Seems the days of the annual trip to your doctor’s office may be fading in favor of a virtual healthcare provider. At least if you follow the research presented by Gartner this week which predicted by 2025, 50% of the population will rely on what it called virtual personal health assistants (VPHAs) for primary care, finding them more responsive and accurate than their human counterparts. +More on Network World: Gartner Top 10 strategic technology trends you should know for 2017To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A feature in Intel's Haswell CPUs can be abused to reliably defeat an anti-exploitation technology that exists in all major operating systems, researchers have found.The technique, developed by three researchers from State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of California in Riverside, can be used to bypass address space layout randomization (ASLR) and was presented this week at the 49th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture in Taipei.ASLR is a security mechanism used by operating systems to randomize the memory addresses used by key areas of processes, so that attackers don't know where to inject their exploit shellcode.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The deal for Verizon to purchase struggling Yahoo became endangered thanks to reports of Yahoo spying on user email for the U.S. government, not to mention the lost data on 500 million accounts and a decline in revenue.Earlier this month, Verizon publicly declared it was looking for a $1 billion discount on the original $4.8 billion it offered to purchase Yahoo. Verizon sought the discount because of Yahoo’s enormous data breach and because of reports that Yahoo was under a court order to scan emails for terrorist chatter, according to the New York Post. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Worldwide IT spending should rebound in 2017 with a 2.9 percent increase over 2016, after a slight decrease this year, according to Gartner projections.Spending on software and IT services should drive the 2017 growth in global IT spending to US$3.49 trillion, the market research group said Wednesday. Gartner projects IT spending will drop by 0.3 percent between 2015 and 2016, with the U.K.'s Brexit vote to leave the European Union swinging IT spending from a modest increase to negative numbers.Driving the spending growth in 2017 will be businesses' efforts to expand, John-David Lovelock, Garter's research vice president, said by email. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It may be a cloud world, but Dell EMC is still invested in on-premises systems, in particular converged systems. At VMworld 2016 in late August, the company took the wraps off a new product line called Validated System for Virtualization, which reflects a significant shift in the company’s converged systems portfolio.The new solution, according to Dell EMC, represents what it calls “service-defined infrastructure” by incorporating a wide range of form-factors, technology choices and deployment options, all designed to fit the needs of a customer ranging from midsized to the Fortune 10.Converged systems, a recent trend in hardware, combine compute, storage, networking and the software workload all into one fully integrated system rather than piecing it together. They are designed for easy installation and use by customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What's it really like to work for Apple?The work culture at Cupertino isn't like that of other companies. Apple is famously secretive (more so, even, than most tech companies), and employees are expected to do the best work of their lives. Apple is very effective at keeping secrets, and that includes what it's like to work there.Even so, there are many sources of great information about what it's like to work for Apple. In this article we're going to look at what ex-employees, their friends and family, and people who've researched the company have to say about what it's like to be an Apple employee.Read next: How to work for Apple | How to get a job at AppleTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Call it the “Un-fine.” Perhaps that’s how T-Mobile, the self-described uncarrier, will spin Wednesday’s settlement with the FCC. The nation’s third-largest wireless network will pay $48 million total including customer benefits, education donations, and a fine as part of an agreement reached with the FCC.
Good settlement with FCC today. @TMobile believes more info is best for customers. #themoreyouknow https://t.co/XFY6dHPfN6To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon is full of knockoff products, but if you’re buying genuine Apple-branded cables and chargers sold directly by Amazon and not a third party, you should be OK, right? Well, maybe not.Patently Apple dug up a lawsuit filed by Apple against Mobile Star LLC, which Amazon identified as the manufacturer of counterfeit cables and power adapters that had been sold as being made by Apple. The complaint says that Apple had purchased the items from Amazon, and tested them interally to determine they were counterfeit. The complaint also cites an Amazon.com customer review claiming one of the adapters caught fire.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A person who had access to the nation's deepest secrets, Robert Gates, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, is lot more open in retirement.Gates had the crowd at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo laughing over his observations about IT and applauding at some of the things he believes in.On stage here, for instance, Gartner analyst Richard Hunter fired off questions, asking at one point whether Edward Snowden, the former security contract employee who in 2010 took thousands of classified documents, was a "traitor or hero?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The BRK 3120B smoke detector from First Alert contains technology that many experts are now recommending -- dual sensors. A photoelectric sensor detects slow and smoldering fires, while an ionization sensor can detect often fast moving open flames. Your current detectors may have only one or the other, so if you're due (or overdue) for new ones, it might be something to consider. This model is hardwired with a battery backup (see below for non-hardwired model), so all units interconnect. When an alarm is triggered, indicator lights let you know which detector was the initiator, so there's no guessing. If being used in a public area, the BRK 3120B also has locking features that prevent theft of the battery or the unit itself. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 230 people (read reviews) and you can buy it now on Amazon for $21.82.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Future self-driving cars and up-and-coming commercial drone aviation are behind a mad scramble to find a better solution for location services than the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS).Advances in Signals of Opportunity (SOP), along with software-defined radios, could be the solution.GPS isn’t ideal. Firstly, it’s a free service made available by the U.S. government out of the kindness of its heart, and the civilian element could conceivably be switched off in times of national crisis—there are no contracts with smartphone makers, for example.Secondly, GPS wasn’t really designed for non-military applications such as civilian automobile navigation—it’s a weak signal and prone to interference, including that from space weather. It’s also not secure at the civilian level. It’s completely unencrypted and open to spoofing, in fact. Further, GPS jamming could bring existing satellite-based systems to a standstill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s a debate that’s raged on for years: Which is cheaper, public or private clouds?A new report from 451 Research finds that two of the most critical factors that influence the cost of a public versus a private cloud deployment are an organization’s ability to efficiently manage infrastructure and utilization of hardware resources. Generally speaking, if any organization has the expertise to manage a large number of servers at a high level of utilization then on-premises, customer-managed private clouds can have a total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage compared to public clouds. For smaller environments, or any sort of variable workload demand, public cloud is a more attractive financial option, 451 Research’s Director of Digital Economics Owen Rogers reports in “The Cloud Price Index: The great public vs private cloud debate.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is trying to do away with the tiring process of figuring out who's supposed to do what after a meeting wraps up.
A new Action Items feature in G Suite for its Docs, Sheets and Slides apps lets users add a comment asking one of their coworkers to take care of something. Users can then see at a glance what documents, spreadsheets and presentations have action items attached that they need to take care of.
Action Items is one of a handful of G Suite updates the company unveiled on Wednesday, alongside improvements to its Forms app. Slack is also integrating with Google Drive, making it easier for users of the popular chat app to collaborate on files stored in Google's service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian hacker suspected of targeting the U.S. for cyber crime.Czech police, working in collaboration with the FBI, arrested the Russian man at a hotel in central Prague. He is currently in custody and now faces possible extradition to the U.S., depending on what the local courts decide, according to a statement from the Czech police.The arrest comes as the U.S. has blamed Russian government for hacking U.S. officials and political groups in an effort to influence this year's upcoming election. However, a U.S. law enforcement official said the Russian hacker wasn't involved with the breach of the Democratic National Committee reported earlier this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new educational foundation hopes to introduce children worldwide to coding, using a tiny single-board computer that has changed the way coding is taught in schools across the U.K.You may have already heard of the Raspberry Pi, a US $35 computer the size of a credit card that, with the addition of a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, can stand in for a desktop machine.But this isn't about that. It's about the U.K.'s other single-board educational computer, the micro:bit.The micro:bit is smaller and cheaper than the Raspberry Pi, and it has a built-in keyboard and display, albeit consisting of just two pushbuttons and 25 red LEDs arranged in a five-by-five grid. It was developed for the U.K.'s national broadcaster, the BBC, which gave a million of them to British schools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software Defined Networking standard bearer the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and ON.Lab have merged with designs on further pushing SDN benchmarks and open source software development of the technology.+More on Network World: Gartner Top 10 technology trends you should know for 2017+According to the groups, the merger will create a single organization under the ONF name. Joint operations will begin immediately, and will be led by ON.Lab founder and executive director, Guru Parulkar. Dan Pitt, an SDN, OpenFlow protocol proponent, left the ONF executive director position recently and ONF technical director Rick Bauer is currently listed as interim executive director but will now serve as ONF’s head of standards. ONF will be governed by an interim board of directors through the end of 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The scoop: Yoga Book (Android version tested), about $500 (Windows 10 version costs $550), by Lenovo.What is it? The Yoga Book takes its name very seriously – it looks more like a paper-based notebook in size and weight than a traditional computer “notebook” does. The system features two innovative and unique features – a light-up keyboard without any physical keys that uses touch-based haptic feedback to emulate typing; and a writing surface that lets you write with a real pen and paper on the device, with handwriting then digitized on the tablet’s screen. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FCC this morning announced an agreement with T-Mobile that will see the carrier pay a fine and provide a basket of restitution benefits worth a total of $48 million for having failed to adequately disclose to its customers that its “unlimited” data plan came with caveats that could result in throttling.“Consumers should not have to guess whether so-called ‘unlimited’ data plans contain key restrictions, like speed constraints, data caps, and other material limitations,” said FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc in a press release. “When broadband providers are accurate, honest and upfront in their ads and disclosures, consumers aren’t surprised and they get what they’ve paid for.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Executive Office Solutions Portable Adjustable Laptop Desk/Stand/Table is designed to allow you to set up an office anywhere! It is easy to carry, with a light weight aluminum frame. This device makes a perfect desk for your laptop. The adjustable legs allow you to rotate 360 degrees and lock it in place at various angles. This desk is also vented and connects to your computer via the included USB cord to power two quiet CPU cooling fans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s a historical fable about the Holy Grail. Various cultures have different versions, but it’s described as some kind of dish or chalice with miraculous powers that gives the wielder eternal youth, riches or some other wonderful thing. Many people throughout history have spent their lives looking for the Holy Grail, but they never found it because it is, after all, a myth. The world of IT has it’s own Holy Grail and that’s being able to understand how the infrastructure is performing through the lens of the user. In theory, one should be able to monitor the application and use that as a proxy for user experience. In theory, this makes sense and seems easy, but practically speaking it’s extremely difficult to do because the “end user experience” can be impacted by the application, device, network, databases, service or a number of other factors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here