A hotly anticipated upgrade to Google Home will let users train the company’s virtual assistant to recognize different voices and provide personalized responses to each person.When users set up speaker recognition, their Home devices will ask that they say “OK Google” and “Hey Google” two times each. Whenever someone uses one of those phrases in the future to ask the Google Assistant a question, the Home device being addressed will check to see if that person is one of its recognized conversation partners.That means two different people in the same household can each log into a Google Home device and set it up with their calendars and other preferences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cut the cable and get access to your local news, weather, sitcoms, kids and sports programs, educational programs and more for free. Enjoy crystal clear HDTV shows in 1080p. The antenna boasts a 50-mile range, and a generous 10-foot cable gives you the flexibility to find the best placement for maximum reception. The AIRFREE antenna currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 170 people on Amazon, where its typical list price of $19.99 has been temporarily reduced 20% to $15.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How many virtual assistants can you fit in one smartphone? European network operator Orange is hoping there's room to squeeze in one more.With the right apps, you can already talk to Alexa, Cortana and Google through your smartphone -- and maybe also to Siri or Bixby if you went with one of the big brands.Orange wants to add Djingo to that list.Djingo will be able to answer questions, send text messages, place calls, play music and video from Orange's set-top box, and control smart home devices.It draws on the company's research into linguistics and artificial intelligence, and will even offer financial advice in conjunction with a new banking service Orange is launching, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two dozen Linksys router models are vulnerable to attacks that could extract sensitive information from their configurations, cause them to become unresponsive and even completely take them over.The vulnerabilities were discovered by senior security consultant Tao Sauvage from IOActive and independent security researcher Antide Petit while working together to analyze the Linksys EA3500 Smart Wi-Fi wireless router.The two researchers found a total of 10 vulnerabilities that affect not only the EA3500, but two dozen different router models from Linksys' Smart Wi-Fi, WRT and Wireless-AC series. Even though these devices are marketed as consumer products, it's not unusual to find them running in small business and home office environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If Rodney Dangerfield were an engineer, he would insult tool makers because inventors get respect, but tool makers none. Everyone remembers Thomas Edison for the invention of the light bulb and phonograph, but no one remembers Edison’s tool maker, Thomas Watson, except that Edison once recorded beckoning him on a phonograph cylinder.Like Watson, web development tool JavaScript gets no respect from some people who consider themselves serious developers. Nevertheless, JavaScript persists because it is the core to responsive web pages and because it is the most widely understood and used programming language in the world outside of the enterprise. It has also proved extensible, adapting to new uses faster than its critics can disparage it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Those high-dollar Bose headphones? A lawsuit filed in Chicago contends Bose has been spying on users via the Bose Connect app, which enables users to remotely control their Bose headphones, and violating their privacy rights by selling the information about what they listen to without permission. Furthermore, Kyle Zak accused Bose of illegal wiretapping.The lawsuit claims the app also has a data miner called Segment.io. Segment, the company behind the data miner, advertises, “Collect all of your customer data and send it anywhere.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Visibility and security controls for internet-based applications such as social media, file sharing and email have been widely adopted at the perimeter. As we transition from the legacy perimeter security model to a cloud security model, there is a need to ensure we don’t forget the principles we have established. Virtualization has changed how applications are built, deployed and used. It has also created challenges to how security is applied and deployed for these environments. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the result of these challenges has driven new innovation in the cloud security space.+ Also on Network World: The tricky, personal politics of cloud security +
Discovering and mapping application communications and dependencies is one of the first steps in defining and creating security policies for east-west data center traffic. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of understanding about these relationships, making east-west security policies difficult to implement and often prone to misconfiguration. As a result, we still see an abundance of successful attacks and the loss of critical data, even with traditional perimeter security models in place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some 350 Wi-Fi true believers have gathered in Tysons Corner, Va., this week to sing the wireless networking technology’s praises, peek into its future and warn of its challenges.The Wi-Fi Now event featured sessions and exhibitors focused on consumer, enterprise and service provider technologies, though I mainly concentrated on the enterprise technology in the sweet spot for Network World’s target readers. This included the latest alphabet soup of new and emerging IEEE 802.11 standards, including 11ad, ah, ax and ay. Bob Brown/IDG/NetworkWorld
Wi-Fi Now exhibitors' floorTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The internet never forgets, which means data that should have been deleted doesn't always stay deleted. Call it "zombie data," and unless your organization has a complete understanding of how your cloud providers handle file deletion requests, it can come back to haunt you.Ever since the PC revolution, the concept of data deletion has been a bit misunderstood. After all, dragging a file to the Recycle Bin simply removed the pointer to the file, freeing up disk space to write new data. Until then, the original data remained on the disk, rediscoverable using readily accessible data recovery tools. Even when new data was written to that disk space, parts of the file often lingered, and the original file could be reconstructed from the fragments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Choosing the right database for the job can be a daunting task, particularly if you’re entertaining the full space of SQL and NoSQL options. If you’re looking for a flexible, general-purpose option that allows for fluid schemas and complex nested data structures, a document database might be right for you. MongoDB and Couchbase Server are two popular choices. How should you choose?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
At a time when a great deal of business is conducted on the go using smartphones, it's become even more important to be conscious of how much data you're using. Whether you're using your own phone or one issued by your company, mobile data is money -- and if you don't optimize your phone to handle it intelligently, you're throwing dollars down the drain.After all, whether you have a plan with a monthly data cap or a setup where you're billed for the data you use, you're essentially paying for all the virtual info you transmit over your carrier's network. In the former case, reducing your data usage could let you move to a cheaper level of service. In the latter, every megabyte you save will directly lower your monthly bill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At this year's Infiltrate Security Conference in Miami, John Grigg walked the audience through a common target network where a known and commonly used SIEM had been integrated in order to show participants how to exploit onto the SIEM, find intel, and cover their tracks.Though SIEM technologies are supposed to help secure the networks, Grigg said that they are often misconfigured, which creates more vulnerabilities.Even though some of the legacy tools are pretty cool, Grigg said the problem is that no one really knows the platform that well. "The vendor who built it knows it from a design standpoint. Then there's the re-selllers, the guys who install it, the internal IT guys who inherit the systems, but they tend to never really focus on it." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Coding Sans, a software development company, released its State of Software Development at Startups survey looking at 126 tech workers at startup companies. Of those polled, 35 percent cited hiring talent as one of the "biggest challenges in software development," and 90 percent expect the demand for software developers will only grow in the next five years.The survey also uncovered some interesting tactics startups use to compete with bigger, more established tech companies. Here are seven realities they've uncovered about hiring software developers at startup companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Raspberry Pi is a computer of relatively modest raw capability, but it’s limited much more by our own creativity than it is by its hardware. We’ve seen Pis be everything from video game emulators to fantastic wedding proposal aides to fruit sniffers. Sure, it’s not a powerhouse, but that’s missing the point.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now have the potential to make enterprise workers more productive. But do “always listening” assistants pose a serious threat to security and privacy, too?Nineteen percent of organizations are already using intelligent digital assistants, such as Siri and Cortana, for work-related tasks, according to Spiceworks’ October 2016 survey of 566 IT professionals in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The survey also found that 46 percent of organizations plan to adopt intelligent assistants within five years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SnapLogic wants to make it easier for users of its enterprise software integration platform to connect components of their business systems. The company has unveiled a new feature that uses machine learning to suggest what users may want to do.The idea behind the new feature, announced this week, is to make it easier to connect and move data between enterprise software systems. SnapLogic's service lets companies take a data source like a Concur instance, and synchronize that with information an ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Docker is offering enterprises an easier on-ramp to using containers with a new consulting program aimed at taking a legacy application and migrating it to a container in five days.The idea behind the program is to show companies the concrete benefits of moving older applications over to containers, without asking them to undergo a massive transformation effort. Docker is working with Cisco, Avanade, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the Modernize Traditional Applications program, which will focus on migrating an application to modern infrastructure and getting it set up inside a containerized environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You could probably see this one and others like it coming, given the current immigration quagmire that is the United States immigration environment. Today the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a fraud alert saying criminals have been using the agency’s Hotline as part of a spoofing scam to steal personal information.+More on Network World: DARPA to eliminate “patch & pray” by baking chips with cybersecurity fortification+The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) said perpetrators of the scam represent themselves as employees with “U.S. Immigration” and can alter caller ID systems to make it appear that the call is coming from the DHS OIG Hotline telephone number (1-800-323-8603).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network management company Riverbed Technology today announced its intent to acquire enterprise Wi-Fi equipment vendor Xirrus for an undisclosed fee.Riverbed touted that the acquisition, which it expects to close by the end of the month, will expand its software-defined WAN solution, and integrate Xirrus’ robust Wi-Fi products into the broader Riverbed ecosystem.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: New FCC web portal opens for 5G experimenters + Trump's cybersecurity mystery: 90 days in, where's the plan?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News this morning that former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez reportedly had committed suicide sent the murderer’s name to the top of Twitter’s “trending” list. Clicking on it brought back a string of tweets that was positively littered with graphic pornography. Twitter
How much porn? I reported and blocked at least a half-dozen tweets and my rough estimate would be that about 1 in 50 were obscene (the flow has since receded to a trickle). I have been a daily, heavy user of Twitter since 2008 and this is by no means the first time I have encountered porn there. And, yes, it has previously been noticeable in instances where fast-breaking news makes the trending list. However, today’s deluge was by far the most concentrated and, well, offensive. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here