Microsoft completes Windows 10 customized for China’s government

Microsoft has wrapped up work on a version of Windows 10 for China's government and state-owned businesses, and is ready to begin selling the software, a state-run newspaper said today."We have worked extensively to make it secure and controllable. We are now ready to serve the market," Alain Crozier, the CEO of Microsoft's Greater China operation, told China Daily.The modified Windows 10 was the result of a December 2015 deal with China Electronics Technology Group (CETC), a state-backed defense contractor. Microsoft and CETC formed a joint venture, C&M Information Technologies, to license the operating system to government agencies and some state-owned enterprises, including ones that control energy, telecommunications and transportation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: As if random telephone and email spam weren’t enough

Google’s smart home speakers on Thursday played an unprompted promotion for Walt Disney Co.’s new “Beauty and the Beast” movie, the first sign of how the world’s largest advertising company could shoehorn ads into its growing number of voice interactions with users. Users of Google’s voice-controlled speaker, called Google Home, heard a 17-second promotion for the movie, after asking the devices about the their schedule. “By the way, Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast opens today,” the device said, according to user videos. —Market Watch

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Peelytics turns peeing into a way to promote products

Not many companies would want you to pee on their product, but one at Cebit positively encourages it.Peelytics of Heidelberg, Germany, has developed a Bluetooth beacon that detects when someone is urinating on it, and for how long. If that person has a hand free to wake up their smartphone, they can "claim" that micturition as their own using the Peelytics app, and perhaps win a prize if they peed for longest.It's all a game designed to encourage people to improve their aim (keeping restrooms cleaner) and to pay attention to promotional messages while in toilets in bars and clubs -- areas that marketers have already identified as prime placements for advertising.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Acoustic attack lets hackers control smartphone sensor

A newfound vulnerability in smartphones could let hackers remotely control the devices.With the acoustic injection attack, “attackers that deliver high intensity acoustic interference in close proximity” can interfere with a device accelerometer and get the sensor to send “attacker–chosen” data to the smartphone’s processor, say researchers from the University of Michigan and University of South Carolina in a paper.Accelerometers measure changes of speed in a device, and they are used industrially to sense vibration for machinery health. In a smartphone, the accelerometer sensor can be used to detect screen orientation, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Acoustic attack lets hackers control smartphone sensor

A newfound vulnerability in smartphones could let hackers remotely control the devices.With the acoustic injection attack, “attackers that deliver high intensity acoustic interference in close proximity” can interfere with a device accelerometer and get the sensor to send “attacker–chosen” data to the smartphone’s processor, say researchers from the University of Michigan and University of South Carolina in a paper.Accelerometers measure changes of speed in a device, and they are used industrially to sense vibration for machinery health. In a smartphone, the accelerometer sensor can be used to detect screen orientation, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Upstart Switch Chip Maker Tears Up The Ethernet Roadmap

Ethernet switching has its own kinds of Moore’s Law barriers. The transition from 10 Gb/sec to 100 Gb/sec devices over the past decade has been anything but smooth, and a lot of compromises had to be made to even get to the interim – and unusual – 40 Gb/sec stepping stone towards the 100 Gb/sec devices that are ramping today in the datacenter.

While 10 Gb/sec Ethernet switching is fine for a certain class of enterprise applications that are not bandwidth hungry, for the hyperscalers and cloud builders, 100 Gb/sec is nowhere near enough bandwidth, and 200 Gb/sec, which is …

Upstart Switch Chip Maker Tears Up The Ethernet Roadmap was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Juniper Rolls Out Data Center Interconnect for Packet and Optical

Juniper signaled it would be taking this approach when it bought Aurrion.

UK follows US ban of electronic devices in cabins on some flights

The U.K. is joining the U.S. in its ban restricting passengers from bringing some electronic devices onto flights from the Middle East.Phones, laptops, and tablets that are larger than 16 cm (6.3 inches) in length and wider than 9.3 cm will no longer be allowed in the cabin on select flights coming from several Middle Eastern countries, the U.K.'s department of transportation said on Tuesday. The U.K. said it was in "close contact" with the U.S. since the country announced its own ban on Monday.  However, the U.K. made no mention of any specific risk, only that it faces "evolving" terrorism threats. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK follows US ban of electronic devices in cabins on some flights

The U.K. is joining the U.S. in its ban restricting passengers from bringing some electronic devices onto flights from the Middle East.Phones, laptops, and tablets that are larger than 16 cm (6.3 inches) in length and wider than 9.3 cm will no longer be allowed in the cabin on select flights coming from several Middle Eastern countries, the U.K.'s department of transportation said on Tuesday. The U.K. said it was in "close contact" with the U.S. since the country announced its own ban on Monday.  However, the U.K. made no mention of any specific risk, only that it faces "evolving" terrorism threats. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung announces competitor to Siri, Cortana

The field of personal digital assistants is only getting more crowded, with Samsung's new entry Bixby joining the fray. The Korean electronics giant announced the new assistant ahead of the Galaxy 8 smartphone, where it will make its debut. Bixby was thought to be the product of Viv, an AI assistant created by the same team that created Siri before Apple acquired it. Samsung acquired the Viv team last year. But Bixby is a new product from Samsung and intended to be a little different from the typical digital assistant. + Also on Network World: Virtual assistant faceoff: Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant and Siri + While Bixby will do most of the typical digital assistant functions found in Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, it also adds three new elements: context awareness, cognitive tolerance and completeness. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper extends data center interconnect options

Large data center interconnect users needing high-speed connectivity and bandwidth for access to massive cloud resources have a new option to handle these demands.Juniper today rolled out its Open Cloud Interconnect package which includes Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing optical boards for its QFX10000 Layer 3 spine switch and BTI7800 optical transport switch families as well as software to manage those systems.+More Juniper coverage on Network World: Juniper battles Cisco, Huawei with new cloud infrastructure software, switches+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper extends data center interconnect options

Large data center interconnect users needing high-speed connectivity and bandwidth for access to massive cloud resources have a new option to handle these demands.Juniper today rolled out its Open Cloud Interconnect package which includes Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing optical boards for its QFX10000 Layer 3 spine switch and BTI7800 optical transport switch families as well as software to manage those systems.+More Juniper coverage on Network World: Juniper battles Cisco, Huawei with new cloud infrastructure software, switches+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rough Guide to IETF 98: Scalability and Performance

HashiCorp Updates Vault Enterprise for Enhanced Security

Vault helps companies secure multi-region security across multiple data centers.

Rough Guide to IETF 98: All About IPv6

Why your cloud strategy should include multiple vendors

For decades, enterprise computing environments have been composed of servers, storage and networking equipment developed by different vendors. Those choices often hinged on the best products to power applications and data -- as well as the enticing volume discounts tossed into enterprise agreements. A similar scenario is playing out in cloud computing infrastructure, where CIOs are grappling with how to best architect systems for multi-vendor, hybrid cloud strategies.A telling exchange on cloud vendors occurred during the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network event last month when an audience member shared his perspective on the challenges of choosing between different cloud vendors with Adrian Cockcroft, vice president of cloud architecture strategy for Amazon Web Services (AWS), who was speaking on stage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

8 tech support best practices

No product or service – or end user – is perfect. This is especially true when it comes to hardware and software. That is why companies, if they want to stay in and grow their business, need to provide help to customers when things go wrong. And while no two products or problems are exactly alike, the best tech support departments share the following eight traits.[ Related: 11 tips for improving your company's customer support ]1. Offer multi-channel tech support, including live chat. “The ubiquity of instant communication channels has meant that people want to get the support they want, whenever they want and through whatever method is most convenient,” says Amir Farhi, vice president, strategic alliances & business development, WalkMe. “Rather than relying [just] on email and phone communications, businesses should provide [tech support via] social media channels, [live chat] and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.” They should also “make sure [tech support representatives] are readily available and trained to use all channels.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows Server on ARM is for Azure only

A couple of months after announcing that Windows 10 will be available on ARM laptops based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 when the Creators Update launches this spring, Microsoft also revealed that it has been trying out ARM servers in its Azure data centers and is planning to use them for some very specific production workloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Windows Server on ARM is for Azure only

A couple of months after announcing that Windows 10 will be available on ARM laptops based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 when the Creators Update launches this spring, Microsoft also revealed that it has been trying out ARM servers in its Azure data centers and is planning to use them for some very specific production workloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Adobe takes aim at customer experience, partners with Microsoft

Customer experience is the name of the game at Adobe Summit 2017 in Las Vegas this week. Today the company unveiled its new Experience Cloud offering, along with a new partnership with Microsoft aimed at creating a standard semantic data model for customer experience apps and services.For years, digital marketers have measured digital interactions to gather customer data in an effort to optimize customer interactions in real-time by doing things like personalizing landing pages and targeting display ads. The new Adobe Experience Cloud brings together Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Advertising Cloud and Adobe Analytics Cloud in an effort to take the technology Adobe has developed for digital marketers and extend it to all the areas that touch on customer experience, like optimizing and personalizing customer support or building products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here