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Google Assistant coming to TVs, smartwatches and cars

Google Assistant will be available soon on Android TVs, with plans to offer the voice-activated personal assistant on car infotainment systems and smartwatches as well.The technology will feature in the coming months, starting with the Nvidia Shield, on Android TVs in the U.S. running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat. Some of the devices expected to ship with Google Assistant are the AirTV Player, Sharp Aquos, Sony Bravia and Xiaomi Mi Box, Sascha Prueter, director of Android TV at Google and Gummi Hafsteinsson, product lead for Google Assistant, wrote in a post on Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM: Next 5 years AI, IoT and nanotech will literally change the way we see the world

 Perhaps the coolest thing about IBM’s 9th “Five Innovations that will Help Change our Lives within Five Years” predictions is that none of them sound like science fiction.“With advances in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, we aim to invent a new generation of scientific instruments that will make the complex invisible systems in our world today visible over the next five years,” said Dario Gil, vice president of science & solutions at IBM Research in a statement.+More on Network World: IBM says soon you won't need passwords; mind reading will be routine; the so-called digital divide will cease to exist and junk mail will become important+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Creating your own Ansible filter plugins

I’ve been playing around with Ansible quite a bit lately.  One of the issues I’ve started to run into is that Ansible can’t always do what you want by default.  Put more plainly, Ansible can’t always easily do what you want.    Many times I found myself writing tasks to manipulate variables and thinking to myself, “Man – if I could just run some Python code on this it would be way easier”.  As luck would have it, you can!  Ansible supports a whole slew of plugins but the type I want to talk about today are called filter plugins.  Filter plugins, in my opinion, are one of the easiest ways to manipulate your variables with native Python.  And once you know how to do it you’ll see that it opens up a whole realm of possibilities in your playbooks.  Some of the most popular filters that exist today were once custom filters that someone wrote and then contributed to Ansible.  The IP address (ipaddr) filter set is a great example of filters that can be used to manipulate IP related information.

When I first looked into writing a custom filter I found the Ansible documentation not very helpful.  It essentially Continue reading

Battle lines drawn as Chromebooks, Windows PCs renew rivalry at CES

Microsoft wants a go-to Chromebook competitor, and it may be getting one in upcoming Windows 10 PCs with ARM chips.Those Windows 10 laptops and tablets could look something like Samsung's latest Chromebook Pro and Plus announced at CES. The attractive 2-in-1s have 12.3-inch screens and are targeted at those who do most of their computing online.In a way, Samsung's new Chromebooks share some features with new Windows PCs announced at CES. They have cool features like 2400 x 1600 pixel touchscreens and USB-C ports, which are also in the latest Windows 2-in-1s with Intel's Kaby Lake chips.While Google plots a Chromebook attack on Windows 10, Microsoft could be using Chromebooks as a blueprint for its "cellular PCs," or thin and light laptops that are always connected to the Internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Department of Labor sues Google over wage data

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit against Google, with the company's ability to win government contracts at risk.The agency is seeking what it calls "routine" information about wages and the company's equal opportunity program. The agency filed a lawsuit with its Office of Administrative Law Judges to gain access to the information, it announced Wednesday.Google, as a federal contractor, is required to provide the data as part of a compliance check by the agency's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), according to the Department of Labor. The inquiry is focused on Google's compliance with equal employment laws, the agency said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

33% off Powerbeats3 Wireless In-Ear Headphones – Deal Alert

Powerbeats3 packs up to 12 hours of battery life in a single charge. And with Fast Fuel technology, a 5-minute charge gives you 1 hour of playback. Sweat and water resistance provides trusted durability, and dual-driver acoustics deliver dynamic sound to power your workout. These highly rated wireless earphones typically list for $199.99, but with this deal you save $50. The discount will be magically applied when you add it to your cart. Get them for $149.99 on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Every Company Must Behave Like a Software Company — Including Yours

Originally posted on the Puppet blog, and republished here with Puppet's permission.In technology, we get used to the idea that change is coming at us all the time, faster and faster. Or at least, we should get used to that idea, and even more important, we should prepare ourselves, our teams and our entire organizations for that rapid pace of change. That's why we created The CIO's Guide to DevOps: to help executives responsible for IT navigate the recent wave of change, dubbed digital transformation. Now that digital technology drives everything, every company, nonprofit, university and government agency that wants to stay relevant must become really good at developing and delivering software quickly, with great agility. That need is what's driving adoption of DevOps principles and practices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDoS-for-hire services thrive despite closure of major marketplace

The closure of a major online marketplace for paid distributed denial-of-service attacks appears to have done little to slow down the illegal activity.In late October, HackForums.net shut down its "Server Stress Testing" section, amid concerns that hackers were peddling DDoS-for-hire services through the site for as little as US$10 a month.According to security experts, the section was the largest open marketplace for paid DDoS attacks -- a notorious hacking technique that can disrupt access to internet services or websites. But since the section's closure, the attacks remain rampant.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDoS-for-hire services thrive despite closure of major marketplace

The closure of a major online marketplace for paid distributed denial-of-service attacks appears to have done little to slow down the illegal activity.In late October, HackForums.net shut down its "Server Stress Testing" section, amid concerns that hackers were peddling DDoS-for-hire services through the site for as little as US$10 a month.According to security experts, the section was the largest open marketplace for paid DDoS attacks -- a notorious hacking technique that can disrupt access to internet services or websites. But since the section's closure, the attacks remain rampant.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Before you pay that ransom…

A decade ago, if a desktop computer got infected with malware the chief symptom probably was an intrusive browser toolbar of some kind. Five years ago you were more likely to get whacked by a banking trojan that stole all your passwords and credit card numbers. These days if your mobile or desktop computer is infected what gets installed is likely to be “ransomware” — malicious software that locks your most prized documents, songs and pictures with strong encryption and then requires you to pay for a key to unlock the files. —Krebs on Security

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Toshiba expands recall of laptop battery packs by 83,000 due to burn/fire risk

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued an alert that Toshiba on Wednesday has greatly expanded its recall of laptop computer battery packs due to burn and fire hazards.More specifically, these are Panasonic lithium-ion battery packs that have been found susceptible to overheating in 41 models of the Toshiba Satellite laptop, which runs Windows. The firm has received five reports of the battery pack overheating and melting, including one additional report since the first recall announcement; no injuries have been reported.MORE: Samsung Note7's phenomenal flame-out timelineTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

56% off 299-Piece All-Purpose First Aid Kit – Deal Alert

This full-fledged, easy-to-tote first aid softpack is designed to save time and frustration in the midst of an emergency. It's compact and portable, but contains 299 physician-recommended supplies.  Among the items neatly organized inside the zippered kit is a first aid guide, vinyl gloves, bandages, cold compress, gauze pads, trauma pad, cotton-tipped applicators, first aid tape roll, antiseptics and all three common OTC pain medications. The kit is currently a #1 best seller on Amazon, averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 280 customers, and its typical list price of $26.74 has been reduced 56% to just $11.69. Click over to Amazon to see this deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PC shipments predicted to return to growth in 2018 after six-year skid

Apple CEO Tim Cook declared the PC dead in a famous 2015 interview. Apparently, he's wrong, and the PC market will live another day.Gartner is projecting annual PC shipments to return to growth in 2018, ending a historic skid that started in 2012, the year Microsoft released Windows 8.The growth in 2018 will be minor. Gartner is projecting shipments of laptops, hybrids, and desktops to be around 272 million in 2018, growing from 266 million in 2017. PC shipments in 2016 were 268 million, according to the research firm.There were a few bright spots in the PC market over the last few years, including the fourth quarter of 2014, when Gartner said shipments grew by 1 percent. But on an annual basis, PC shipments have been dropping and hit double-digit declines in 2015, the year Microsoft released Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hottest products from CES 2017

Get your Gadget On!Image by IDG / Network WorldIt's time once again for the International CES, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show. Thousands of people will flock to Las Vegas to see the latest gizmos, gadgets, TVs, computers, smartphones, robots and other devices meant to make our lives easier. Here's a sneak peek at some of the products on display at the show.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Back Door Feature Problem

In Don’t Forget to Lock the Back Door! A Characterization of IPv6 Network Security Policy, the authors ran an experiment that tested for open ports in IPv4 and IPv6 across a wide swath of the network. What they discovered was interesting—

IPv6 is more open than IPv4. A given IPv6 port is nearly always more open than the same port is in IPv4. In particular, routers are twice as reachable over IPv6 for SSH, Telnet, SNMP, and BGP. While openness on IPv6 is not as severe for servers, we still find thousands of hosts open that are only open over IPv6.

This result really, on reflection, should not be all that surprising. There are probably thousands of networks in the world with “unintentional” deployments of IPv6. The vendor has shipped new products with IPv6 enabled by default, because one large customer has demanded it. Customers who have not even thought about deploying IPv6, however, end up with an unprotected attack surface.

The obvious solution to this problem is—deploy IPv6 intentionally, including security, and these problems will likely go away.

But the obvious solution, as obvious as it might be, is only one step in the right direction. Instead of just Continue reading

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