The TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp is adjustable and dimmable for multiple brightness settings, making them ideal for home and office use. Say goodbye to old incandescent light and faintly illuminated working space, and say hello to this elegantly designed, modern looking and energy-efficient source. Designed to blend naturally into any scene and provide flicker-free and ghost-free lighting that is pleasant and comfortable to your eyes. Even after long hours of use, your eyes will feel less fatigue than with traditional types of lighting. With a slight touch from your finger tips, you can switch through 7 brightness level to fine tune your illumination. This light also allows you to plug in your eReader, tablet, or smartphone into the built-in USB port. With nearly 3,000 reviews on Amazon, it averages 4.8 out of 5 stars (read reviews). Its typical list price of $29.95 has been reduced by 23% to $22.99. See the discounted TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia for "another couple of years," according to a spokeswoman for the government there.
The Russian government has extended the residence permit for Snowden, the former NSA contractor charged with espionage for leaking details of U.S. surveillance operations, said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry. Zakharova announced the extension on her Facebook page late Tuesday.
Zakharova's post came in response to a column by Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the U.S. CIA, who said Russia can return Snowden to the U.S. as a "perfect inauguration gift" to President-elect Donald Trump.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As one of those Super Bowl watchers who prefers the football over the commercials, I try my best to get the ads out of the way before the big game, which this year will be played in Houston on Sunday, Feb. 6.Here's a running list of Super Bowl 51 commercials from technology companies -- I'll leave it up to you to decide whether brands are getting their $5 million worth. So far, it looks like tech companies will take a back seat to beer, candy and other brands, in terms of the number of advertisers, on Super Bowl Sunday.MORE: Techiest commercials from Super Bowl 50, in 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve been covering Microsoft Windows since the 1980s. There have been several regime changes, each with its own distinct ego. Some regimes listened eagerly, some didn’t. This one is failing, but I believe the current fingers-in-the-ears stance are related more to revenue than to ideology. Microsoft wants data about you. To do so, Windows 10 is riddled with phone-home messaging. Some sites document dozens of IP addresses and add even more DNS calls for your machine’s data. We’re told that the data isn’t personally identifiable and that it’s used to improve QA. No one said Microsoft didn’t need QA. New versions of Windows have always had holes big enough to fly airliners through, but Microsoft finally got some sense when in Windows XP SP2 and Vista, they demoted user space. Finally. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some cyber scum suckers sunk to an all-time low, hitting an Indiana Cancer Services agency with ransomware before threatening “to contact family members of living and deceased cancer clients, donors and community partners” if the $43,000 ransom was not paid.Cancer Services of East Central Indiana-Little Red Door, an independent, non-profit agency based in Muncie, Indiana, became a victim of a ransomware attack a week ago. This is an organization whose goals include helping to “reduce the financial and emotional burdens of those dealing with a cancer diagnosis.”The attackers did not leave the traditional ransom demand note, oh no, but chose to personally reach out to the agency’s executive director, president and vice president to make the extortion demands clear. This makes it seem more like a targeted attack and less of one that was a result of opportunity. It was also at least the second time that week that attackers attempted to ransom sensitive patient information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to understanding which, what and how popular information travels the Internet, we have a lot to learn.That seems to be the idea behind a new program that the researchers at The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will unravel next month that aims to simulate the spread and evolution of online information.+More on Network World: DARPA: Show us how to weaponize benign technologies+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s been interesting to see how longtime home wireless vendors have been approaching the new wireless mesh market, in which startup products like Eero, Luma, AmpliFi and Almond have hit the scene – in addition to Google, which doesn’t qualify as a startup, but is new to the Wi-Fi market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Power grids were bombed in World War II to cripple industrial output. Today, attacks against Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure causes even broader disruptions—without bombs.The danger is real. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently published guidelines to “provide a strategic focus on security and enhance the trust framework that underpins the IoT ecosystem.” The report explains why security has to be a combined effort.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oracle released its first batch of security patches this year, fixing 270 vulnerabilities, mostly in business-critical applications. Many of the flaws can be exploited remotely without authentication.The majority of the fixes are for flaws in business products such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail Applications, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Supply Chain Products and Oracle Database Server.E-Business Suite, which is used by companies to store key data and manage a wide range of business processes, accounts for more than 40 percent of the patched vulnerabilities -- 121. Out of these, 118 are remotely exploitable and the highest rated one has a score of 9.2 (critical) in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Complexity in data centers has grown exponentially with the introduction of new technologies to scale IT infrastructure to keep pace with business demands. This dynamic has caused IT departments to seek out new tools to help manage and secure complex IT environments in modern data centers. The broad adoption of these tools has created new, arduous challenges, including the difficulty of managing various network connections and monitoring specific traffic flows at scale. Leading-edge IT organizations have started adopting software-based network packet broker (NPB) solutions to solve these complex IT challenges with increased agility and flexibility. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies, especially in technology, are pulling out all the stops to recruit and retain women: fertility benefits, shipping breast milk home from work trips, in-office massages and manicures, on-site OB/GYNs, the ability to travel with children and a care-giver and feminine products in the restrooms are just a few of the ways companies are getting creative with trying to appeal to women.But while these perks might be appreciated, they're not the fundamental drivers of women's decisions to come on board with your company -- or to stick around, says Ursula Mead, co-founder and CEO of InHerSight, an employee ratings and review site for women.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Businesses could lose their choice of cloud services and applications if the incoming administration or the new congress rolls back net neutrality rules, Tom Wheeler, the outgoing chair of the Federal Communications Commission, warned in his final planned speech before stepping down.Identifying the 2015 open Internet order as one of his signature policy achievements, Wheeler positioned the FCC's net neutrality regulation, which bars ISPs from blocking or slowing transmissions on their networks, as a needed protection for consumers and businesses alike."As everything goes into the cloud, the ability to access the cloud free of gatekeepers is essential. If ISPs get to choose which applications and clouds work better than others in terms of access, speed and latency, they will control the cloud future," Wheeler said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This super thin HD antenna averages 4 out of 5 stars from nearly 3,700 people on Amazon (read reviews). With a regular price of $46.99, this 49% discount puts the list price at $23.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Eight years is but a blink in the grand scheme, yet so much will have changed on the technology and social-media landscape between when Barack Obama took the oath on Jan. 20, 2009 and Donald Trump does so Friday.Before he got started, Obama needed to plead and perhaps pull rank to keep his beloved BlackBerry, a gadget preference which at the time did not seem all that odd. Obama would remain loyal to the device, too, even as its popularity diminished, only relinquishing it last year in exchange for a customized smartphone that he mocked as more suitable for a toddler than a commander in chief.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Our resume writers have seen it all. IT resumes come in all shapes and sizes - they can be as long as novels, as hard to decode as a Shakespeare play or boring enough to put even the biggest tech-junkie to sleep. And that's because writing a resume is not an easy task, no matter how long you've been in the game or how confident you are in your skills and experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Plugging the holesImage by Les ChatfieldWhat is risk management? Any time you have something of value (like a corporate network, a website, or a mobile application), there will be risk to manage in order to protect it. As organizations innovate and change the way they use technology, the risks change too. Traditional approaches and controls are no longer good enough. Caroline Wong, vice president of security strategy at Cobalt, provides a fewtips for managing risk in today’s modern business environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the most important skills any computer user should have is the ability to use a virtual private network (VPN) to protect their privacy. A VPN is typically a paid service that keeps your web browsing secure and private over public Wi-Fi hotspots. VPNs can also get past regional restrictions for video- and music-streaming sites and help you evade government censorship restrictions—though that last one is especially tricky.The best way to think of a VPN is as a secure tunnel between your PC and destinations you visit on the internet. Your PC connects to a VPN server, which can be located in the United States or a foreign country like the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, or Thailand. Your web traffic then passes back and forth through that server. The end result: As far as most websites are concerned, you’re browsing from that server’s geographical location, not your computer’s location.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
WikiLeaks said that its founder Julian Assange is confident of winning 'any fair trial' in the U.S. and indicated that the founder of the whistleblowing website would stand by all the promises he had made in return for clemency to Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. soldier who disclosed classified data relating to the Iraq War to the site.On Tuesday, Manning’s prison sentence was commuted by U.S. President Barack Obama raising questions whether Assange would keep his part of a deal he proposed online, and agree to extradition to the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Qualcomm strong-armed some phone makers into accepting unfavorable technology licensing terms while giving Apple a break in exchange for exclusivity, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has charged.The company used its dominance in baseband processors, which manage cellular communication in mobile devices, to force vendors to pay elevated royalties for Qualcomm technologies, the FTC charged in a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court.At the same time, Qualcomm gave Apple favorable terms so it could supply the baseband chips for all iPhones from 2011 to 2016, according to the FTC. Among other things, in 2007 it got Apple to agree not to use WiMax, the original 4G system used on Sprint’s network, in any iPhones, the complaint said. WiMax was promoted by Intel, Qualcomm’s archrival.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Donald Trump is inaugurated as the U.S. President on Friday, Juan Soberanis intends to protest the event -- digitally.His San Francisco-based protest platform is calling on Americans to oppose Trump’s presidency by visiting the Whitehouse.gov site and overloading it with too much traffic. In effect, he’s proposing a distributed denial-of-service attack, an illegal act under federal law. But Soberanis doesn’t see it that way.“It’s the equivalent of someone marching on Washington, D.C,” he said on Monday. “Civil disobedience has been part of the American democratic process.”Soberanis’s call to action is raising eyebrows and highlights the isssue of whether DDoS attacks should be made a legitimate form of protest. Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, sending a command to a protected computer with the intent to cause damage can be judged a criminal offense. But that hasn’t stopped hacktivists and cyber criminals from using DDoS attacks to force websites offline. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here