Half of all American adults are in a face recognition database, and not one law enforcement agency requires a warrant before tapping into that tech to identify someone.While you might be binge-watching Netflix, cooking, working or sleeping—in other words, minding your own business and doing nothing illegal—law enforcement may be running your photo through a face recognition network, using your face in a virtual line-up to find a person suspected of committing a crime.How did you end up in this digital manhunt? It could be because you have a driver’s license or state-issued ID, since 26 states “enroll their residents in a virtual-line up.” That covers more than 117 million American adults, an investigation found, but since not all drivers are adults, then the total number of drivers in face recognition networks is more than 131 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We saw it coming last fall, and now the reality is here: Project Spark is dead. Microsoft removed its game-creation platform from the Windows Store and the Xbox Marketplace on Friday.
Project Spark, which lets users create games with no coding experience necessary, went into “maintenance mode” in September. At that time, Microsoft stopped active development of the platform but continued to operate it as “a free incubation engine.” The company unlocked all previously paid downloadable content—character packs, themes, etc.—and continued to operate the online services for the platform. That will all end soon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Another home networking vendor has joined the 802.11ad Wi-Fi market – Netgear today launched the Nighthawk X10 AD7200. Aimed at users interested in faster data transfers for large file sizes, which includes 4K video streaming and VR gaming, the Nighthawk X10 is powered by a 1.7GHz Quad Core processor and Quad-Stream Wave 2 Wi-FI architecture. The router is now available for pre-order via Netgear for $499.99, with retail availability expected by the end of October.Adding the 802.11ad feature means that users can get faster data transfers via the 60 GHz frequency (aka 60Gig), but in a limited space (about 20 feet, line of sight between the client and the router). Backward compatibility with 802.11ac (and b/g/n) means that you can still use this in your home network, but speeds will drop as you get further from the router. There are a limited amount of clients currently supporting 802.11ad (Acer has a few notebooks and docking stations), but Netgear says it’s preparing for the future as more client devices support 802.11ad for different scenarios. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oracle has released another large batch of patches, fixing many critical vulnerabilities in enterprise products that are used to store and work with critical business data.About 40 percent of the patched flaws are located in Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail Applications, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Supply Chain Products and Oracle Database Server. Many of these flaws can be exploited remotely without authentication to compromise the affected components.In total, Oracle's October Critical Patch Update (CPU) contains 253 security fixes across hundreds of products including database servers, networking components, operating systems, application servers and ERP systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As we know, there is an acute shortage of cybersecurity talent available on a global basis. For example, previous ESG research from 2016 reveals that 46 percent of organizations say they have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity talent at present.Unfortunately, the cybersecurity skills shortage goes beyond headcount alone. According to a recently published report from ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)—The State of Cyber Security Professional Careers, Part 1—cybersecurity teams can be in a constant state of flux due to issues with employee satisfaction, a lack of adequate training and staff attrition. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The SURFboard SB6190 is the first Gigabit+ cable modem available in retail, and is compatible with major US Cable Internet Providers like Xfinity by Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Brighthouse and many others, so you can ditch their cable modem (along with their rental fee) and regain control. It harnesses the power of DOCSIS 3.0 technology to bond up to thirty two downstream channels and eight upstream channels--providing you advanced multimedia services with data rates up to 1.4 Gbps download and 131 Mbps upload depending on your Cable Internet provider service. That makes streaming HD Video, gaming, shopping, downloading, working, high-quality voice and video conferencing, and peer-to-peer networking applications far more realistic, faster, and efficient than ever before. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 4,100 people (read reviews). Its typical list price of $149.99 has been reduced 25% to $111.99. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s easy to get all “cloud first” when you’re talking about new, greenfield applications. But how do you get the core business applications running in your data center – so-called brownfield apps – easily and efficiently migrated to the cloud? That’s the problem startup CloudVelox set out to solve, with the larger mission of helping CIOs build “boundaryless” hybrid data centers. IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant spoke with CloudVelox CEO Raj Dhingra about how the company has automated the migration of complex, traditional applications to Amazon Web Services (and Microsoft Azure in the near future). Dhingra explained how companies are using CloudVelox’s One Hybrid Cloud platform to not only migrate apps, but to build cloud-based disaster recovery capabilities and simplify a variety of test/dev chores.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Attacks that compromise online shops to skim payment card details are increasing and growing in sophistication. The latest technique involves hiding malicious code and stolen data inside legitimate files.A Dutch researcher reported last week that almost 6,000 online shops, most of them built with the Magento content management system, have malicious code that intercepts and steals payment card data during online transactions. The online storefront of the U.S. National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) was among those websites until earlier this month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
WikiLeaks is accusing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry of trying to stop the site from publishing stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Citing "multiple U.S. sources," the site tweeted on Tuesday that Kerry had asked the Ecuadorian government to prevent WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange from releasing more documents.
Assange is currently residing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been helping to run the WikiLeaks site. But on Saturday, the Ecuadorian government shut down his internet connection.
WikiLeaks claimed that Kerry had private negotiations with Ecuador last month. However, the U.S. Department of State is denying any involvement with cutting Assange's internet connection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As I strive to make my life safe and secure from prying eyes, one area stands out as being astoundingly critical: email.Heck, you can barely go 24 hours without another example of leaked or hacked emails being released to the public. Add to that the recent revelations that Yahoo has been working secretly with United States government agencies to scan all email going through their system, and it quickly becomes clear that the majority of us have email accounts that are not even remotely private or secure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Zenefits had a rough year. The company -- previously a darling of Silicon Valley -- was rocked by a massive insurance scandal in February and has been fighting to regain the trust of customers and regulators since.David Sacks, the Yammer cofounder and former Zenefits COO, has been leading the charge after taking over the CEO role in February. The company made its biggest announcement under his tenure Tuesday, unveiling Z2, a redesign and upgrade of its capabilities.The marquee change of Z2 is a design that brings the app store model popularized by smartphones to the world of human resources. Zenefits's offerings, like vacation tracking, offer letter generation, and employee insurance, are still available as apps in the new Z2 platform. But now, users will also be able to add third-party integrations from a set of 17 services. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Photographs of nearly half of all U.S. adults -- 117 million people -- are collected in police facial recognition databases across the country with little regulation over how the networks are searched and used, according to a new study.Along with a lack of regulation, critics question the accuracy of facial recognition algorithms. Meanwhile, state, city, and federal facial recognition databases include 48 percent of U.S. adults, said the report from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. The search of facial recognition databases is largely unregulated, the report said. "A few agencies have instituted meaningful protections to prevent the misuse of the technology," its authors wrote. "In many more cases, it is out of control."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bring your own device (BYOD), digital transformation and other trends have raised the bar on Wi-Fi. A decade or so ago, Wi-Fi was a “nice to have” for most organizations, and users understood the tradeoff: high-quality, consistent access through the wired connection or freedom of movement coupled with spotty quality with wireless access.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi speeds will triple, get more range with MegaMimo 2.0 +Today, that’s not the case. Wi-Fi is the primary network and a mission-critical resource for most companies, as many devices today do not even have a wired option. Users need high-quality, consistent and secure wireless connectivity to do their jobs. When Wi-Fi isn’t working, it isn’t just internal employees who are affected. Student’s can’t do research, shoppers can’t purchase goods, clinicians can treat patients and IoT devices can’t connect. Poor Wi-Fi is no longer simply an inconvenience; it means lost customers, degraded teaching experiences, lost revenue and brand damage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FDA wants the medical device industry to quickly fix cybersecurity issues, reminding healthcare executives that they may soon be hearing about vulnerabilities more frequently from security researchers thanks to a DMCA exemption which will soon go into effect.Although the Librarian of Congress issued the new exemptions (pdf) last year, there was a one year hold supposedly so various agencies could update their policies. It’s silly, since the exemptions are not permanent; they must be argued and renewed every three years, which basically means security researchers can take advantage of it for two years. They can hope that if their research will take longer than two years, that the exemption is renewed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
JDA is a global supply chain and retail planning software company with 4,500 employees and almost a billion dollars in revenue. Suresh Acharya heads JDA Labs, the company’s 50 person research group exploring the science, emerging technologies and user experiences that are critical to this complex field. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up to Acharya to talk about everything from customer segmentation to self-learning supply chains and the store of the future.
Suresh Acharya, Head of JDA Labs, Research and DevelopmentTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier today, Wikileaks published a new set of documents from John Podesta's private Gmail account. Of all the new revelations, one of the more intriguing developments is an email that lays out many of the vice president candidates Hillary Clinton's campaign had under consideration. In an email Podesta sent out in March of 2016, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign listed a number of potential VP picks, including former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and current Apple CEO Tim Cook.The list, according to Podesta, was a "first cut," so it's anybody's guess as to how seriously the Clinton campaign thought about pursuing either Gates or Cook. As a point of interest, Cook is a noted supporter of Clinton and just this past summer held a fundraiser where all proceeds were donated to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft researchers say they have created a speech recognition system that understands human conversation as well as the average person does.In a paper published this week the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research group said its speech recognition system had attained “human parity” and made fewer errors than a human professional transcriptionist.+More on Network World: Feds want to set a trail for future AI advances+“The error rate of professional transcriptionists is 5.9% for the Switchboard portion of the data, in which newly acquainted pairs of people discuss an assigned topic, and 11.3% for the CallHome portion where friends and family members have open-ended conversations. In both cases, our automated system establishes a new state-of-the-art, and edges past the human benchmark. This marks the first time that human parity has been reported for conversational speech,” the researchers wrote in their paper. Switchboard is a standard set of conversational speech and text used in speech recognition tests.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Canonical, developer of Ubuntu, a distribution of Linux, released a new version of its software that targets hybrid cloud deployments. Ubuntu is often mentioned as one of the top 3 distributions of Linux when shipments are considered, depending upon which research firm one cites.What Canonical has to say about Ubuntu 16.10
Canonical pointed out that this release of Ubuntu targets high-performance network deployments, including hybrid cloud implementations. The following summarizes the announcement:
Ubuntu is the platform used in the majority of cloud deployments worldwide.
Version 16.10 includes tools or hybrid cloud operations, bare-metal cloud performance.
It provides enterprises with the ability to "lift and shift" 80 percent of Linux virtual machines to machine containers.
It includes Kubernetes for process-container coordination.
It also includes full container support in OpenStack, as well as "telco-grade" networking latency enhancements.
Canonical went on to discuss other features of this release:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In recent years, the concept of employer brand has taken hold as companies compete for talent. Just as a strong market identity gives a company the capability to charge premium prices — think Apple, American Express and BMW — a strong employer brand assists with recruiting in a competitive job market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
You may find many uses for this versatile and powerful file hub from RAVPower, currently discounted 58% on Amazon from $75.99 down to just $32.49. Let's run down the features:
Let up to 5 devices wirelessly connect to the FileHub wireless network, to access its SD card and/or USB storage to share files
Media server capabilities, allowing wirelessly connected devices to stream audio and video from any attached storage device
Move files freely between all connected methods of storage and devices, including tablets and phones
Bridge an existing wireless network, create a new secure network and share with family or friends, or bridge to connect to devices such as Chromecast in hotels
Built-in power bank charges your device when you can't access a power source
RAVPower's FileHub currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,800 customers (read reviews). For more information or to explore buying options, see the discounted FileHub now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here