Robots should one day have rights as "electronic persons," members of the European Parliament recommended Thursday -- but not until the machines are all fitted with "kill" switches to shut them down in an emergency.Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee wants the European Commission to propose legislation that will settle a number of ethical and liability issues in the field of robotics -- including who is to blame when an autonomous vehicle is involved in a collision.Granting the more sophisticated autonomous robots some kind of electronic personhood could settle issues of who is responsible for their actions, the committee suggested. More urgent than the question of robot rights, though, is the setting up of an obligatory insurance scheme that would pay out to the victims of a self-driving car if it caused an accident in the European Union.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the next 18 months, Amazon expects to add 100,000 full-time jobs in the U.S.While many of the jobs will be in warehouses, Amazon said the company will be looking for engineers and software developers in such areas as cloud computing and machine learning.[To comment on this article, visit Computerworld's Facebook page.]“Innovation is one of our guiding principles at Amazon, and it’s created hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, in a statement. “These jobs are not just in our Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley. They’re in our customer service network, fulfillment centers and other facilities in local communities throughout the country.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson met with President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday to talk jobs and investment, but the company's multi-billion takeover of Time Warner was not on the table.
The company didn't say much about the meeting, which took place at Trump Tower in New York, but characterized it as wide ranging.
"As the country’s leading investor of capital for each of the last five years, the conversation focused on how AT&T can work with the Trump administration to increase investment in the U.S., stimulate job creation in America, and make American companies more competitive globally," AT&T said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An appeals court has ruled that Apple must face antitrust charges in a lawsuit that alleges that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps.The U.S. Court for Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed Thursday a decision by a lower court and ruled that the app buyers filing the lawsuit are direct purchasers of iPhone apps from Apple, rather than from app developers, and hence have standing to sue. Apple was a distributor of iPhone apps, selling them directly to buyers through its App Store, according to the court.The proposed class-action lawsuit started in 2011 with the complaint changing several times.NEWSLETTERS: Get the latest tech news sent directly to your in-box
The purchasers object to the 30 percent "surcharge" that they pay to Apple. The company collects 30 percent of the revenue of third-party apps on its store, with the balance going to the developer, in a closed system in which Apple controls which apps can run on an iPhone, according to court records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What steps do I need to take before selling or giving away my old Mac?It's perfectly safe to sell on a Mac second-hand (or pass it on to a friend or relative), provided you take some basic precautions. (Well, if you've been storing state secrets or billion-pound business-critical data on there, you might want to get in some specialist help. The following tips are for the rest of us!)Before you sell your Mac second-hand, you should clean it both inside and out. Here are the most important steps you should take before selling or giving away an old Mac.Read next: Best Mac buying guide 2017 | How to sell an old MacTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Estimates for IT employment growth this year range from flat to gangbuster. But the actual 2017 outcome will depend on the economy and the still-uncertain policies of President-elect Donald Trump.Trump has talked about actions such as tariffs to keep some firms from relocating operations to Mexico or other countries. But analysts don't know how deep or broad the tariffs might be and what their hiring impact would be.[To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page.]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Success of a company is often a double-edged sword for technology teams. Enthusiastic customers, positive sales numbers and increased opportunity generally mean only one thing for a CTO—the need to scale.For start-ups, determining how and when to scale can be a challenge. Just when you hire your first set of developers and build the product, you’re faced with the need to grow your team and ensure that technology can accommodate an expanding number of users. Resource management is also key—and technology and process, in addition to people, can help you to scale wisely without having to rebuild your product. After managing the challenge of scaling at a number of companies, I’ve narrowed it down to three elements of scaling to keep in mind when it comes to people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The “Third Network” is a term coined by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) to communicate a concept that combines the performance and security assurances of Carrier Ethernet (CE 2.0) and the agility and ubiquity of the Internet. “It gives unprecedented levels of network control to for new and evolving types of cloud-centric applications and control for network connectivity services within current network architectures as well as emerging SDN and NFV implementations,” says MEF.
Top awards
Each year, MEF confers Excellence Awards to recognize service, application, technology, and professional excellence and innovation in the global Third Network. For 2016, AT&T was honored to receive five awards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The hacking group that stole cyberweapons suspected to be from the U.S. National Security Agency is signing off -- but not before releasing another arsenal of tools that appear designed to spy on Windows systems.On Thursday, the Shadow Brokers dumped them online after an attempt to sell these and other supposedly Windows and Unix hacking tools for bitcoin.The Shadow Brokers made news back in August when they dumped hacking tools for routers and firewall products that they claimed came from the Equation Group, a top cyberespionage team that some suspect works for the NSA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As if the whodunnit into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee wasn't already confusing and murky enough, the supposed Romanian hacker who first released the emails resurfaced on Thursday to say everyone has it wrong.“I’d like to make it clear enough that these accusations are unfounded,” Guccifer 2.0 said in Thursday blog post. “I have totally no relation to the Russian government.”Make of that what you will.According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Guccifer 2.0 is actually a front for Kremlin-backed cyberspies.“It’s obvious that the intelligence agencies are deliberately falsifying evidence,” said a message on the Guccifer 2.0 blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security, not availability, is now the number one priority driving the adoption of application services, according to a new report by F5 Networks.Applications are becoming core to the digital economy, and organizations are increasingly turning to application services to keep them humming. In its third annual State of Application Delivery report, F5 Networks found that the average number of app services used by organizations increased from 11 in 2016 to 14 today. Sangeeta Anand, senior vice president of product management and marketing at F5 Networks, adds that the average organization plans to deploy 17 app services in the next 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security said Wednesday his top priority in 2017 will be to push for creation of a cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security.
“DHS needs focus and resources, and they are doing a decent job, but could be doing a lot better with the help of Congress,” said U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) in comments to reporters at the National Press Club. “It’s not a Republican or Democratic issue.” Ed Schipul
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Virtual reality at CESImage by Alexandra Wimley/BU News ServiceVirtual reality was all over CES, providing attendees with a glimpse into the computer animated future. But while show-goers were deep in their virtual worlds, photographers Ann Singer and Alexandra Wimley of BU News Service were outside looking on. Here's what they captured. Here, David Nevas, of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, tries out the Icaros virtual reality flying device at CES on Jan. 6, 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's new MacBook Pros have put the brakes on a free-fall of Mac shipments globally, though they haven't provided the significant boost the company was looking for.The company's Mac shipments totaled 5.3 million units during the fourth quarter of 2016, a decline of just 0.9 percent compared to the same quarter in 2015.That compares favorably to overall Mac shipments in 2016, which totaled 18.4 million units, a decline of 9.8 percent compared to 2015, according to IDC. Apple launched the new MacBook Pros in late October, and it was considered a significant upgrade. Had the new MacBook Pros shipped for all three months, the quarterly growth may have jumped up to flat or positive territory.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Originally posted on the Puppet blog, and republished here with Puppet's permission.What is continuous delivery? How is it different from continuous deployment? How does it relate to DevOps? We get these questions a lot, we even created a handbook for continuous delivery.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The above headline on a post to Reddit piqued my interest this afternoon because it was in that site’s section devoted to system administration and those people know a bug when they encounter one.The Redditor elaborates: “I found a bug in my ASA today. Eth 0/2 was totally unusable and seemed ‘blocked.’ These Cisco bugs are really getting out of hand. I'm just glad I didn't open this port up to the web.”Scare quotes around blocked? Gratuitous mention of the web. I smelled a ruse before even opening the first of three pictures.No. 1, labeled “checking layer 1:”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It would probably be an understatement to say the IT services industry is spooked by the recent financial results reported by major IT services providers. Both the top and the bottom lines have been under pressure. The medium-term future, and even the shorter term, have become unpredictable. Results are inconsistent, and companies have softened their guidance on future growth rates.At the same time, tech spend around the world is increasing. At the NASSCOM Product Conclave in Bangalore a couple of months ago, I was struck by the buoyancy of the start-up market. India alone is home to more than 5,000 start-ups, and this number is slated to more than double by 2020. There is no doubt the tech love affair will continue to heat up as new innovations continue to spring from both unlikely garages and sophisticated computer labs alike.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have found a new ransomware program dubbed Spora that can perform strong offline file encryption and brings several innovations to the ransom payment model.The malware has targeted Russian-speaking users so far, but its authors have also created an English version of their decryption portal, suggesting they will likely expand their attacks to other countries soon.Spora stands out because it can encrypt files without having to contact a command-and-control (CnC) server and does so in a way still allows for every victim to have a unique decryption key.Traditional ransomware programs generate an AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) key for every encrypted file and then encrypts these keys with an RSA public key generated by a CnC server.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows 10 Insider previews are sometimes just full of surprises. An unmentioned feature in Build 15002 was recently uncovered by Windows Central that appears to be a complementary feature to Windows Hello, the biometric login system that automatically unlocks your PC when you sit in front of it.Dubbed Dynamic Lock, this newly discovered feature is designed to automatically lock down your computer when Windows detects that you’re away. It’s not clear if the feature is working yet and Microsoft has yet to discuss it publicly. For that reason it’s unknown what Dynamic Lock actually does. Though Windows Central says Microsoft’s internal name for the feature is “Windows Goodbye,” which indeed suggests a close relationship with Windows Hello.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Since its launch in September, the Galaxy Note7 went from being the phone to beat to the one you couldn’t take on airplanes. Even with a global recall in place and a series of software updates designed to brick any remaining devices, the FAA continued its ban on Samsung’s phablet, and frequent travelers grew accustomed to hearing about the warning before take-off.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here