Despite a turbulent past, Windows PCs with ARM are making a grand return later this year, but only with Qualcomm chips.
Another big ARM chipmaker, MediaTek, is sitting out the opportunity to put its ARM-based chips in Windows PCs because the company sees it as a limited opportunity.
MediaTek's chips are already used in Chromebooks, but ARM has had a turbulent history with Windows. That's another reason for the company to stay out.
ARM getting into PCs is like Intel trying to get into smartphones -- it's a risky proposition, said Finbarr Moynihan, general manager of sales at MediaTek.
PCs are dominated by x86 chips from companies like Intel and AMD. But Intel failed in its attempt to unseat a dominant ARM in smartphones, and ultimately quit making chips for handsets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We have all watched a major cultural shift in the world of IT, from optimizing the use of the computer to optimizing the use of the developer and user.This move makes a great deal of sense. At one time, the computer, its memory and its storage were the biggest costs of supporting an IT solution. Over time, that changed. The drastic improvement in processing power and memory capacity, combined with amazing decreases in system and component prices, changed the ratio so that people, communications and power were all more costly than the machines and their components themselves.These factors, along with users' desire for graphical user interfaces, changed the world of IT. It is not really clear, however, if all of the changes were beneficial.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the past few weeks attackers have been probing networks for switches that can potentially be hijacked using the Cisco Smart Install (SMI) protocol. Researchers from Cisco's Talos team have now released a tool that allows network owners to discover devices that might be vulnerable to such attacks.The Cisco SMI protocol is used for so-called zero-touch deployment of new devices, primarily access layer switches running Cisco IOS or IOS XE software. The protocol allows newly installed switches to automatically download their configuration via SMI from an existing switch or router configured as an integrated branch director (IBD).The director can copy the client's startup-config file or replace it with a custom one, can load a particular IOS image on the client and can execute high-privilege configuration mode commands on it. Because the SMI protocol does not support any authorization or authentication mechanism by default, attackers can potentially hijack SMI-enabled devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nearly a year after it bought Jasper for $1.4 billion, Cisco this week strengthened the company’s Internet of Things reach by adding support for an emerging low-power WAN technology and expanding its partner programs further into automotive and healthcare.
Cisco bought Jasper and its Control Center platform to firmly establish a hold in the IoT world. And indeed, it has. CEO Chuck Robbins noted in Cisco’s recent earnings call that “Jasper connects more than 40 million devices including over 12 million connected vehicles, and we're adding more than 1.5 million new devices per month. The number of enterprise customers utilizing data from the Jasper platform has grown from 4,000 a year ago to more than 9,000 this quarter,” Robbins said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I miss the Old Internet.Call me a fuddy-duddy. Call me nostalgic for ye olden days. But I’ll say it right now, and I’ll stand by it: The internet was (in almost every way) better 15-plus years ago than it is today. And I’m not talking about just “the World Wide Web” either. All of it. It’s getting downright crummy. Let’s walk this through step by step. System resource usage
If you go to CNN.com today, the front page of their website will take up just shy of 100 MB of RAM while it is loaded. By comparison, the same page from the year 2000 takes literally 1/10th that (thanks Archive.org). CPU usage is even worse. The idle CNN.com from the year 2000 just sits there. Happily eating just about 0% of even the slowest CPUs. Today’s version gobbles up a good 10% of the i7 sitting in front of me—while sitting idle. For a single page. Displaying a few news headlines. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Work more efficiently while on the go. Compact, versatile, durable and light, this new keyboard from iClever folds on two innovative hinges that double as grips to keep your board steady, while the grips on each end keep it from sliding around. It pairs quickly with up to 3 devices, switching with the push of a button, and features a high sensitivity touchpad for mouse functionality. When folded, it takes up roughly the same space as a smartphone. Compatible with not only IOS and Android, but also supports Windows/Mac/Linux-based tablets, Blackberry, Playstation, WebOS, and Sybian. Its list price is $79.99, but you can buy it right now on Amazon for 38% off, or just $49.99. See the discounted iClever folding keyboard on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
No one wants to learn that they have been hacked; if a company is not doing so well, then it might really be scared after it is breached. But burying your head in sand and hoping it will all go away if you ignore it for long enough is simply not going to make the breach disappear. In the case of CloudPets, owned by SpiralToys, it wasn’t the cute and huggable smart stuffed toys hackers were hugging, but the data.
Here it is:- Toy captured kids voices- Data exposed via MongoDB- 2.2m recordings- DB ransom'd- And much more...https://t.co/HvePnZleXRTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Portal router is a new class of Wi-Fi router, utilizing frequency bands not seen in other Wi-Fi products, whether a more traditional Wi-Fi router or some of the newer Wi-Fi mesh products. It’s still a dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) router, but includes additional spectrum within the 5GHz space (designated as part of the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure).The Portal router has the permission of the FCC to share some of the spectrum normally reserved for radar (U-NII-2 and U-NII-23). This gives Portal 15 extra channels to work with, in the frequency ranges from 5.260 to 5.700 GHz, where other routers in the U-NII-1 and UNII-3 space can operate across 9 channels in the 5.180-5.240 GHz range and 5.745-5.825 range. Because those ranges are also unlicensed, Portal can make use of those too, so in essence you would get 24 channels across the entire 5.180 through 5.825 GHz range.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Seven billion connected devices and counting—and we are only at the threshold of the massive, new class of connected devices known as the Internet of Things (IoT).Devices, such as sensors, remote robots and everyday objects, are rapidly becoming connected to expand the universe of IoT and to provide valuable data. In a network-centric world, the more devices that are connected in aggregate, the more value is created for the whole. And this value scales exponentially. It’s what’s called a network effect, and it can bring boundless possibilities for value and wealth creation in the next five years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese smartphone maker Meizu claims its Super mCharge technology can recharge batteries in as little as 20 minutes.To prove its point, the company demonstrated the superfast charging capabilities during a press conference on the show floor of Mobile World Congress, which is being held in Barcelona.The charging speed is even faster than Qualcomm's recently introduced Quick Charge 4.0, which "is engineered to charge a typical smartphone from zero to 50 percent in about 15 minutes or less," the chip maker claimed in a statement.The charging demonstration was via a USB Type-C port, and the smartphone carried a 3,000-milliamp hour battery, which is the capacity range in newer smartphones. The trick is offloading some of the charging pressure off the battery to the USB cable, which can carry a maximum of 160 watts of power.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While Dell sold off many software assets as part of the 2016 mega merger with EMC that created Dell Technologies, it kept Dell Boomi as a critical component for helping IT shops build and run hybrid clouds. Dell Boomi offers integration platform as a service (iPaaS) – a set of cloud-based capabilities for connecting everything from SaaS apps to EDI and internet of things applications. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Mobile World Congress takes place this week, so it’s time again for carrier and vendors to serve up bold claims about what 5G cellular will do for users -- this time, with a dash of realism.“5G is not ready yet,” T-Mobile USA’s CTO Neville Ray said Monday morning. “It’s maturing quickly, but it’s not real today, and I can’t go and deploy a 5G radio to serve my customers with and give them a handset.”Like most other carriers, T-Mobile is testing pre-standard 5G technology, and Ray is enthusiastic about the next generation in the long term. But he reminded the audience that some parts of 5G, like using ultra-high frequencies to reach mobile devices, still face big technical challenges and 4G will still be around for years after the first big 5G rollouts happen around 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The White House plans to substantially hike defense spending, but it's going to cut other agency budgets with a big axe. It is nail-biting time for people who develop supercomputers and do other scientific work that relies on federal R&D funding.The White House said today it will increase defense spending, currently at about $600 billion, by $54 billion or 9%. But most other agencies, with the exception of "security agencies," will see budget reductions, it said at a briefing for reporters on Monday.This means the cuts will fall heavily on agencies such as the Department of Energy, which funds exascale supercomputing development. Another target may be the National Science Foundation, a major funder of basic scientific research. Overall, the cuts will be focused on civilian agencies because there isn't a lot of room to cut otherwise. The Trump administration is expected to leave Medicare and Social Security alone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not always easy to find reliable Wi-Fi on the go, especially if you're looking for a secure, private connection. Public Wi-Fi networks can leave you vulnerable to hackers and create privacy issues if you're viewing sensitive data. But if you have an Android smartphone in your pocket, you're just a few steps away from having a private, personal Wi-Fi hotspot.All smartphones running Android 2.2 or later have built-in hotspot capabilities, but some carriers might limit access to the feature depending on your wireless plan. Also, your smartphone might run a slightly different version of Android depending on your device --few devices carry stock Android, instead applying a proprietary interface, like Samsung TouchWiz. So some of these steps might look slightly different on your device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On March 1, new regulations go into effect in New York State, requiring that all regulated financial services institutions have a cybersecurity program in place, appoint a Chief Information Security Officer, and monitor the cybersecurity policies of their business partners.It might seem a little sudden, since the regulations were only finalized a month ago. But it's actually not as bad as it sounds."There's a transitional period," said Brad Keller, senior director of third party strategy at Prevalent. "Everyone has six months to be in compliance."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While plenty of controversy has surrounded President Donald Trump’s fledgling administration, it hasn’t yet faced a major crisis.But according to Forrester Research, aside from any political or military events, the new president will face a cyber crisis sometime within his first 100 days.The company made the prediction last fall, prior to the election, as part of its “Predictions 2017” brief, so it didn’t specifically focus on either Trump or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ThreateningImage by ThinkstockCybersecurity is a heroic task. Every day, businesses and organizations face an onslaught of attacks from malicious actors across the globe. As part of your organization’s cybersecurity efforts, it is your job to not just catch these attacks as they happen, but try to mitigate threats and prevent them before anything occurs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BARCELONA -- Mobile payments made in different parts of the globe were an important theme at Mobile World Congress this week, with leaders Visa and Mastercard announcing new services.Visa on Monday announced one of the most unusual approaches, one that relies primarily on older QR code technology through its mVisa payment service. It went live Monday for merchants and customers in India, Kenya and Rwanda and will soon be available in Egypt, Pakistan and a few other developing countries.The service allows merchants and consumers to make payments via a mobile phone and a QR code kept at each merchant's store location. Visa said the flexible nature of QR codes means that merchants do not need to invest in costly point-of-sale infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Engineers at South Korea's SK Telecom have developed a tiny chip that could help secure communications on a myriad of portable electronics and IOT devices.The chip is just 5 millimeters square -- smaller than a fingernail -- and is capable of generating mathematically provable random numbers. Such numbers are the basis for highly-secure encryption systems and producing them in such a small package hasn't been possible until now.The chip, on show at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, could be in sample production as early as March this year and will cost a few dollars once in commercial production, said Sean Kwak, director at SK Telecom's quantum technology lab.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Space X today said two unnamed private citizens have paid the company a “significant deposit” to fly them to the moon and back to Earth.“We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results,” Space X stated.Space X said the mission will take place after the space company launches its unmanned Dragon (Version 2) spacecraft to the International Space Station later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here