Amazon is cranking out new products as fast as it can, such as the new Alexa-powered Echo Show device with a screen, but SNL has an even more practical idea.The SNL spoof ad, from the minds of Amazon and AARP, addresses the unique needs of older people unable to quite get the latest gadgets. It even includes Uh Huh mode to deal with those situations where people make a short story longer...
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Monday is going to suck for some folks, those who run old, unsupported Windows systems which are vulnerable to WannaCry ransomware, if they didn’t put in some weekend time applying security updates.In response to the massive global ransomware attack on Friday, Microsoft took the “highly unusual step of providing a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003.” Europol chief Rob Wainwright told the BBC, “Companies need to make sure they have updated their systems and ‘patched where they should’ before staff arrived for work on Monday morning.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Users of old Windows systems can now download a patch to protect them from this week’s massive ransomware attack.In a rare step, Microsoft published a patch for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 8 -- all of them operating systems for which it no longer provides mainstream support.Users can download and find more information about the patches in Microsoft’s blog post about Friday’s attack from the WannaCry ransomware.The ransomware, which has spread globally, has been infecting computers by exploiting a Windows vulnerability involving the Server Message Block protocol, a file-sharing feature.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprises' HP-UX OS has been around for more than 30 years, and users may be looking to move on from the Unix-based OS.Now HPE is offering a way out of the ancient OS using containers, which are small buckets running instances of applications. The containers will be offered with the Linux OS.HPE will provide containers to transition from conventional mainframe-style OSes to new hardware like x86-based Xeon servers. In this case, HPE is trying to get users to transition from Itanium chips.Intel started shipping its last Itanium 9700 chips -- codenamed Kittson -- on Thursday. Correspondingly, HPE announced new Integrity i6 servers with the new chips. But the future of HP-UX servers is uncertain because Intel has no new Itanium chips beyond Kittson.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sam Ramji, who joined Google about six months ago as VP of Product Management for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), has deep roots in open source: He was the founding CEO of Cloud Foundry Foundation and he designed and led Microsoft's open source strategy. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix sat down with Ramji at the recent Red Hat Summit in Boston to discuss how Google is trying to differentiate its cloud service. Google
Sam Ramji, VP of Product Management for Google Cloud Platform (GCP)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On May 11, 1997, a computer showed that it could outclass a human in that most human of pursuits: playing a game. The human was World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, and the computer was IBM's Deep Blue, which had begun life at Carnegie Mellon University as a system called ChipTest.One of Deep Blue's creators, Murray Campbell, talked to the IDG News Service about the other things computers have learned to do as well as, or better than, humans, and what that means for our future. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.IDGNS: Is it true that you and Deep Blue joined IBM at the same time?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nearly thirty different Hewlett-Packard Windows PC models may be recording every keystroke their owners make and storing them in a human-readable file accessible to any user on the PC. Oh, boy.Switzerland-based security company Modzero recently discovered a keylogger present in an audio program in HP PCs called MicTray. Modzero reported it on their blog early Thursday morning.You can also find a complete list of affected HP PC models in the company's security advisory. Affected models include PCs from the HP Elitebook 800 series, HP ProBook 600 and 400 series', the EliteBook Folio G1, and others. The program has existed on HP PCs since at least late 2015, Modzero says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Devops platform provider Puppet has introduced its Puppet Cloud Discovery service for learning what, exactly, users have running in the cloud and their impact.As Puppet's first foray into SaaS, the service offers visibility into cloud workloads, providing the same type of introspection as the on-premise Puppet Enterprise platform. For example, it can tell users if they might have vulnerabilities because they're running an outdated version of OpenSSL, or it could inform users which virtual machines need to migrated when moving from Windows Server 2012 to 2016.[ Download the Deep Dive: Monitoring in the age of devops. | Get a digest of the day's top tech stories in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ]
Cloud Discovery will debut in a preview form on the Amazon Web Services cloud later this month; plans call for it to eventually be supported on other cloud platforms as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Saying bimodal IT is dead may be a tad premature. But as digital disruption continues to sweep across sectors -- driven by companies such as Amazon.com, Uber and Airbnb -- two-speed IT is beginning to look and feel antiquated. Some CIOs and consultants argue that the operating model hinders innovation at a time when companies must accelerate their digital initiatives.Introduced by Gartner in 2014, bimodal IT splits technology departments into two groups: a stable mode (Mode 1) where the bulk of technology is carefully cultivated and refined and a second mode (Mode 2) that espouses experimentation, free-thinking and agility. Forking IT into separate tracks made sense a few years ago, as many CIOs worked to plug gaps in talent, process and technology, Forrester Research analyst Matthew Guarini tells CIO.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Users of Asus RT-N and RT-AC series routers should install the latest firmware updates released for their models because they address vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to hijack router settings.The flaws were discovered by researchers from security consultancy outfit Nightwatch Cybersecurity and leave many Asus router models exposed to cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.CSRF is an attack technique that involves hijacking a user's browser when visiting a specially crafted website and forcing it to send unauthorized requests to a different website -- or in this case, the router web-based administration interface accessible over the local area network (LAN).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This week, SD-WAN vendor Aryaka released its “2017 State of the WAN Report,” which summarizes a global study conducted by the vendor that looks at WAN trends across a number of verticals and across every region of the globe for 2016.The study was conducted by aggregating data from Aryaka’s customer base. The global SD-WAN vendor has analyzed connectivity to and from over 5,000 locations around the world across more than 550 enterprise organizations. The network data was rolled up and analyzed to see what’s happening on the enterprise WAN.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day
Aryaka also provided a comparison with last year’s data set, which provides insight into how things have changed over the past 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Internet of Things applications have diverse connectivity requirements in terms of range, data throughput, energy efficiency and device cost. WiFi is often an obvious choice because in-building WiFi coverage is almost ubiquitous, but it is not always the appropriate choice. This article examines the role WiFi can play and two emerging IEEE standards, 802.11ah and 802.11ax.Data transfer requirements for IoT vary from small, intermittent payloads like utility meters to large amounts of continuous data such as real-time video surveillance. Range requirements can span from very short distances for wearables to several kilometers for weather and agriculture applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The Steam Link allows existing Steam gamers to expand the range of their current gaming set up via their home network. Just connect your Steam PC or Steam Machine to your home network, plug into a TV, and stream your games to the Link at 1080p. It's a #1 best seller on Amazon where it averages 4 out of 5 stars from 800 people, and its typical list price of $50 has been discounted to $20.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Is it possible that a writer at The Onion has previously toiled as a network engineer … or systems administrator? He or she at least did their homework to produce a “story” headlined: “Network Engineer Would Be Systems Manager If He Could Do It All Over Again.”From the “story.”
Reflecting wistfully on what he might have made of himself had he chosen a different profession, Dynatrend Solutions network engineer Alan Miller said Wednesday that he would be a systems manager if he had the chance to go back and do it all over again.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprises are changing their cybersecurity technology procurement habits and consolidating the number of cybersecurity vendors they do business with and purchasing security products designed for integration, according to ESG research. Eventually, CISOs will buy more products from fewer vendors, leading to the rise of a few enterprise-class cybersecurity technology vendors that dominate the space. These vendors will offer tightly integrated cybersecurity technology architectures that span across applications, host systems, networks and cloud-based assets, offering capabilities for threat analysis/investigations, as well as prevention, detection and response.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's the end of the line for Intel's Itanium chip, a troubled processor family that spawned many product delays and bad blood between HP and Oracle.Intel on Thursday started shipping its latest Itanium 9700 chip, code-named Kittson, in volume. It's the last of the Itanium chips, which first appeared in early 2001.Beyond Kittson, there will be no more chips coming from the Itanium family, an Intel spokesman said in an email. That ends a tumultuous, 16-year journey for Itanium, which Intel once envisioned as a replacement for x86 chips in 64-bit PCs and servers.Support for Itanium has dwindled over the past decade, which has led to its gradual death. Server makers stopped offering hardware, software development stalled, and Intel has been openly asking customers to switch to x86-based Xeon chips.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A conservative group took credit for a barrage of anti-net neutrality comments posted on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's website this week, but it denied generating fake activism.The Center for Individual Freedom said it did not use a bot to generate comments after news reports raised questions about the legitimacy of the posts. Between Monday and early Wednesday afternoon, the FCC had received more than 128,000 comments duplicating the language provided by CFIF.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fraud rates for online ads are scary, with advertisers losing billions of dollars each year.Last week, Pixalate released a report showing that 35 percent of U.S. desktop ad impressions sold through programmatic advertising networks are fraudulent. Programmatic ads are those purchased through online networks, often through automatic bidding systems, instead of directly from individual publishers.U.S. advertisers spent more $25 billion on programmatic online ads last year, meaning that about $8 billion is lost to fraud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some supporters of a U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to repeal its recent net neutrality rules have apparently resorted to dirty tricks.An apparent bot-generated campaign has posted more than 83,400 comments on the FCC's website supporting the agency's plan to gut its own net neutrality rules.A handful of people whose names are on the bot-generated comments have denied making the comments, according to a report by ZDNet. The 83,400 comments, filed to the FCC's comment system between Monday and Wednesday, all contain the same text, reading in part:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Tuesday updates for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge force those browsers to flag SSL/TLS certificates signed with the aging SHA-1 hashing function as insecure. The move follows similar actions by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox earlier this year.Browser vendors and certificate authorities have been engaged in a coordinated effort to phase out the use of SHA-1 certificates on the web for the past few years, because the hashing function no longer provides sufficient security against spoofing.SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) dates back to 1995 and has been known to be vulnerable to theoretical attacks since 2005. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has banned the use of SHA-1 by U.S. federal agencies since 2010, and digital certificate authorities have not been allowed to issue SHA-1-signed certificates since Jan. 1, 2016, although some exemptions have been made -- for example, for outdated payment terminals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here