If you plan to buy a new PC or mobile device this year, you'll likely be shelling out more cash than in previous years. Prices are going up, and expensive devices are in demand.On average, the price of PCs and phones will go up by 2 percent this year, Gartner said in a research report released on Thursday. The calculations are based on U.S. dollars and average market sizes.Breaking those numbers down, PC prices are expected to go up 1.4 percent this year, while mobile phone prices will go up 4.3 percent.The prices will go up largely due to the rising prices of components. Also, more users are upgrading to more expensive and feature-rich mobile handsets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The attorney general of Massachusetts has taken the abstraction of online privacy and brought it into crystal clear focus by barring a Boston advertising agency from targeting anti-abortion ads at the cellphones of women the moment they arrive at reproductive health facilities.From a story in the Boston Globe:
“You Have Choices,” one message said. Others offered “Pregnancy Help,’’ and assured recipients, “You’re Not Alone,” according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who on Tuesday announced a legal action that alleged the ads illegally used consumer health data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alexa in every room? Get 3 Echo Dots for less than the price of one Amazon Echo, and save $20 on top with this limited time deal. Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses Alexa to play music, control smart home devices, provide information, read the news, set alarms, read audiobooks from Audible, and more. In fact, new Alexa "skills" are being created all the time. Amazon has quietly published a special code that will apply a $20 discount when you buy 3 Echo Dots -- good until 4/25 only. Just put them in your cart and apply the code DOT3PACK to activate this deal. If you're in the market for a few Dots, jump over to Amazon and claim your discount while it lasts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The legal battle between Cisco and Arista is heating up as the two sides square off again in court this week in a hearing about their technology patent infringement and enforcement case.This hearing is the latest round in an ongoing battle that began in 2014. Most recently, in January the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency revoked its November 2016 finding that Arista’s redesigned products don’t infringe a key Cisco patent -- as a result Cisco called on Arista to stop importing those products and recall others sold with redesigned software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Power and charge in over 150 Countries with US UK EU & AUS/CHINA Plugs. This adapter works in Canada, Russia, Asia, Central America, South America and the Middle East to name a few. Dual USB charging ports for simultaneously charging your USB devices as well. A 6-amp fuse (and built-in spare fuse) is included, as well as an 18-month warranty. LOOP's travel adapter averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 580 people (read reviews). It's $39.95 list price has been reduced a generous 58% to just $16.75. To learn more, or to take advantage of this discount, hop over to Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies that choose to outsource their IT operations should be careful. Suspected Chinese hackers have been hitting businesses by breaching their third-party IT service providers. Major IT suppliers that specialize in cloud storage, help desk, and application management have become a top target for the hacking group known as APT10, security providers BAE Systems and PwC said in a joint report.That's because these suppliers often have direct access to their client's networks. APT10 has been found stealing intellectual property as part of a global cyberespionage campaign that ramped up last year, PwC said on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After playing a key role in the 2015 bifurcation of Hewlett Packard into the consumer-focused HP Inc. and the enterprise-centric Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Chris Hsu is busy working on another big split. Hsu, currently HPE’s COO and GM of HPE Software, is preparing to spin out much of HPE’s software portfolio to Micro Focus in a deal announced last September. When the spin is completed, Hsu will also take over as CEO of Micro Focus, which will be a nearly $5 billion software company with a wide portfolio of assets in big data, security, IT operations and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Apple has one big reason to move to a homegrown GPU: It wants full control over the hardware and software in its devices.The device maker is apparently developing its own GPU from scratch after dumping Imagination Technologies' PowerVR architecture, which is being used in the iPhone 7. The smartphone runs on the PowerVR A10 Fusion chip.It's not certain when Apple's homegrown GPU will appear in devices, and the company didn't respond to request for comment.Apple has made graphics improvement a priority in its iPhone and iPad models, so users should get better gaming experiences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Chris Cook was considering taking the job of Delphix CEO, the company was described to him as 'the best kept secret' in the tech industry. Cook, who's been CEO for a year now, will tell you that's not a good thing and he's working hard to change it. Is one of the things that holds Delphix back is that the market for your product is not easily defined? Is there an easy two- or three- or four-word phrase for what you do? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Ask CIOs and CISOs what cybersecurity fears keep them up at night and you’ll hear a range of responses -- from social engineering hacks such as phishing, as well as malware that enables perpetrators to hijack users' websites -- the dreaded ransomware -- and denial-of-service attacks. Depending on their business you might hear them say "all of the above."These threats are driving increased spending on cybersecurity tools intended to protect corporate data from nation-state actors, lone wolf attackers and other malcontents who are seeking access to corporate data. IT leaders know that it takes only one well-placed exploit to infiltrate a corporate network, but they also acknowledge that the best approach is to shrink their attack surface and be ready to respond to an incident in the event of an attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft Windows 10 powered about 9% of all business personal computers a year and a half after its launch, a just-released study of corporate deployments said.According to Austin, Texas-based Spiceworks, an online community and resource for IT professionals and the vendors trying to reach them, the proportion of company-deployed PCs running Windows 10 was almost double that of its predecessor, Windows 8, which powered 5% of all enterprise desktop and laptop systems.[ Related: Fix Windows 10 problems with these free Microsoft tools ]
That Spiceworks' number was just a fraction of the global user share of Windows 10 -- on Saturday, analytics vendor Net Applications pegged 10's share as 25% of the world's PCs -- was no surprise. Most of the users who have adopted Windows 10 were consumers, not commercial customers: The latter are traditionally much slower to migrate machines to a new OS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fujitsu is helping to keep SPARC from extinction as it continues to design and develop the architecture. The company has introduced two Unix servers -- the M12-2S and the M12-2 -- using SPARC chips based on a new CPU architecture.The M12 servers are about 2.5 times faster than their predecessor, the M10, which used the older SPARC X chips.Oracle and partner Fujitsu are the only companies using the SPARC architecture, and share a healthy partnership. Devotees of SPARC feared the architecture was on its way out after Oracle restructured its Solaris OS and chip roadmap and Fujitsu adopted ARM architecture to build Japan's flagship supercomputer, Post-K, which is due for release by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple this week disclosed to a number of outlets, including John Gruber of Daring Fireball, that the company has not forgotten about its demographic of small but influential pro users. Quite the opposite, Apple says that's already working on a brand new Mac Pro that will feature a modular design, thereby addressing one of the longstanding complaints surrounding the company's current Mac Pro.In the interim, Apple also revealed -- at long last -- that it will be upgrading the current Mac Pro's internals, thereby giving users a little bit more bang for the buck. Specifically, the entry level Mac Pro will now feature 6 Xeon CPU cores and dual G500 GPUs while the pricier $3999 model will feature 8 CPU cores and dual D700 GPUs. While these spec upgrades aren't groundbreaking, it's a nice gesture from Apple given that the Mac Pro hasn't changed one iota since Apple originally introduced the machine back in June of 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple released an iOS update Monday to fix a serious vulnerability that could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on the Broadcom Wi-Fi chips used in iPhones, iPads, and iPods.The vulnerability is a stack buffer overflow in the feature that handles authentication responses for the fast BSS transition feature of the 802.11r protocol, also known as fast roaming. This feature allows devices to move easily and securely between different wireless base stations in the same domain.Hackers can exploit the flaw to execute code in the context of the Wi-Fi chip's firmware if they're within the wireless range of the targeted devices.The issue is one of several flaws found by Google Project Zero researcher Gal Beniamini in the firmware of Broadcom Wi-Fi chips. Some of these vulnerabilities also affect Android devices and have been patched as part of Android's April security bulletin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Open source networking proponents have uncorked an updated routing protocol project designed to give white box, virtualized environments of all sizes fast and reliable communications.The project, now called the Free Range Routing (FRR) offers a full-on IP routing protocol suite for Linux/Unix platforms and includes protocol daemons for BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM, and RIP. The FRR groupsays that the technology’s integration with the native Linux/Unix IP networking stacksmakes it applicable to a wide variety of applications from connectinghosts/virtual machines/containers to the network, advertising network services, LAN switching and routing, Internet access routers, and Internet peering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I use a MacBook Pro as my main notebook for work, and when I’m in my cubicle I like to connect things like an additional monitor, storage drives and peripherals like a larger keyboard and wireless mouse. The best way to do this is with a docking station, but the last one I used required that I also prop up some books to rest the notebook on to create the dual-display effect I was looking for.A much sleeker system comes from Henge Docks, which sent me its new automated docking station. The company makes two horizontal docks for MacBook Pro owners – one for MacBooks that have the Retina display ($399 introductory price, available for 13-inch and 15-inch models), and one for the new MacBook Pro (pre-order, coming soon). The dock features a metal chassis and 13 expansion ports (two audio ports, SD Card Reader, HDMI, six USB 3.0, power port, Ethernet, Thunderbolt 2 and mini display port). The slim profile of the dock makes for a much cleaner desktop look and feel.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two GoFundMe campaigns have raised more than US$290,000 in an effort to buy the web browsing histories of U.S. politicians after Congress voted to allow broadband providers to sell customers' personal information without their permission.It's unclear if those efforts will succeed, however. Even though Congress scrapped the FCC's ISP privacy rules last week, the Telecommunications Act still prohibits telecom providers from selling personally identifiable information in many cases. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is working to accelerate the performance of its applications over the internet by building out a software-defined network at broad scale. On Tuesday, the company announced Espresso, a system that provides increased network performance to users of the company’s applications.It works by applying software-defined networking to the edge of the tech titan’s network, where Google connects to the peer networks of other internet service providers. Rather than rely on individual routers to figure out the best way to direct internet traffic, Espresso hands that responsibility off to servers running in the data centers Google operates at the edge of its network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Users who have had their files encrypted by any version of the Bart ransomware program are in luck: Antivirus vendor Bitdefender has just released a free decryption tool.The Bart ransomware appeared back in June and stood out because it locked victims' files inside ZIP archives encrypted with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Unlike other ransomware programs that used RSA public-key cryptography and relied on a command-and-control server to generate key pairs, Bart was able to encrypt files even in the absence of an internet connection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Corporate security pros can add a new task to their busy days: handling panicky employees worried about privacy who are using the onion router (Tor) browser as a way to protect their online activity.That practice translates into additional security alerts that require time-consuming manual sorting to determine whether the persons behind Tor sessions are friend or foe, says George Gerchow, vice president of security and compliance at Sumo Logic.Ever since congressional action started a few weeks ago to roll back privacy regulations governing ISPs, Gerchow says has seen a dramatic increase in the use of Tor for accessing his company’s services, meaning security analysts have to check out whether the encrypted, anonymized traffic coming through Tor is from a legitimate user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here