AllSeen’s merger with OCF brings IoT closer to common ground

Two of the main IoT standards groups have merged, probably bringing consumers closer the day when your lights, your refrigerator, and the power company can all talk to each other.On Monday, the Open Connectivity Foundation and the AllSeen Alliance announced they would merge under the OCF name. The two groups include companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, Cisco Systems, GE Digital, and Haier -- possibly a critical mass of IoT component and product makers. OCF's scope even extends beyond home IoT into some industrial technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

27% off SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick 200GB – Deal Alert

The SanDisk Connect wireless stick is a flash drive with a unique twist -- you can access it wirelessly. Whether it's in your pants pocket, in your bag, or on the picnic table at your campsite, the Connect wireless stick lets you stream media or move files wirelessly with up to three computers, phones or tablets simultaneously. Connections are made via built-in wifi (think "hotspot"), so no external wireless or internet services are needed. A USB connection is also available, if desired. Storage on this model is a generous 200GB. Reviewers on Amazon report at least 8-10 hours of battery life on one charge. This model is currently discounted 27%, from $119.99 down to $87.56. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

27% off SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick 200GB – Deal Alert

The SanDisk Connect wireless stick is a flash drive with a unique twist -- you can access it wirelessly. Whether it's in your pants pocket, in your bag, or on the picnic table at your campsite, the Connect wireless stick lets you stream media or move files wirelessly with up to three computers, phones or tablets simultaneously. Connections are made via built-in wifi (think "hotspot"), so no external wireless or internet services are needed. A USB connection is also available, if desired. Storage on this model is a generous 200GB. Reviewers on Amazon report at least 8-10 hours of battery life on one charge. This model is currently discounted 27%, from $119.99 down to $87.56. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AllSeen, OCF Merge to Foster IoT Interoperability

Both projects will now be sponsored by the Linux Foundation.

Samsung Note7: A phenomenal phablet flame-out timeline

The Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone's demise has been swift: Introduced in early August, the phablet is now off the market due to it being a fire hazard. Early reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 phablet were generally positive. Headlines described the latest Apple iPhone 7 rival as a "Pricey phablet made for power users" and "an excellent phone for the high-price market." But batteries that burn too hot and burst into flames have resulted in much less glowing headlines and a full-fledged business disaster for Samsung, which has now issued a recall of both the original and replacement Note7 phones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Digitalk Deploys Affirmed’s Software to Create Mobile Promotions

Digitalk helps mobile operators extend their networks to the cloud.

Apple Mac shipments take a beating in Q3 as PC shipments decline

Sales of Windows PCs fared better than Apple Macs during the third quarter this year.Third-quarter PC shipments declined by 3.9 percent compared to the same quarter last year, but Mac shipments dropped by 13 percent. PC shipments totaled 68 million units, according to IDC.The declines weren't as bad as expected, and were roughly 3.2 percent ahead of IDC's initial projections, the research firm said.In the top five PC companies, fourth-placed Apple registered the largest decline, with the 13 percent drop in Mac shipments. Apple's Mac sales totaled 5 million units during the quarter, declining from 5.76 million units in the same quarter a year ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook, Twitter cut access to monitoring tool used by police

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were handing over data to a monitoring tool that law enforcement agencies were using to track protesters, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.The social media analysis tool, called Geofeedia, had been harvesting posts from the social media networks for surveillance purposes, and more than 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies have been using it, the ACLU said in a Tuesday report.Through a public records request, the ACLU found that Geofeedia had entered into agreements with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for their users' data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook, Twitter cut access to monitoring tool used by police

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were handing over data to a monitoring tool that law enforcement agencies were using to track protesters, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.The social media analysis tool, called Geofeedia, had been harvesting posts from the social media networks for surveillance purposes, and more than 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies have been using it, the ACLU said in a Tuesday report.Through a public records request, the ACLU found that Geofeedia had entered into agreements with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for their users' data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Note 7 is dead: What Samsung must do now

Samsung formally stopped production, sales and exchanges of its Note7 smartphones early Tuesday, after several weeks of reports that the devices -- and even their replacements -- overheated, smoked and caught fire.The death of the Note7 will be costly, according to many analysts.Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy has pegged the overall cost to Samsung at $5 billion to $7.5 billion, not including the hard-to-estimate impact on the Samsung brand. Some analysts, including Credit Suisse, said the lost sales on up to 19 million Note7 phones is about $17 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

With help from Docker, Google’s Go jumps in popularity

Google's Go language, which anchors projects like Kubernetes and Docker, keeps climbing the charts in language popularity.Ranked 65th a year ago in the Tiobe Index of language popularity, it has climbed to 16th this month and is on track to become Tiobe's Programming Language of the Year, a designation awarded to the language with the biggest jump in the index.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of programming is changing rapidly. We help you navigate what's hot in programming and what's going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] "Google's Go language seems to be unrivaled, probably boosted by the immense popularity of Docker, the container application that is written in Go," said a report accompanying the index, which gauges popularity based on a formula assessing searches on languages in popular search engines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Elliptic Curve Cryptography and DNS

Erasthosthenes of Cyrene was an ancient Greek of some astounding learning, becoming the Chief Librarian at that fabled wonder of the ancient world, the library of Alexandria, in the third century BCE. Not only has he been credited as the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth, but for the purposes of this article his claim for posterity is based on his work in number theory, and in particular his invention of the Sieve of Erastosthenes as a means of identifying prime numbers. His method is complete and accurate, but for very large numbers the process is inordinately slow. And we haven’t really made it much faster in the intervening 2,200 years. The related problem, that of computing the prime number factors of a very large integer also takes a long time as at its heart is a basic enumeration problem that grows as the size of the number grows. —Potaroo

The post Worth Reading: Elliptic Curve Cryptography and DNS appeared first on 'net work.

Samsung officially announces the Galaxy Note 7 and a refreshed GearVR

Samsung’s next phone-tablet hybrid device has officially landed. The company introduced the sixth-generation Galaxy Note 7 phablet in New York City on Tuesday. It features the latest hardware, a pressure sensitive stylus, and a spruced up interface, all packaged into a shiny metal-and-glass, water-resistant shell. And for the virtual reality-obsessed, Samsung has announced a new GearVR headset designed just for the Galaxy Note 7.  Meet the new phablet  You might be wondering why there’s no Galaxy Note 6 this year. That’s because Samsung opted to skip that number and jump straight to the number 7 so that its phablet line and flagship family—the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge—are directly aligned. Frankly, it makes sense to have both device types on the same page, so to speak. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft released 10 patches: 5 rated critical, 5 fixed zero-day flaws

It is the first month for Microsoft’s new patching model. Older Windows OSes will be treated like Windows 10, with the patches all rolled into a big bundle meant to fix security and non-security issues. However, there will also be a monthly security update that is supposed to resolve that month’s issues without the previous month's fixes as well. On the third Tuesday of the month, the week after Patch Tuesday, Microsoft will release a preview of the upcoming patches so the non-security fixes can be tested to make sure the big rolled-up patch doesn’t blow anything up on some systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft released 10 patches: 5 rated critical, 5 fixed zero-day flaws

It is the first month for Microsoft’s new patching model. Older Windows OSes will be treated like Windows 10, with the patches all rolled into a big bundle meant to fix security and non-security issues. However, there will also be a monthly security update that is supposed to resolve that month’s issues without the previous month's fixes as well. On the third Tuesday of the month, the week after Patch Tuesday, Microsoft will release a preview of the upcoming patches so the non-security fixes can be tested to make sure the big rolled-up patch doesn’t blow anything up on some systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Supreme Court wrestles with size of damages for Apple design patents

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments in a long-running Apple and Samsung patent dispute on Tuesday, seemed to question a 19th-century law that allows huge infringement damages in design patent cases.Questioning lawyers for the two companies, the justices repeatedly referred to a law that instructs courts to award patent damages based on the total profit from the infringing device, instead of from just the infringing pieces of the device.The total-profit rule for design patents may work for simple products, but not for complex ones like smartphones, Justice Stephen Breyer said. "For wallpaper, you get the whole thing," he said, according to Fortune.com. "A Rolls-Royce with the thing on the hood? No, no, no you don’t get profits on the whole car."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The network effect on wealth creation

We live in a network-centric world, and network laws are beginning to govern business models and even global economics. When you understand these laws, you begin to understand why we live in a world where new network-centric business models (think Google, Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb, etc.) become de facto monopolies that result in incredible wealth creation.More important, you might be able to figure out how to put these same network effects to work for your business to spur growth and increase customer and shareholder value.Metcalfe’s Law and network effects The first law to understand is Metcalfe’s Law. As you probably know, Bob Metcalfe is the co-inventor of Ethernet. I’ve met Bob a few times in my career. He’s smart, kind and very intuitive. Back in the dawn of networking, he made an observation about how networks work, and he put an equation behind it. That equation has come to be known as Metcalfe’s Law. Here’s how it goes and why it’s critical for modern business models, not just for the networks that underpin them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The network effect on wealth creation

We live in a network-centric world, and network laws are beginning to govern business models and even global economics. When you understand these laws, you begin to understand why we live in a world where new network-centric business models (think Google, Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb, etc.) become de facto monopolies that result in incredible wealth creation.More important, you might be able to figure out how to put these same network effects to work for your business to spur growth and increase customer and shareholder value.Metcalfe’s Law and network effects The first law to understand is Metcalfe’s Law. As you probably know, Bob Metcalfe is the co-inventor of Ethernet. I’ve met Bob a few times in my career. He’s smart, kind and very intuitive. Back in the dawn of networking, he made an observation about how networks work, and he put an equation behind it. That equation has come to be known as Metcalfe’s Law. Here’s how it goes and why it’s critical for modern business models, not just for the networks that underpin them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Second group of hackers found also targeting SWIFT users

A second hacking group is also trying to rob banks by exploiting the SWIFT money transfer system, following a US$81 million heist in February that used a similar approach.The cyberattacks have been going on since January and have been targeting companies in the U.S., Hong Kong, Australia, and other countries, according to a Tuesday report from security firm Symantec.A "rough guess" is that about 100 organizations have been hit so far, based on the 74 individual computer infections detected, the security firm added.As part of their attacks, the hackers used malware to cover up records of fraudulent transactions made over SWIFT, preventing their victims from learning about the money theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Second group of hackers found also targeting SWIFT users

A second hacking group is also trying to rob banks by exploiting the SWIFT money transfer system, following a US$81 million heist in February that used a similar approach.The cyberattacks have been going on since January and have been targeting companies in the U.S., Hong Kong, Australia, and other countries, according to a Tuesday report from security firm Symantec.A "rough guess" is that about 100 organizations have been hit so far, based on the 74 individual computer infections detected, the security firm added.As part of their attacks, the hackers used malware to cover up records of fraudulent transactions made over SWIFT, preventing their victims from learning about the money theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here