Many web browsers have some variation of “private” browsing mode. In that mode, websites shouldn't be able to read cookies stored on your computer, nor should they be able to place permanent cookies onto your computer. (They think they can place cookies, but those cookies are deleted at the end of the session.)Normally, you have two ways to use those modes:
Deliberately decide to start a private session. On Firefox for the Mac, it’s File -> New Private Window. Ditto for Safari for the Mac. In Chrome for the Mac, it’s File -> New Incognito Window. The process is similar for Windows, and it is somewhat different on phones and tablets. The problem is that if you click a link in, say, an email, it will open in a regular, non-private window.
Set a default that every browser session will be private/incognito. (The method varies widely based on browser and operating system.) This method will handle external link requests by opening them in private/incognito mode. But since everything else will open that way too, you’ll have to manually log into every website you visit. That is a real nuisance. (You can set browsers to block cookies, but that’s bigger nuisance because Continue reading
Microsoft has published the source code for its Project Malmo, allowing anyone to conduct artificial intelligence experiments in the world of Minecraft with a little programming.It unveiled the project, then known as AIX, back in March, but at the time only a few academics had access to the code. On Thursday the company made good on its promise to open up the source code by publishing it on Github.Minecraft, the blocky world-building game that Microsoft paid US$2.5 billion for two years ago, is an ideal place to test how artificial intelligences will interact with one another and with humans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An offer you can refuseThe clock is ticking, folks. If you want to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, you only have until July 29, 2016 to do so. And most people should! Windows 10 is the best Windows yet, chock full of handy new features, sleek under-the-hood improvements, and headache-killing extras.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How the recently announced “spin-merger” between HPE’s spun-off enterprise services unit and CSC to create a $26 billion global services giant (the third largest in the U.S) will actually shake out once its completed next spring is uncertain. What is clear is that the two service businesses had been struggling for some time.[ Related: HPE to spin out its huge services business, merge it with CSC ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two decades ago, the core was the place to be in campus networking. The networking battles of the 1990s concluded with the edge specialists humbled and assimilated by core product lines. Control the core, we declared, and the edge will fall into place.But now the edge is fruitful, and the core is sterile—and for two reasons. First, the wireless interface adds mobility and complexity to the edge. Second, the new architectures of software-defined networking (SDN) and IoT are based on centralized models that take sensed information, manipulate a software representation of the network, then send control signals back to network nodes. Nodes are peers under the controller. Their importance is based on the quantity and quality of the information they can report, as well as the sophistication of the control they can apply.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
European Union officials are set to give final approval to a new EU-U.S. data transfer agreement early next week, after member states gave their approval to an updated text on Friday.Privacy Shield is intended to replace the Safe Harbor Agreement as a means to legalize the transfer of EU citizens' personal information to the U.S. while still respecting EU privacy laws.A new deal is needed because the Court of Justice of the EU invalidated the Safe Harbor Agreement last October, concerned that it provided Europeans with insufficient protection from state surveillance when companies exported their personal data to the U.S. for processing.The first draft of Privacy Shield agreement presented by the European Commission in January lacked key assurances from U.S. officials on the same matters that had concerned the CJEU about Safe Harbor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sensors, such as accelerometers, found in wearable devices can be used to reverse engineer a human hand’s movements and trajectories while at an ATM, thus giving away the PIN code, researchers say.The findings bring into question the fundamental security of smartwatches.Malware installs on devices might be one way the newly discovered hack could work, the scientists say. The software would wait for a mark to use a secure system, such as a keypad-controlled enterprise server, for example, and then collect data from the gyroscope, magnometer, accelerometer and other sensors. (Devices use those sensors to measure fitness and so on.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While channel surfing recently I landed on a reality TV show where people bid on abandoned homes without knowing what’s inside. Occasionally, something of true value is found—maybe even something that might make the new owners wealthy. One might say that something like this happened when Avaya acquired Nortel Enterprise Solutions (NES) in 2009.Comparatively, Avaya inherited rooms upon rooms where old Aunt Norty had stashed the detritus of her life. There were, however, many treasures. One find, known today as the company’s SDN Fx™ Architecture, might be compared to a Picasso found stashed away in the attic. That’s the good news.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The following email subject lines appeared in my inbox on Wednesday just a couple of hours apart:* Walmart Pay Now Available in all Walmart Stores Nationwide (from Walmart PR)* Map of Walmart store closings (from a market research firm making a larger point about rapid changes in retail and consumer packaged goods markets) My first thought, upon noticing the juxtaposition, was well, having 154 fewer stores in the US this year probably made it easier for Walmart to roll out its mobile payment app nationwide.MORE: 7 reasons mobile payments still aren't mainstreamTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kitten videos are harmless, right? Except when they take over your phone.
Researchers have found something new to worry about on the internet. It turns out that a muffled voice hidden in an innocuous YouTube video could issue commands to a nearby smartphone without you even knowing it.
The researchers describe the threat in a research paper to be presented next month at the USENIX Security Symposium in Austin, Texas. They also demonstrate it in this video.
Voice recognition has taken off quickly on phones, thanks to services like Google Now and Apple's Siri, but voice software can also make it easier to hack devices, warned Micah Sherr, a Georgetown University professor and one of the paper’s authors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Thieves armed with laptops are hacking into electronic ignitions of late-model cars to steal the vehicles. Police and insurers sounded the warning to raise awareness about the latest car-theft trend.The Houston Police Department pointed at surveillance footage that shows two suspects, one of whom used a laptop, before stealing a 2010 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The first suspect opened the Jeep’s hood to reportedly cut the alarm. The footage below took place about 10 minutes later when a second suspect jimmied the door open, climbed inside and then did something with a laptop before stealing the Jeep.
“If you are going to hot-wire a car, you don’t bring along a laptop,” Houston Police Department Officer James Woods told the Wall Street Journal. “We don’t know what he is exactly doing with the laptop, but my guess is he is tapping into the car’s computer and marrying it with a key he may already have with him so he can start the car.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers have identified a new Mac backdoor program that's designed to steal credentials stored in the OS-encrypted keychain and give attackers control over the system.
Dubbed OSX/Keydnap by researchers from antivirus vendor ESET, this is the second backdoor program targeting Macs found by antivirus firms in the past few days.
It's not clear how Keydnap is distributed, but it arrives on computers in the form of a zip archive. Inside there's an executable file with an apparently benign extension such as .txt or .jpg that actually has a space character at the end. The file also has an icon indicating an image or text file.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner is leaving after 11 years in the role. He won't be replaced.Employees learned of the move Thursday in an email message from CEO Satya Nadella, in which he outlined his plans for reorganizing the company's senior leadership team.Nadella highlighted the importance of having "one feedback loop" across the company to reinforce customer value and satisfaction. To achieve this, he said, he will more deeply integrate the sales, marketing and services group with the rest of the company, under a single senior leadership team.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We’re obsessed with our phones, a new study has found. The heaviest smartphone users click, tap or swipe on their phone 5,427 times a day, according to researcher Dscout.That’s the top 10 percent of phone users, so one would expect it to be excessive. However, the rest of us still touch the addictive things 2,617 times a day on average. No small number.+ Also on Network World: Time for digital detox? Searching for Wi-Fi becomes normal vacation behavior +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A recently discovered vulnerability in a D-Link network camera that allows attackers to remotely take over the device also exists in more than 120 other D-Link products.The vulnerability was initially discovered a month ago by researchers from security start-up firm Senrio in D-Link DCS-930L, a Wi-Fi enabled camera that can be controlled remotely through a smartphone app.The flaw, a stack overflow, is located in a firmware service called dcp, which listens to commands on port 5978. Attackers can trigger the overflow by sending specifically crafted commands and then can execute rogue code on the system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Farming is difficult. Farming outside the power grid is close to impossible.For many electric utilities, it’s hard to justify the investment needed to extend the power grid to remote farms. Cellular providers also prefer to build cell towers where there are many customers. On top of that, farmers have little purchasing power individually, making it hard for them to negotiate power and coverage from large utilities and cellular providers.The power of cooperatives
Farmers strengthen their bargaining power by forming cooperatives. This enables them to negotiate for more services and better prices. Cooperatives are businesses-owned and controlled by the people who use them—not shareholders. There are nearly 3,000 farmer cooperatives in the U.S. owned by a million farmers and ranchers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The San Francisco Bay Area added 120,500 tech jobs in the last five years, for a growth rate of 61.5% percent. Major U.S. cities, generally, all saw double-digit growth in tech employment, according to a new report.There is a fair chance that good number of San Francisco's tech workers came from the Boston area, according this study, 2016 Scoring Tech Talent by CBRE, a real estate services firm.INSIDER 12 habits of successful tech CEO
This report puts the nation's tech population at 4.8 million, and says tech employment has grown by about 1 million over the last five years. Of this total, 37% work for tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple. The balance is made up of people employed outside the tech sector, in industries such as banking and healthcare.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Antivirus vendor Avast Software has agreed to buy rival AVG Technologies for US$1.3 billion in cash.The deal will give Avast access to over 400 million "endpoints," or devices running its and AVG's software, 160 million of them phones or tablets, the company said Tuesday.Avast hopes the deal will make the combined company more efficient, as well as allowing it to take advantage of new growth opportunities such as securing the internet of things."This combination is great for our users. We will have over 250 million PC/Mac users enabling us to gather even more threat data to improve the protection to our users," Avast CEO Vincent Stickler wrote on the company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When David Bray arrived in 2013 to lead IT at the Federal Communications Commission, he found a department in a certain amount of disarray.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Wide awakeImage by Flickr/ Alyssa L. MillerThe cloud is now a mainstream IT platform. Through its unlimited economies of scale and its ability to deliver IT resources dynamically whenever users need them, the cloud’s popularity permeates through businesses of all sizes and industries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here