LinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.The professional network that was acquired by Microsoft in December has been generally associated with educated urban professionals but the company is now planning to extend its reach to semi-skilled people in India.Having connected white-collared professionals around the world with the right job opportunities and training through LinkedIn Learning, the platform is now developing a new set of products that extends this service to low- and semi-skilled workers, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event on digital transformation in Mumbai on Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.The professional network that was acquired by Microsoft in December has been generally associated with educated urban professionals but the company is now planning to extend its reach to semi-skilled people in India.Having connected white-collared professionals around the world with the right job opportunities and training through LinkedIn Learning, the platform is now developing a new set of products that extends this service to low- and semi-skilled workers, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event on digital transformation in Mumbai on Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Border Digital Safety for Journalists

The CPJ, the "Committee to Protect Journalists", offers some horrible advice [*] on Digital Security, especially when crossing the border.

The most important piece of advice I can give you is this: if somebody's life depends upon it, then no simple piece of advice, no infographic, is going to help you. You have to learn about cybersecurity enough to make intelligent decisions for yourself. You have to make difficult tradeoffs yourself. Anybody giving you simple advice or infographics is a charlatan.

So I thought I'd discuss what's wrong with the following infographic:


I. Passwords, managers, and two-factor

The biggest issue is don't reuse passwords across different accounts. If you do, when hackers breach one of your accounts, they breach all of them. I use a simple password for all the accounts I don't care about, then complex unique passwords for all my important accounts. I have to write them down on a piece of paper I've got hidden at home, because sometimes I forget them.

Password managers certainly help you have multiple strong passwords across many accounts. On the other hand, it puts all your eggs in one basket, and the police can grab them from the company.

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iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: thrown for a curve, glass crack clues & 3D sensing

iPhone 8 rumors can become a snooze when they focus too much on the inside of Apple’s anticipated next flagship smartphones, but this week most of the scuttlebutt is thankfully centered around the shiny new display.Rumor fans also seemed excited to have a new source of information rather than the usual suspects (we’ll get to them later…) A TrendForce of Nature Market watcher TrendForce created a stir on Tuesday by releasing a report in which it says, based on information from the supply chain, Apple won’t have a curved AMOLED display after all in its next flagship iPhone (so that’s one area where Apple might not match or surpass what Samsung is doing with its phones, like the Galaxy S7 Edge). The expected 5.8-inch iPhone will still have an energy-efficient and bright AMOLED screen, but production issues have forced Apple to hold off on the curved design, according to the report. “Thus, the next high-end iPhone is expected to have the same 2.5D glass for display cover as the current models,” TrendForce says. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Redfin CTO says machine learning needs human help

Machine learning can automate the handling of huge troves of data to help companies make and save money. However, they’re not without pitfalls, as the real estate tech company Redfin learned.As Redfin began building its own machine-learning capabilities, it ran into a problem: Employees weren't using them. Bridget Frey, the firm’s CTO, said in an interview that there was a key reason for that: At first, Redfin didn't leave room in these systems for the real estate agents who were supposed to use them to make modifications.For example, a Listings Matchmaker feature generated a list of personalized recommendations for homebuyers, based on their interests. In its initial iteration, agents weren’t able to add recommendations they thought would be useful.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Additional Insights on Shamoon2

IBM analysts recently unveiled a first look at how threat actors may have placed Shamoon2 malware on systems in Saudi Arabia. Researchers showcased a potential malware lifecycle which started with spear phishing and eventually led to the deployment of the disk-wiping malware known as Shamoon. […]

Change All Your Passwords, Right Now!

by Steinthor Bjarnason, Senior ASERT Security Analyst & Roland Dobbins, ASERT Principal Engineer CloudFlare are probably best known as a DDoS mitigation service provider, but they also operate one of the largest Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) on the Internet. Many popular Web sites, mobile apps, […]

3D Memory Sparks New Thinking in HPC System Design

Whether being built for capacity or capability, the conventional wisdom about memory provisioning on the world’s fastest systems is changing quickly. The rise of 3D memory has thrown a curveball into the field as HPC centers consider the specific tradeoffs between traditional, stacked, and hybrid combinations of both on next-generation supercomputers. In short, allocating memory on these machines is always tricky—with a new entrant like stacked memory into the design process, it is useful to gauge where 3D devices might fit.

While stacked memory is getting a great deal of airplay, for some HPC application areas, it might fall just

3D Memory Sparks New Thinking in HPC System Design was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

75% off Brother P-Touch PT-D210 Label Maker – Deal Alert

The PT-D210 makes it easy to create great-looking labels for your home and office. With convenient one-touch keys, you can quickly access fonts, symbols, frames and templates. Plus, you can preview your work on the display. The highly rated unit is a #1 best-seller on Amazon, where it has been discounted 75%, for what will likely be a limited time. So instead of $40 you'll be paying just $10. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft still plans to ship two Windows 10 upgrades in 2017

Microsoft this month reaffirmed that it will issue two Windows 10 upgrades this year, twice the number of 2016 but still shy of the firm's original target.In a presentation 11 days ago at a Microsoft technical conference held in Australia, Bill Karagounis, a director of program management, pointed to a follow-on upgrade that will appear sometime after the Creators Update, which is expected to finalize and ship next month.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ] A slide Karagounis showed during the session -- which was webcast from Microsoft's Channel 9 website -- included another upgrade this year after Creators. It lacked a release date and a more descriptive name other than "Second Update in 2017."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No new HoloLens hardware until 2019

A new report from a usually reliable site says there will be no new version of the Microsoft HoloLens, its virtual reality/augmented reality headset, until 2019. Not only that, but the company is skipping the second version design and going straight to the third version In a lengthy report on Thurrott.com, Brad Sims details how Microsoft decided that version 2 of HoloLens would feature only small, incremental improvements over the original version and that it wasn't right to come to market with a minor bump. Instead the company decided to shelve V2 and go straight to V3, which would feature a bigger leap in technology, and that meant taking a little longer to get it done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).

NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple to unveil new iPads, a red iPhone 7 and a revamped iPhone SE in March

With all eyes understandably focused on Apple's iPhone 8 unveiling, an event that will presumably take place this coming September, it appears we won't have to wait seven more months before being able to feast our eyes on a slew of new Apple hardware.According to a fresh report from MacOtakara, Apple in March will not only unveil a slew of new iPad hardware, but some new iPhone models as well.Starting with Apple's upcoming iPhone products, the report relays that Apple in March will roll out a revamped iPhone SE. If history is any indication, the new iPhone SE will incorporate all of the same specs as the iPhone 7, albeit in the iPhone 5s' smaller form factor. A 128GB model is also said to be in the works. A revamped iPhone SE is certainly intriguing because there remains a large contingent of users who simply find the larger-screened iPhone models a bit too unwieldy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple to unveil new iPads, a red iPhone 7, and a revamped iPhone SE in March

With all eyes understandably focused on Apple's iPhone 8 unveiling, an event that will presumably take place this coming September, it appears that we won't have to wait 7 more months before being able to feast our eyes on a slew of new Apple hardware.According to a fresh report from MacOtakara, Apple in March will not only unveil a slew of new iPad hardware, but some new iPhone models as well.Starting with Apple's upcoming iPhone products, the report relays that Apple in March will roll out a revamped iPhone SE. If history is any indication, the new iPhone SE will incorporate all of the same specs as the iPhone 7, albeit in the iPhone 5s' smaller form factor. A 128GB model is also said to be in the works. A revamped iPhone SE is certainly intriguing because there remains a large contingent of users who simply find the larger-screened iPhone models a bit too unwieldy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The cloud is growing 7 times faster than the rest of IT

The public cloud just keeps on growing, with increases in spending on cloud services and infrastructure easily outpacing overall IT spending. And it isn’t even close.  The latest update to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide projects worldwide investments in the public cloud “will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4 percent over 2016. Those are big numbers, obviously, but to put them in full perspective, IDC noted that growth rate is nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here