded code for the live webcast, which starts at 6pm, EST, Sept. 22.
MORE: Why there's no Nobel Prize in ComputingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new survey released this week reveals that while a little more than half of state CIOs surveyed consider mobile devices and apps an essential or high priority, relatively few state government apps are mobile ready or are being used by employees and external users on mobile devices.The 2016 State CIO Survey: The Adaptable State CIO, released at the annual National Association of State CIO (NASCIO) conference this week in Orlando and produced by NASCIO, accounting/consulting firm Grant Thornton and trade association CompTIA, covers a range of topics beyond mobile, including cybersecurity, the internet of things, cloud computing and hiring.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bob Brown