Microsoft will stop manufacturing Surface 3 by the end of the year, which raises a big question: Will there be a Surface 4?The company has declined to say whether a Surface 4 will ever be released. But Microsoft says it saw strong demand for the Surface 3 tablet PC, so releasing a successor seems like a no-brainer.But the PC market is challenged. Upgrades have slowed down to every five or six years, and tablet shipments -- with the exception of 2-in-1s -- are declining. PC makers are already releasing innovative products that could be viable options to a Surface 3 successor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Even the noise from your PC’s fans could be used to steal the data inside. Researchers in Israel have found a way to do just by hijacking the fans inside and manipulating the sounds they create.The research from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev shows how data could be stolen from “air-gapped” computers, which are not connected to the Internet.These air-gapped computers are isolated and typically contain the most sensitive information. To hack them, attackers typically need to gain physical access and install malware, possibly through a USB stick. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Artificial intelligence is still surrounded by an aura of mystery, and it would be tough to find a better illustration than the story in the news last week about a British grandmother who includes "please" and "thank you" in all her Google searches."Please translate these roman numerals mcmxcviii thank you," read the search request from May Ashworth that ultimately went viral when her grandson tweeted it on Twitter."I thought, well somebody's put it in, so you're thanking them," Ashworth reportedly explained. "I don't know how it works, to be honest. It's all a mystery to me."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Internet of Things platform supplier C3 IoT this week announced two sweeping contracts, one with ENGIE, a huge energy company in Europe, the other with the U.S. Department of State, adding to the eight-year-old company’s roster of big IoT wins.
The Department of State is said to have signed a multi-year deal valued up to $25 million to use C3 IoT’s enterprise application development platform for a global energy management initiative. C3 IoT will enable the Department of State to “gain dynamic, real-time operational insights and efficiencies by analyzing … data from enterprise and extra-prise systems and sensors across 22,000+ Department facilities in 190+ countries,” C3 IoT says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You can't put SSDs on the Raspberry Pi 3, but a competitive board coming soon will have that option.The new MinnowMax Turbot Dual-E board will have an m.2 slot in which SSDs can be inserted. It's being made by ADI Engineering and will be released in the third quarter, according to a message on Twitter.The board's price wasn't immediately available.High-capacity SSD chips up to 512GB can be found on sites like NewEgg. But the MinnowMax board's SSD storage capacity will ultimately depend on the device's hardware specifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. and the European Union have reportedly reached an agreement on the language of a key data transfer pact, including limits on U.S. surveillance.The revamped EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was sent to EU member states overnight, according to a report from Reuters. Privacy Shield would govern how multinational companies handle the private data of EU residents.Member states are expected to vote on the proposal in July, unnamed sources told Reuters. Representatives of the EU and the U.S. Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the reported deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On June 16, just a hair over one week, I started using the Linux terminal. Exclusively.
Up until that point, I'd been a lover of all things command line—my fondness for text based interfaces, and unreasonably old technology, bordering on the legendary. Despite that, I've relied on graphical interfaces for the better part of the last three decades.
I've always told myself that I could, if I wanted to, do all of my computing entirely within a text-based shell—and never leave. With the number of times I've suggested this to myself, you'd almost think I was trying to goad myself into it. Throwing down some serious nerd peer pressure—on myself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. When it comes to network and endpoint security incidents, there's no shortage of products that can detect suspicious activities and send up alerts. However, what there is a shortage of is skilled incident response experts and time to investigate all the alerts. Security operations (SecOps) professionals need better tools and more efficient processes to become more effective.Demisto Inc. is a new company that launched in May to address these challenges. Demisto says it can help Security Operations Centers (SOCs) scale the capabilities of their human resources, improve incident response times, and capture evidence while working to solve problems collaboratively. The Demisto Enterprise platform is an innovative approach that includes enabling collaboration among analysts and intelligent automation using bots and playbooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This bias lighting strip, currently discounted by 54% on Amazon from $49.99 down to just $22.99, reduces eye-strain caused by differences in picture brightness from scene to scene in movies, shows and games, by adding a subtle backlight to your monitor or TV. The LED lights can be changed with up to 20 color selections customizing and setting the mood of your workspace. The strip is easy to install and can be cut to size and plugs directly in the USB port of the TV or monitor. Just Plug-and-play!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Traditional fiber-optic communication sends data using just one light pattern. That’s fine, but it means the amount of bandwidth that a fiber strand can deliver is limited. If you could add more light patterns alongside the initial one, you could increase the bit rate, some scientists say.By bundling more information-containing light arrangements into a fiber, you could theoretically increase bandwidth.And scientists think they might have figured out how to do it. They say they are ready to crack what they call a “bandwidth ceiling.”+ Also on Network World: First light-based chip could signal revolution for fiber networks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the Lenovo Solution Center support tool that is preinstalled on many laptop and desktop PCs. The flaws could allow attackers to take over computers and terminate antivirus processes.Lenovo Solution Center (LSC) allows users to check their system's virus and firewall status, update their Lenovo software, perform backups, check battery health, get registration and warranty information and run hardware tests.The two new vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2016-5249 and CVE-2016-5248 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, were found by security researchers from Trustwave. They affect LSC versions 3.3.002 and earlier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Business executives are able to hold two contradictory thoughts in their heads: Technology is costly, but the internal IT services they use are free. An IT governance process is the way to get those execs to understand IT’s true costs — and opportunities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If you've reviewed tech products for as long as I have, you'll have learned that categories of products have archetypes. These days, for example, laptops are (for the most part) slim black boxes and monitors are thin glass rectangles. Mobile phones, which used to have clamshell designs, are now all metal (or metal-looking) slabs with a glass front. And home wireless routers tend to be small black boxes bristling with more antennas than an NSA surveillance van.The Starry Station wireless router breaks the mold. A white polycarbonate-over-metal triangular prism with a base measuring 7 x 3 in. and standing 6.25 in. high, it has a 3.8-in. LCD touchscreen you can use to see and control the device's operational status. The device retails for $350 (Amazon price - What's this?).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Though deciding between the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 was an agonizing choice for PCWorld editors, customers apparently know what they want: The Surface Pro 3—yes, the older one.AdDuplex, a Windows-specific ad network which compiles data on Windows machines, estimates that an even third of all Surface users are using a Surface Pro 3, a convertible tablet Microsoft phased out when its successor, the Surface Pro 4, began shipping in late 2015. SP4 sales are closing fast, though: AdDuplex said they’re about 30.9 percent of all Surface tablets that it detected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In today's digital world, companies are struggling to find IT professionals with the cutting-edge skills they need to drive innovation and growth. If you're an IT professional looking to land a new role or a professional looking to make a career change, summer's the perfect time to brush up on new skills. And the availability and affordability of online learning has made it easier than ever to add critical hard and soft skills, even those from elite learning institutions like Harvard, MIT and Columbia University, says Anant Agarwal, CEO of online learning provider edX.
"Talking to CIOs and hiring managers, we find that they're struggling to find talent with the needed skills to grow their business and remain competitive -- a prime example of this is in data science and analytics which, as a career, has only evolved in the last few years. Traditional educational institutions can't keep up with that," Agarwal says.
If you're looking to beef up your IT resume, Agarwal suggests focusing on five areas: introduction to computer science; business and management including entrepreneurship; Java programming; data science and analytics; and agile software development.
[ Related story: 10 top-ranked tech-focused MBA programs ]
"These are a great Continue reading
Seagate is targeting drones and robots as it looks to add its storage technologies to new devices.
"There's a huge opportunity there," said Patrick Ferguson, a product manager at Seagate. "I'm really excited about it."
Manufacturers make drones easy to fly, but storage isn't a heavy consideration, Ferguson said.
Robots and drones generate a lot of data, but have limited internal storage to retain all that information. For example, drones with multiple cameras generate a lot of video, but just one CompactFlash or SD card to store all that data may not be enough.
"In a 20 minute flight you're talking hundreds of gigabytes, not tens of gigabytes," Ferguson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the haircut that the sterling-euro exchange rate has taken in the wake of the U.K.'s vote to leave the European Union, the U.K. has suddenly become a low-cost country for companies wishing to host or process the personal information of EU citizens.EU businesses will need to weigh that price cut against the regulatory uncertainty Thursday's vote introduced -- but it turns out that's surprisingly small, at least in the short to medium term.As for U.K. businesses hoping for more relaxed data protection rules in the wake of the referendum vote, they will have to wait -- perhaps for a very long while.That's because many of the rules that the 51.9 percent who voted to leave the EU hoped to escape are, in fact, firmly part of U.K. law, and will only go away if the U.K. parliament votes to repeal them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the statement that IT security has become exponentially more complex over the past five years. It seems every month there’s a new startup that solves a specific security issue but addresses only that one issue.This leads to an increasing number of security vendors causing security solution sprawl. A recent ZK Research survey revealed that large enterprises have an average of 32 security vendors deployed, which is a ridiculously high number. It’s hard enough to build a strategy around two to three vendors, but 32?One startup trying to simplify security is Tempered Networks. I recently spoke with Marc Kaplan, vice president of security architecture for the company, about how Tempered Networks makes network security simpler. Below is our conversation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. court has ruled that the FBI can hack into a computer without a warrant -- a move which is troubling privacy advocates.The criminal case involves a child pornography site, Playpen, that had been accessible through Tor, a browser designed for anonymous web surfing.The FBI, however, managed to take over the site in 2014, and then tracked down and arrested its members by hacking their computers. This allowed law enforcement to secretly collect their IP addresses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. court has ruled that the FBI can hack into a computer without a warrant -- a move which is troubling privacy advocates.
The criminal case involves a child pornography site, Playpen, that had been accessible through Tor, a browser designed for anonymous web surfing.
The FBI, however, managed to take over the site in 2014, and then tracked down and arrested its members by hacking their computers. This allowed law enforcement to secretly collect their IP addresses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here