People may have been wrongly imprisoned due to faulty ankle bracelet tracking devices

If you were required to wear an ankle bracelet tracking device for electronic monitoring purposes, can you imagine how the conversation with police or probation officers would go down if the device falsely notified them that you had tried to tamper with the strap to remove it, when in fact you had not? It’s doubtful you would be believed if you tried to blame it on glitchy or defective technology. Yet in the UK, some offenders may have been wrongly sent back to prison after defective ankle bracelets alerted the authorities that they had been tampered with.The UK government admitted that ankle bracelets “used to electronically monitor offenders and suspects with a curfew” may have given false tamper reports to authorities and resulted in some people being wrongly imprisoned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Excel for Windows finally gets real-time collaboration

Microsoft has brought live, collaborative editing to its Excel app for Windows through a beta update it launched on Tuesday. The new feature lets testers collaborate with one another on the same file from inside the app.Live collaboration has been a major focus of Office 2016, which Microsoft released roughly a year and a half ago. The suite first offered real-time co-authoring for the desktop version of Word, then expanded those capabilities to PowerPoint. It’s a major change for Microsoft’s client applications, which previously kept editing to a fairly solitary experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Frequently Asked Questions on Undersea Cable

I’ve been involved with TeleGeography’s research on submarine cables since 2000. Over the years I’ve fielded numerous questions about the submarine cable industry from journalists, investors, family and friends. It seems as good a time as any to provide a compilation of answers to some of the most commonly asked questions. —APNIC

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IDG Contributor Network: Chaos in the enterprise: How digital transformation drives agility, continuous development

In today’s data-driven economy, consumer expectations for services anywhere, anytime have led to a need for organizations to become more agile and increase their speed of deliver exponentially. Gone are the days when product and service updates were delivered on a monthly basis, instead we have reached a point where an environment of continuous development is becoming required to meet the ever-evolving needs of users.+ Also on Network World: Digital transformation progress. Or not… + There’s no doubt that digital transformation is a major driver in this change in development methodology, partly as a response to the threat posed by agile startups that are disrupting markets globally. Most organizations have begun their digital transformation journey, but for many it’s still in its infancy. However, there is no doubt that for enterprises across a wide range of sectors, multiple IT technologies, processes, applications, systems and protocols need to be adopted and updated on a regular basis in order for businesses to remain competitive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Turning everyday objects into radio stations

Capturing radio signals that are already in the air, then adding data and reflecting the combination back to passersby’s smartphones is how marketing and smart city communications should take place in the future, say researchers.By doing so, one can use everyday objects as radio stations, say scientists from University of Washington. A kind of smart-poster would be one use for the technology, they say.Bus stop billboards, for example, would be able to broadcast a message to be picked up by a transit customer’s FM radio already built into their smartphone. The “singing poster,” as they call it, wouldn’t need to be powered with any great oomph—the radio signal reflective technology consumes “close to zero power,” the researchers claim in an article on the university’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Turning everyday objects into radio stations

Capturing radio signals that are already in the air, then adding data and reflecting the combination back to passersby’s smartphones is how marketing and smart city communications should take place in the future, say researchers.By doing so, one can use everyday objects as radio stations, say scientists from University of Washington. A kind of smart-poster would be one use for the technology, they say.Bus stop billboards, for example, would be able to broadcast a message to be picked up by a transit customer’s FM radio already built into their smartphone. The “singing poster,” as they call it, wouldn’t need to be powered with any great oomph—the radio signal reflective technology consumes “close to zero power,” the researchers claim in an article on the university’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

9% off Nyko Rechargeable Power Station for Xbox One Controllers – Deal Alert

The Power Station from Nyko attaches to the side of the Xbox One console and charges 2 included rechargeable batteries for use in Xbox One Wireless Controllers, for up to 25 hours of play time. It's powered by USB so there are no visible cords, and is designed to look like a natural extension of your console. The Power Station averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 190 people on Amazon (read latest reviews here), where its typical list price has been reduced 9% to just $15.97. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hadoop fails to live up to the promise and the hype

Hadoop, the open source big data framework first developed at Yahoo for analyzing large data sets, is a total failure that costs too much and is too much of a headache to implement, say people in the field. In a lengthy and in-depth piece on Datanami, big data experts describe Hadoop as too primitive for any kind of complex processing work or interactive, user-facing applications. At best, it's a batch process job, which is how Hadoop started out. It doesn't seem to have grown beyond it. “I can’t find a happy Hadoop customer. It’s sort of as simple as that,” Bob Muglia, CEO of Snowflake Computing, told Datanami. Snowflake develops and runs a cloud-based relational data warehouse product. “It’s very clear to me, technologically, that it’s not the technology base the world will be built on going forward.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner did not just delete his tweets, says Wayback Machine

Yesterday’s post about the relative tweeting habits of President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner has inadvertently gotten swept up in a widely reported yet apparently false allegation that Kushner has recently deleted all his tweets, allegedly out of concern over what they might reveal relative to Russian interference in November’s election.And while I am loath to defend anyone on Team Trump, the alleged mass deletion of tweets did not happen, at least according to the indispensable Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which has screen captures of Kushner’s Twitter page dating back to 2014. Those screen captures show that Kushner only tweeted three times – in 2011 and about innocuous matters. And while those tweets are indeed no longer visible on Kushner’s verified Twitter account, they haven’t been documented there since March 5, 2014.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Netgear doubles down on Orbi wireless gear

Netgear today announced some new products in its Orbi line of wireless products – aka “whole-home coverage” or “wireless system” space. The new products – the RBK30 and RBK40 systems include routers and satellite devices to help owners cover more of their home with Wi-Fi than with a traditional router, or even a router-and-extender option. Netgear says the new systems are aimed at consumers that need smaller whole-home coverage – the original system (now called the RBK50) covers homes up to 5,000 square feet, while the newer ones cover up to 3,500 square feet (RBK30) or 4,000 square feet (RBK40).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft paces delivery of Windows 10 upgrades

If Microsoft orchestrates next month's Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade as it did 2016's mid-year Anniversary Update refresh, it will take about three months for the latest version to reach most eligible devices.According to advertising network AdDuplex, 60 days after the Aug. 2, 2016, introduction of Windows 10 1607 -- aka Anniversary Update -- just 35% of measured Windows 10 PCs were running the upgrade. By the 90-day mark, however, that number had soared to 80%, showing that Microsoft, after a purposefully slow start, had stomped on the update accelerator.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ] There has been no sign from Microsoft that Creators Update, the company's label for April's feature upgrade, will be deployed any differently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ignore that call from “Apple” about an iCloud breach

Earlier on Monday, my wife let me know that “Apple Support” had called about iCloud security. She was dubious, and rightly so. “Apple” then called five more times (and counting). Suffice it to say, it wasn’t Apple, but fraudsters trying to piggyback on reports that a major breach of iCloud credentials could render hundreds of millions of accounts vulnerable.Apple says no such breach occurred, and security researchers, like Troy Hunt of HaveIBeenPwned.com, say the group trying to extort Apple likely has reused credentials from other sites’ password leaks. (We recommend turning on two-factor authentication at iCloud regardless.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ignore that call from “Apple” about an iCloud breach

Earlier on Monday, my wife let me know that “Apple Support” had called about iCloud security. She was dubious, and rightly so. “Apple” then called five more times (and counting). Suffice it to say, it wasn’t Apple, but fraudsters trying to piggyback on reports that a major breach of iCloud credentials could render hundreds of millions of accounts vulnerable.Apple says no such breach occurred, and security researchers, like Troy Hunt of HaveIBeenPwned.com, say the group trying to extort Apple likely has reused credentials from other sites’ password leaks. (We recommend turning on two-factor authentication at iCloud regardless.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to respond to device and software backdoors inserted or left by vendors

It’s bad enough when black hat hackers insert malicious backdoors into systems and software after vendors/makers have sold these into the marketplace. It is another matter when the vendors who create these devices and programs unwittingly or purposely leave backdoors inside their products.With IHS forecasting an influx of 30.7 billion IoT devices by 2020 and 75.4 billion by 2025, additional products that could house vendor backdoors will flood the enterprise, multiplying the risks of these kinds of security holes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IDG Contributor Network: IoT-enabled Delta Gloves help you keep your workout resolutions

Did you resolve to workout more this year? If you're like many, that resolution didn't last.One way to improve and strengthen your resolve is to track your workouts. But manually tracking sessions is messy. How many drills were done? What weights were used? How well did you perform the exercises? Should any adjustments be made?To help, PureCarbon has created IoT-enabled Delta Gloves. They help you keep your exercise resolutions and improve your workouts.The Delta Gloves The challenge with monitoring exercise workouts is that they require small sensors with low power requirements and the ability to work without connectivity. PureCarbon’s Delta Gloves use piezoresistive sensors, Bluetooth and advanced data analytics to track weights lifted, exercises performed and the number of reps performed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What enterprises should take away from the CIA leak

The recent document leak detailing CIA spying campaigns and hacking techniques has fostered conversations and news stories on how to balance intelligence gathering with privacy, as well as discussions on the agency’s extensive spying capabilities. What hasn’t been discussed as much is what enterprises (and governments in one case) can learn from the WikiLeaks Vault 7 leak.To me, three key takeaways are that leaks can happen to any organization, figuring out what entity carried out an attack is difficult to do, and we’re in an era when nation-state weapons end up in the hands of criminals. Collectively, these development make practicing information security more complex than ever. Now, let’s explore each one in more detail.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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