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Category Archives for "Networking"

Cortana gets IoT integration, support for third-party skills

Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant is getting a lot smarter. On Tuesday, the company announced a set of developer tools aimed at bringing it into the internet of things, and adding support for developers to build new functionality for it.The makers of IoT devices like speakers and cars will be able to use a Microsoft software development kit to integrate Cortana into their products. In addition, developers will be able to build custom integrations that add capabilities to Microsoft’s virtual assistant.Microsoft is also launching a new service designed to help users simplify the process of scheduling meetings. Cortana will help find openings on a user’s calendar and work with meeting participants to find a time that works for everyone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s taking Brillo into smart homes with Android Things

Android is headed to the internet of things in the form of Android Things, an operating system that grew out of Project Brillo and will be able to get updates directly from Google.With the home IoT industry still emerging from the hobbyist realm to mass market, Android’s traction in the smartphone realm could make it a popular platform for devices like lights, locks, thermostats, and household appliances that consumers want to manage through their phones.On Tuesday, Google announced a developer preview of Android Things, which will be able to run on the Raspberry Pi 3, Intel Edison, and NXP Pico hardware platforms. It will be easy for developers to scale their prototypes up to large production runs using custom versions of those boards, Google says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s taking Brillo into smart homes with Android Things

Android is headed to the internet of things in the form of Android Things, an operating system that grew out of Project Brillo and will be able to get updates directly from Google. With the home IoT industry still emerging from the hobbyist realm to mass market, Android’s traction in the smartphone realm could make it a popular platform for devices like lights, locks, thermostats, and household appliances that consumers want to manage through their phones. On Tuesday, Google announced a developer preview of Android Things, which will be able to run on the Raspberry Pi 3, Intel Edison, and NXP Pico hardware platforms. It will be easy for developers to scale their prototypes up to large production runs using custom versions of those boards, Google says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 recovery environments for tricky Windows 10 repairs

If you work with Windows systems, especially on the client side, you’ll occasionally need to bring an inoperable system back to life. The causes of this lamentable system state are as varied as the symptoms, which can range from an inability to boot Windows to a non-functional keyboard or display (hard to do anything in Windows without input or output). Despite all the many potential causes and symptoms, the situation remains the same: For whatever reason, a Windows system won’t start up and run as it should.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

The Ring Stick Up Cam. Don’t bother.

Just over a year ago I reviewed the Ring ($199), a security camera that replaces your conventional doorbell and lets you not only see who’s ringing your doorbell but also talk with them. The Ring doorbell provides movement detection with optional cloud video recording for a monthly fee ($3 per month).While I liked the product conceptually, the startup lag (the time between detecting movement and when recording begins, usually a delay of a few seconds) is long enough that fast moving people like the Fedex guy can come and go before the device starts recording and the so-so video quality led me to give it a Gearhead rating of 3.5 out of 5.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Ring Stick Up Cam. Don’t bother.

Just over a year ago I reviewed the Ring ($199), a security camera that replaces your conventional doorbell and lets you not only see who’s ringing your doorbell but also talk with them. The Ring doorbell provides movement detection with optional cloud video recording for a monthly fee ($3 per month).While I liked the product conceptually, the startup lag (the time between detecting movement and when recording begins, usually a delay of a few seconds) is long enough that fast moving people like the Fedex guy can come and go before the device starts recording and the so-so video quality led me to give it a Gearhead rating of 3.5 out of 5.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Financial regulators use AWS’s cloud to analyze 75 billion trades daily

About three years ago the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) began plotting a migration to Amazon’s cloud. Most companies when they do so target low-hanging fruit: Applications that can be relatively easily lifted and shifted to the cloud.Not FINRA. “We started with the migration of our most critical systems to AWS,” explains Steve Randich, executive vice president and CIO of FINRA, and a former CIO of the NASDAQ stock exchange and Citibank. “We moved our most mission critical, data-intensive services first.” Randich called them FINRA’s “crown jewels.”+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: Amazon’s biggest re:Invent announcements | Inside Bank of America’s IT transformation +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

13% off Fitbit Charge 2 Heart Rate + Fitness Wristband – Deal Alert

Make every beat count with Fitbit Charge 2, the all-new heart rate and fitness wristband built for all-day, workouts and beyond. PurePulse continuous heart rate makes it easy to maximize workouts, better track calorie burn and get a snapshot of your cardio fitness level, while all-day activity and auto sleep tracking, lets you see how your whole routine adds up. Record your workouts with multi-sport modes to see real-time workout stats on screen, or rely on SmartTrack to automatically record select exercises for you. The large OLED display helps you stay connected with call, text and calendar alerts, stay active with Reminders to Move, and find moments of calm with personalized guided breathing sessions. Plus, you can find a look that fits your style with customizable clock faces and interchangeable bands. With more advanced features in a sleeker package, it's the motivation you need to push yourself further-every step, every beat, every day. The Charge 2 is a #1 Amazon best seller with over 3,800 ratings averaging 4.3 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews). Its typical list price is $149.95, but it's currently available on Amazon at the discounted price of $129.95.To read Continue reading

Microsoft’s new service turns FAQs into bots

Finding customer service help online can be a pain. Filtering through a knowledge base to find the right answer to your question can be an exercise in fighting with nested frequently asked questions documents.Microsoft is aiming to help by making it easier for companies to create intelligent bots that can answer common questions.The QnA Maker, launched in beta on Tuesday, will let users train an automated conversation partner on existing frequently-asked-questions content. After that information is fed in, the service will create a bot that will respond to customer questions with the content from the knowledge base.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dec. 2016 Patch Tuesday: Microsoft releases 12 security bulletins, 6 rated critical

For the last Patch Tuesday of 2016, Microsoft issued 12 security bulletins, half of which are rated critical due to remote code execution vulnerabilities. Get ready for restarts. Please do not delay deploying patches since three do address vulnerabilities which had been publicly disclosed.Rated criticalMS16-144 pertains to patching a plethora of bugs in Internet Explorer: two scripting engine memory corruption vulnerabilities, two memory corruption vulnerabilities, a security feature bypass bug, and two information disclosure flaws and one Windows hyperlink object library information disclosure vulnerability.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dec. 2016 Patch Tuesday: Microsoft releases 12 security bulletins, 6 rated critical

For the last Patch Tuesday of 2016, Microsoft issued 12 security bulletins, half of which are rated critical due to remote code execution vulnerabilities. Get ready for restarts. Please do not delay deploying patches since three do address vulnerabilities which had been publicly disclosed.Rated criticalMS16-144 pertains to patching a plethora of bugs in Internet Explorer: two scripting engine memory corruption vulnerabilities, two memory corruption vulnerabilities, a security feature bypass bug, and two information disclosure flaws and one Windows hyperlink object library information disclosure vulnerability.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WIth Apple CEO Tim Cook on board, MIT pulls off first 2017 commencement speaker coup

MIT, which not surprisingly has a good track record of securing techie leaders for its commencement speakers, has signed on Apple CEO Tim Cook to do the honors on June 9, 2017.It will mark the first time one of Apple's leaders delivers a commencement address at MIT. Past MIT speakers from the technology field have included United States CTO Megan Smith (2015), Dropbosx CEO Drew Houston (2013) and Digital Equipment Corp. Founder Ken Olsen (1987).Cook in 2015, as George Washington University's commencement speaker, told grads to ignore the cynics and change the world like Steve Jobs did (see Cook's GW commencement speech transcript).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IPv6, DHCP, and Unintended Consequences

I ran into an interesting paper on the wide variety of options for assigning addresses, and providing DNS information, in IPv6, over at ERNW. As always, with this sort of thing, it started me thinking about the power of unintended consequences, particularly in the world of standardization. The authors of this paper noticed there are a lot of different options available in the realm of assigning addresses, and providing DNS information, through IPv6.

Alongside these various options, there are a number of different flags that are supposed to tell the host which of these options should, and which shouldn’t, be used, prioritized, etc. The problem is, of course, that many of these flags, and many of the options, are, well, optional, which means they may or may not be implemented across different versions of code and vendor products. Hence, combining various flags with various bits of information can have a seemingly random impact on the IPv6 addresses and DNS information different hosts actually use. Perhaps the most illustrative chart is this one—

Each operating system tested seems to act somewhat differently when presented with all possible flags, and all possible sources of information. As the paper notes, this can cause Continue reading

Just how slow is government IT?

Almost all of the 300 federal government workers who responded to a recent survey by application performance management vendor Riverbed said slow IT issues impact their jobs.The results shine a startling light on inefficiencies in the federal government stemming from a lack of investment in new technologies, vendor Riverbed says.+ MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Federal cyber incidents grew an astounding 1,300% between '06 and '15 +The survey asked workers, most of whom are supervisors at more than 30 civilian and defense government agencies, what their greatest frustrations are in IT operations and what the impact of those problems is.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook helps companies detect rogue SSL certificates for domains

Facebook has launched a tool that allows domain name owners to discover TLS/SSL certificates that were issued without their knowledge.The tool uses data collected from the many Certificate Transparency logs that are publicly accessible. Certificate Transparency (CT) is a new open standard requiring certificate authorities to disclose the certificate that they issue.Until a few years ago, there was no way of tracking the certificates issued by every certificate authority (CA). At best, researchers could scan the entire web and collect those certificates being used on public servers. This made it very hard to discover cases where CAs issued certificates for domain names without the approval of those domains' owners.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook helps companies detect rogue SSL certificates for domains

Facebook has launched a tool that allows domain name owners to discover TLS/SSL certificates that were issued without their knowledge.The tool uses data collected from the many Certificate Transparency logs that are publicly accessible. Certificate Transparency (CT) is a new open standard requiring certificate authorities to disclose the certificate that they issue.Until a few years ago, there was no way of tracking the certificates issued by every certificate authority (CA). At best, researchers could scan the entire web and collect those certificates being used on public servers. This made it very hard to discover cases where CAs issued certificates for domain names without the approval of those domains' owners.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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