South Korean investigators on Tuesday raided the offices of Samsung Electronics, as part of a probe into alleged political corruption at the highest levels of that country’s government.The administration of President Park Guen-hye – who is South Korea’s first female president, and the daughter of former President Park Chung-hee – has been rocked by allegations of influence peddling centered on a mysterious figure said to have influenced policy decisions in exchange for cash.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Samsung apologizes for the exploding Note7 with a full-page ad | Phenomenal Note7 Phablet Flame-out Timeline +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More code, more projectsMaking big software and hardware projects open-source is an increasingly popular thing to do, whether you’re a big company, a small company, or even the government. Here’s a sampling of the latest major projects to hit the open-source realm. Enjoy.Facebook’s VoyagerImage by FacebookTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Despite a number of potential digital threats, voter fraud remains a mostly imaginary problem in this country, a specter raised by politicians seeking to justify ever-more stringent rules designed to suppress voter turnout in areas unfavorable to them.But in a largely post-truth political discourse, simply pointing out that this is a fact doesn’t seem to be enough. What is needed – and what the New York Times Op-Docs project has collaborated with the satirists at GOP Arcade to produce – is a video game.+ CAN THE ELECTIONS BE HACKED? Find out with Network World's package of stories +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Announced today, the Cape Sensor is a simple device that can be installed anywhere in a company’s campus, and behaves just like any other Wi-Fi client being used in that area – the idea being that any wireless issues experienced by actual clients should be seen by the Cape Sensor operating in the same place.
ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016 + Cisco says it'll make IoT safe because it owns the networkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Run your fingers over this!Apple rolled out the newest generation of the MacBook Pro today at a showcase event at the company’s Cupertino campus. Along with – get this – thinner and sleeker construction, Apple’s latest MacBook Pros have had several important features redesigned, and one big new feature added. Have a look.The Touch BarImage by AppleTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Being a person that lives in San Francisco, we’re reliably informed, is one of the best ways to spend lots of money, while simultaneously competing with other persons for very limited living space. The situation is much the same for cars, apparently, because one clever San Franciscan developed a Raspberry Pi-based gadget to help him hold onto parking spaces for as long as possible.The resident parking spaces near developer John Naulty’s home in the Castro have a two-hour limit, but he realized that those two hours didn’t start until San Francisco’s parking enforcement interceptors – distinctive little vehicles that monitor parked cars – drove past and noted his position.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some of the biggest names on the internet – including Twitter, GitHub, Etsy, Shopify, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among many others – were temporarily knocked offline by a DDoS attack that targeted DNS provider Dyn early Friday morning.DNS is the mechanism by which computers turn human-readable web addresses like www.networkworld.com into a numerical format that can be used to retrieve the actual web page. Dyn is a managed DNS provider – essentially, a phone book that computers use to correlate IP addresses to web page names.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Apple sues Amazon supplier over fake iPhone chargers + Technology confirms election ballot error is less than .001%To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some of the biggest names on the internet – including Twitter, GitHub, Etsy, Shopify, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among many others – were temporarily knocked offline by a DDoS attack that targeted DNS provider Dyn early Friday morning.DNS is the mechanism by which computers turn human-readable web addresses like www.networkworld.com into a numerical format that can be used to retrieve the actual web page. Dyn is a managed DNS provider – essentially, a phone book that computers use to correlate IP addresses to web page names.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Apple sues Amazon supplier over fake iPhone chargers + Technology confirms election ballot error is less than .001%To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Happy birthdayImage by Thinkstock/UbuntuFounder Mark Shuttleworth announced the first public release of Ubuntu – version 4.10, or “Warty Warthog” – on Oct. 20, 2004. The idea behind what would become the most recognizable and widely used Linux distributions ever was simple – create a Linux operating system that anybody could use. Here’s a look back at Ubuntu’s history.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s latest foray into open-source software is a cloud-based top-level-domain registrar platform called Nomulus, bringing a substantial chunk of the company’s gigantic internet infrastructure into the public eye.What Nomulus does, in essence, is manage the domain names under a top-level domain, or TLD, the largest divisions of the internet’s domain name system (.com, .org, .net, and so on). Nomulus tracks DNS and registry info, so that when domain names change hands, or someone makes a WHOIS inquiry, the system can manage this.ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: A dozen extensions to TCP/IP that optimize internet connections | Microsoft’s Nadella takes on privacy fears about LinkedIn, CortanaTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A backdoor in Android firmware provided by manufacturer Foxconn allows attackers to root devices to which they have physical access, according to a security researcher and barbecue enthusiast who dubbed the vulnerability Pork Explosion.Jon Sawyer (who also goes by jcase online) discovered the vulnerability at the end of August, and publicized it on his blog on Wednesday, a day after smartphone vendor Nextbit, which was one of the most heavily affected OEMs, released a fix for the problem.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Hardcore fans mourn the death of Nexus by denouncing the Pixel + Darkweb marketplaces can get you more than just spam and phishTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. National Science Foundation yesterday handed out 11 grants, totaling $12 million, to researchers working on bringing the benefits of the public airwaves to more Americans than ever before.The awards went to researchers at a diverse range of educational institutions, including the U.S. Naval Academy, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, and Texas A&M, among others. The research itself tended to center on work that makes spectrum sharing easier, freeing up space across the increasingly crowded airwaves.Specifically the NSF said the awards were directed at four major areas, including:
Innovative radio hardware and access architectures to enable spectrum sharing.
Harmonious co-existence of heterogeneous wireless technologies.
Development of automated detection mechanisms and compliance certification methods.
Spectrum access for science services.
+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: With help from Docker, Google's Go jumps in popularity + Wi-Fi vs. LTE could be the start of a mobile rollercoasterTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A small semiconductor company based in Cambridge, Mass., was acquired today by Nokia, in a move to make the Finnish giant’s base station technology more energy-efficient.Eta Devices’ technology and institutional expertise appear to be at the heart of the acquisition, for which terms and pricing were not disclosed. Eta has 20 employees, located in Cambridge and at an R&D office in Stockholm, Sweden.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Satya Nadella's comp package slips 3% to $17.7M + Happy 25th once again to Linux, 'the little OS that definitely could'To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A small semiconductor company based in Cambridge, Mass., was acquired today by Nokia, in a move to make the Finnish giant’s base station technology more energy-efficient.Eta Devices’ technology and institutional expertise appear to be at the heart of the acquisition, for which terms and pricing were not disclosed. Eta has 20 employees, located in Cambridge and at an R&D office in Stockholm, Sweden.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Satya Nadella's comp package slips 3% to $17.7M + Happy 25th once again to Linux, 'the little OS that definitely could'To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pulling consumers inGoogle made a big deal about the confluence of its new hardware designs and its software – particularly AI – on Tuesday at its launch event in San Francisco. And, indeed, many of the new products that Google introduced seem designed to pull consumers further into the Google ecosystem, but there’s no denying that there were some impressive capabilities on show. Have a look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We know that Google is set to release a slew of hardware Tuesday at an event in San Francisco, including smartphones, smart home devices and even a new Wi-Fi router. Here’s what the leaks and rumors say about the specifics of the company’s big release day tomorrow.Bye, bye, NexusGoogle is set to release the already-widely-leaked Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, which will boast flagship specs and run totally stock Android. It’s the same idea as the Nexus line of phones – top-end smartphones designed to showcase the possibilities of the operating system free from the modifications that OEMs impose on their own devices.ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Tim Cook: Augmented reality will be an essential part of your daily life, like the iPhone | U.S. cellular carriers charge too much, and here’s proofTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Washington, D.C. think tank on Wednesday hosted the first event to feature representatives from both sides of the LTE-U debate since a contentious agreed testing framework was created several weeks ago.The panelists included representatives from Broadcom, Verizon, Comcast, T-Mobile and consumer advocate Public Knowledge. The event was moderated by the director of the wireless future project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, Michael Calabrese, and kicked off with presentations from Josh Breitbart, a senior adviser for broadband to New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, and Kevin Robinson, vice president of marketing for the Wi-Fi Alliance.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Nutanix CEO skewers box-based hyperconvergence rivals + BlackBerry stops making hardware, but BlackBerry phones live onTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Stiff EU copyright proposals that theoretically ban memes, gifs and even pictures of some landmarks are the target of a campaign backed by Firefox browser maker Mozilla, which has encouraged a campaign of digital civil disobedience it’s calling Post Crimes.Post Crimes is centered on a web app that lets users mock up selfies of themselves in front of several European landmarks, then send them as postcards to EU lawmakers to ridicule the proposed copyright laws.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: 802.11ad is the fastest Wi-Fi that you might not ever use + Swift CEO reveals three more failed attacks on banking networkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here are the broad strokes about 802.11ad, the wireless technology that’s just starting to hit the market.
802.11ac, 802.11ac wave 2, 802.11omg! Could we maybe get some different names for this stuff?
No! Next question! May the power of the IEEE smite you down for heresy!
Fine, fine. So 802.11ad – what’s the deal here?
Well, now that you’re being civil, I’ll tell you – 802.11ad is, yes, a new wireless standard that uses the 60GHz spectrum instead of the 5GHz and 2.4GHz used by most Wi-Fi connections today. It boasts a theoretical max speed of 7Gbps, vs 3.2Gbps for 802.11ac Wave 2.
MORE: 802.11ad is the fastest Wi-Fi that you might not ever use | Is Wi-Fi finally ‘fast enough?’To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Millimeter-wave Wi-Fi technology, better known as 802.11ad, is a powerful new wireless standard, for which products are just beginning to hit the market – a router from TP-Link and a laptop from Acer are the only ones so far.
802.11ad is based on very high-frequency radio waves – where today’s 802.11n and 802.11ac standards use 5GHz frequencies, ad uses 60GHz. That means that it’s both capable of handling a lot more data than earlier standards, and a lot more short-ranged, since higher frequency signals dissipate much faster.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Jon Gold