The Seagate Backup Plus portable drive offers the mobility of a portable drive with the high capacity of a desktop drive. With this 29% off deal you get a staggering 4TB physical storage + 200GB cloud storage for just $127 (list price $179.99). The unit averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 7,500 people (read reviews). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has released surveillance camera video of an unintentionally driverless Red Line train zipping through two commuter stops in December, a potential catastrophe triggered by the operator’s decision to wrap a rubber cord around the vehicle’s accelerator before stepping out to address a signal problem. The train left without him and travelled through a total of four stations before stopping after power was cut to the third rail.While the episode itself was dramatic, to say to the least, the video – even this edited version from WCVB Channel 5 TV -- is underwhelming.
Even the people on the platforms didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has published its latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), which it does twice a year, covering security issues for the prior six months. This latest edition covers the second half of 2015, analyzing the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide.It is a massive effort, with dozens of Microsoft staff from different groups contributing. For the first time, they looked at not only PC malware but threats to its Azure cloud service as well, which the company says "reveals how we are leveraging an intelligent security graph to inform how we protect endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response, to help protect our customers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hold Security made quite a splash in the security world on Wednesday when it claimed to have recovered 272 million stolen email credentials from a much larger trove, but on Friday the email provider most strongly affected called the report an effort to create media hype.Hold suggested that nearly 57 million of the stolen email accounts uncovered were from the popular Russian service Mail.ru. But more than 99.9 percent of the Mail.ru account credentials in a sample examined by the provider are invalid, the Russian company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) will hold its second annual Apache: Big Data North America conference in Vancouver, BC, starting Monday next week. Alongside keynotes from companies like Netflix and IBM, and panels on a huge range of topics — from security and storage to managing distributed systems and machine learning — the foundation will also host a forum that looks to cut to the heart of its community model and how private companies should be involved in its work.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jim Jagielski, senior director in the Tech Fellows program at Capital One and one of the developers and founders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), and John Mertic director of Program Management for ODPi and Open Mainframe Project at The Linux Foundation, will host a panel dubbed ODPi and ASF Collaboration: Ask Us Anything!.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oracle’s legal fight with Google over its use of Java in Android goes to a jury trial for the second time next week, and the stakes are even higher than when the two sides met in court four years ago.Oracle wants a whopping $8.8 billion in damages from Google, much more than the first time around, making it one of the biggest copyright cases ever, and it's anyone’s guess which way the jury will go.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
The timing is awkward for Google – its I/O conference comes smack in the middle of the trial -- and developers at that event should pay attention to the outcome. If Oracle wins, Google could be forced to make changes to the way people build apps for Android, or else swallow a royalty fee for continued use of Oracle's technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google and Honeywell have signed a patent cross-license agreement that resolves a long-standing patent dispute over thermostats made by Nest Labs, the home automation startup the Internet giant acquired.The proceedings in the case have been pending in court for about four years, awaiting the results of a reexamination of the patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to court records. The companies said Thursday they believe that the patent accord “promotes product innovation and consumer choice in the market for smart home products.” The financial and other details of the deal between the two companies were not disclosed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
App developers now have an easier way to sell their wares to businesses running Windows 10.
On Thursday, Microsoft said developers can submit paid apps for inclusion in the Windows Store for Business, a version of the online store for Windows 10 that companies can use to distribute software to their employees over the web. (The store previously offered only free applications.)
The move means independent app developers have an easier way to get their wares in front of large enterprise customers, and businesses have an easier way to purchase apps for their users and distribute them across a large population of Windows 10 PCs and tablets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To help the IT function better understand the data it generates, real-time IT management specialist ManageEngine today took the wraps off its new self-service IT analytics solution, Analytics Plus."One of the things that we've realized and our customers have realized is that, ironically, as big data has become a major talking point and major point of interest for customers, IT has lagged in that area in terms of using analytics solutions to better understand and optimize IT management," says Raj Sabhlok, president of ManageEngine, a division of Zoho.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
According to the most recent Verizon data breach report, a phishing email is often the first phase of an attack. That's because it works well, with 30 percent of phishing messages opened, but only 3 percent reported to management.But when employees are trained on how to spot phishing emails, and then get tested with mock phishing emails, the percent who fall victim decreases with each round.Of course, it's impossible to get to a zero response rate. The criminals are becoming extremely clever with their messages. Fortunately, it's not necessary. If enough employees forward phishing emails to security, then the company becomes aware that it is the target of a campaign, and be prepared to deal with those messages that do slip through.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft today said that 300 million "active devices" are running Windows 10, a boost of 30 million, for an increase of 11%, in the last five weeks.The Redmond, Wash. company also warned customers that the Windows 10 free upgrade offer would end July 29, and urged them to grab the deal before it vanishes."Time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on July 29 and we want to make sure you don't miss out," said Yusuf Mehdi, a senior executive in the Windows and devices group, in a post to a company blog Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pivotal, the platform as a service company spun out from VMware and EMC three years ago, today announced plans to close a series C financing round worth $253 million led by Ford, Microsoft and its existing investors GE and its two parent companies.Pivotal is one of the leading vendors behind the Cloud Foundry PaaS, the commercialized version of the open source project. Cloud Foundry provides an environment for developers to build applications; it provisions the infrastructure needed to run and scale them.Perhaps most interesting about the announcement are the new investors: Ford and Microsoft. Ford follows GE as an investor in the company, indicating its heavy use of CF and its desire to ensure the company’s future viability and success. Ford last week launched FordPass, a consumer platform that the company says was built with Pivotal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. presidential candidates should embrace encryption and narrow government access to Internet users' data as part of a comprehensive technology agenda, IT trade groups say.While the FBI and some lawmakers have pushed in recent months for encryption workarounds in criminal investigations, presidential candidates should "recognize encryption as a critical security tool," 13 tech trade organizations said in a set of tech policy recommendations released late Wednesday.By narrowly targeting governments' access to consumer data, the next president can promote global trust in digital goods and services, said the groups, representing hundreds of tech companies. Trade groups signing the letter included the Telecommunications Industry Association, the Consumer Technology Association, and BSA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco Systems has fixed a critical vulnerability that could allow attackers to take over TelePresence systems, and patched other high-severity flaws in Cisco FirePOWER and Adaptive Security Appliance devices.The TelePresence software vulnerability stems from an improper authentication mechanism for the XML application programming interface (API). Attackers could exploit it by sending crafted HTTP requests to the XML API in order to bypass authentication and execute unauthorized configuration changes and commands on the system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Puppet CEO Luke Kanies has seen a lots of change since he founded Puppet.The company, whose goal is to make the deployment of IT infrastructure quicker and easier than before, came about around the time widespread adoption of virtualization occurred. This adoption called for a new way of working: instead of physically racking and stacking machines and installing software on them at the same time, the ability to programmatically set up servers called for a new way to set up the software that runs on them. This is the area that Puppet and its arch-rival Chef are focused on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tens of millions of stolen credentials for Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo email accounts are being shared online by a young Russian hacker known as "the Collector" as part of a supposed larger trove of 1.17 billion records.That's according to Hold Security, which says it has looked at more than 272 million unique credentials so far, including 42.5 million it had never seen before. A majority of the accounts reportedly were stolen from users of Mail.ru, Russia's most popular email service, but credentials for other services apparently were also included.Hold discovered the breach when its researchers came across the hacker bragging in an online forum. Though the hacker initially asked Hold for 50 rubles for the initial 10GB stash -- that's equivalent to about 75 cents -- he eventually turned it over to them in exchange for likes and votes for him on social media.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This morning (May 4, 2016), I had the pleasure of being in San Francisco for Microsoft’s “Future of SharePoint” event, which coincided with the general availability date for SharePoint 2016. This is the second time I’ve been in San Francisco for a major SharePoint event. The last time was in 2003, for the launch of SharePoint 2003. It’s amazing how far things have come in the past 13 years! The future of SharePoint is now – and the future is all about you and me – and making it easier to connect and collaborate and get work done in a way that brings the information we need to make key decisions to the places we need it, in the format we need it in, and on the device we are currently using. The future of SharePoint is all about people – and there should be no doubt that Microsoft is continuing to invest in providing great people experiences with SharePoint. While I am super focused on user experiences in SharePoint, and Microsoft has shown users a whole lotta love in the announcements today, developers are going to be pretty happy too – along with the folks focused on security and Continue reading
LAS VEGAS --The growing number of vendors supporting 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair copper cabling demonstrated the interoperability of a variety of new gear at the Interop event here.The NBase-T Alliance showed off an assortment of 2.5 and 5GBase-T products – from switches to NICs -- it says show new applications for NBase-T products, including the ability to aggregate data at 2.5G and 5G Ethernet data across 802.11ac Wave2 access points and improved speed links to network-attached storage devices. The Alliance noted that Dell’Oro Group predicted recently that there will be a doubling of ports shipped every year in the 2.5G and 5G Ethernet market over the next 3 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007, he boldly exclaimed that it was a leapfrog product that was five years ahead of anything else on the market. And though Jobs was sometimes prone to hyperbole, his remarks about the iPhone were spot-on.Looking back, it's fair to say that Android didn't come close to reaching parity with the iPhone until about 2011 or 2012. Suffice it to say, the iPhone was a revolutionary device that completely changed the way the world interacts with technology.Not only did it quite literally put the internet in the pockets of millions of consumers, but it also ushered in the era of mobile apps—yet again changing the way consumers interact with technology. Today, I can use my iPhone to play games, listen to music, write reports, email with friends, pay for items at any number of stores, order food, track my exercise and much, much more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Star Wars Day (May the forth...) pitches this week have been mercifully few, but one that did catch my eye was job site Indeed's revelation that the word "Jedi" has increasingly been showing up in job descriptions since the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted in December.Indeed, which published a blog post today about the history of weird job titles/descriptions, claims to have seen a 328% growth in appearances of "Jedi" either in job titles or descriptions since the movie came out. Indeed
MORE: Cool ways to celebrate Star Wars Day | 4 of the best and 4 of the worst Star Wars video gamesTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here