More than half the world’s people still off the internet

Less than half of the world's population still isn't using the Internet, although the numbers are improving, according to a United Nations report.A report released this week by the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) found that 47.1% of the population is online, an increase from 2015's figure of 43%.The spread of mobile networks around the globe has played an important role in increasing Internet connectivity, the report said. Mobile-broadband networks cover 84% of the world's population this year, but the number of users, at 47.1%, is well below those who have access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More than half the world’s people still off the internet

Less than half of the world's population still isn't using the Internet, although the numbers are improving, according to a United Nations report.A report released this week by the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) found that 47.1% of the population is online, an increase from 2015's figure of 43%.The spread of mobile networks around the globe has played an important role in increasing Internet connectivity, the report said. Mobile-broadband networks cover 84% of the world's population this year, but the number of users, at 47.1%, is well below those who have access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook said to create censorship tool to enter China again

Facebook has reportedly developed a software tool that will help keep certain content away from users’ news feeds in certain geographies, reflecting the company’s apparent willingness to meet Chinese government censorship demands part of the way.The social networking site has been banned in China since 2009 because of the government’s censorship rules and like many other U.S. technology companies would like to reenter the market with nearly 1.4 billion people.CEO Mark Zuckerberg has learned Mandarin, visited the country often and cultivated the local leadership including President Xi Jinping.The new tool suppresses posts from appearing to people in certain geographies but will not be used directly by Facebook, reported The New York Times on Tuesday, citing three current and former Facebook employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the tool is confidential.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Disney’s best releases may be its open source tools

While most people associate Disney with Mickey Mouse, animation, and amusement parks, the company is forging a path in the open source software realm, encouraging contributions from its developers and releasing software of its own.Not surprising, several projects involve images, such as the OpenEXR high-dynamic-range image file format developed by Disney subsidiary Industrial Light and Magic. Others are less image-focused, including Munki, a set of tools to help MacOS X admins manage software installs and removals.[ Get the most out of collaborative programming with InfoWorld’s 20 essential pointers for Git and GitHub. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld’s Application Development newsletter. ] The company’s GitHub repo highlights its Open Source Program, through which it encourages Disney developers to tap open source software, contribute to open source projects, and release what they create to the open source community at large. Disney’s GitHub repo “features” a few homegrown open source projects in particular, including Universal Scene Description (USD), which Disney notes as being the core of Pixar’s 3D graphics pipeline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First look: Visual Studio for Mac is here at last, almost

Visual Studio for Mac is something that many Microsoft developers have sought for more than a decade. As Mac OS X became interesting in the early 2000s, coders who spent most of their days working in Visual Studio on Windows wondered why they couldn’t use the same languages, frameworks, and tools for the Mac, rather than needing to learn Objective-C, Cocoa, and Xcode, all of which were substantially different from the languages and tools for Windows development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

U.S. says cybersecurity skills shortage is a myth

The U.S. government has released what it claims is myth-busting data about the shortage of cybersecurity professionals. The data points to its own hiring experience.In October 2015, the U.S. launched a plan to hire 6,500 people with cybersecurity skills by January 2017, according to White House officials. It had hired 3,000 by the first half of this year. As part the ongoing hiring effort, it held a job fair in July.At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), "We set out to dispel certain myths regarding cybersecurity hiring," wrote Angela Bailey, chief human capital officer at DHS in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. says cybersecurity skills shortage is a myth

The U.S. government has released what it claims is myth-busting data about the shortage of cybersecurity professionals. The data points to its own hiring experience.In October 2015, the U.S. launched a plan to hire 6,500 people with cybersecurity skills by January 2017, according to White House officials. It had hired 3,000 by the first half of this year. As part the ongoing hiring effort, it held a job fair in July.At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), "We set out to dispel certain myths regarding cybersecurity hiring," wrote Angela Bailey, chief human capital officer at DHS in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cyber Monday 2016 tech deals sampler features Dell, Walmart

The line between what constitutes a Black Friday 2016 deal and a Cyber Monday one has pretty much disappeared, but what we have here are a handful of tech deals specifically available for Cyber Monday, which is Nov. 28.Cyber Monday got its start as an online-only alternative to once in-store focused Black Friday, but of course Black Friday, Black November, etc., is now a mishmash of online and in-store action. Nevertheless, some retailers still trot out the Cyber Monday marketing term, and we'll accommodate them briefly here by highlighting a few of their deals.(Black Friday & Cyber Monday watchers such as BFads and Best Black Friday have been a big help in keeping tabs on deals.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Make companies pay full cost of breaches to restore trust in the internet, says ISOC

Fake news, online banking thefts and data breaches: It's no wonder that trust in the internet is at an all-time low. But don't worry: The Internet Society has a five-step plan for restoring faith in the network of networks.The first step is to put users first, according to ISOC, which published its 2016 Global Internet Report on Thursday. That involves being more transparent (step two) about risk and the incidence of data breaches and prioritizing data security (step three) to ensure breaches don't happen.ISOC isn't just a talking shop, it is also the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), source of many of the protocols and standards on which the internet relies. That adds weight to the more detailed recommendations on how to prioritize security contained in the ISOC report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Make companies pay full cost of breaches to restore trust in the internet, says ISOC

Fake news, online banking thefts and data breaches: It's no wonder that trust in the internet is at an all-time low. But don't worry: The Internet Society has a five-step plan for restoring faith in the network of networks.The first step is to put users first, according to ISOC, which published its 2016 Global Internet Report on Thursday. That involves being more transparent (step two) about risk and the incidence of data breaches and prioritizing data security (step three) to ensure breaches don't happen.ISOC isn't just a talking shop, it is also the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), source of many of the protocols and standards on which the internet relies. That adds weight to the more detailed recommendations on how to prioritize security contained in the ISOC report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside Intel’s Strategy to Integrate Nervana Deep Learning Assets

There is little doubt that 2017 will be a dense year for deep learning. With a sudden new wave of applications that integrate neural networks into existing workflows (not to mention entirely new uses) and a fresh array of hardware architectures to meet them, we expect the space to start shaking out its early winners and losers and show a clearer path ahead.

As we described earlier this week, Intel has big plans to integrate the Nervana ASIC and software stack with its Knights family of processors in the next several years. This effort, codenamed Knights Crest, is a long-term …

Inside Intel’s Strategy to Integrate Nervana Deep Learning Assets was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

T-Mobile offers users a free iPhone 7 with qualifying trade-in

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has a penchant for making a big splash, and with Black Friday just a few days away, Legere on Tuesday announced an intriguing new promotion that prospective iPhone 7 buyers might want to keep on their radar.As part of the company's Black Friday push, T-Mobile is offering users either a free iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus with a qualifying trade-in. In order to get a free 32GB iPhone 7, users can trade in the following devices: an iPhone 6s, an iPhone 6s Plus, Samsung's Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge, the S7, the S7 Edge and the Note 5. Other qualifying devices include the LG V20 and the LG G5.If you have an older device, there are still good deals to be had. Case in point: users can get $100 off a 32GB iPhone 7 if they trade-in any of the following devices: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, Samsung Note 4, Samsung Galaxy S5, the LG G4 and the LG V10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to make home IoT more secure: Assume the worst

Sometimes the truth hurts but you just have to face it. The internet advisory group BITAG lays it on the line for the IoT industry in a new report: No, consumers aren’t going to update the software on their devices.“It is safe to assume that most end users will never take action on their own to update software,” the Broadband Internet Technology Advisory Group said. Its recommendation: Build in mechanisms for automatic, secure updates.That bit of human nature is just one of the harsh realities BITAG acknowledges in the report, which came out on Tuesday. It also points out that some consumer IoT devices ship with weak built-in usernames and passwords like “admin” and “password,” can’t do authentication or encryption, or can easily be taken over by malware that turns them into bots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to make home IoT more secure: Assume the worst

Sometimes the truth hurts but you just have to face it. The internet advisory group BITAG lays it on the line for the IoT industry in a new report: No, consumers aren’t going to update the software on their devices.“It is safe to assume that most end users will never take action on their own to update software,” the Broadband Internet Technology Advisory Group said. Its recommendation: Build in mechanisms for automatic, secure updates.That bit of human nature is just one of the harsh realities BITAG acknowledges in the report, which came out on Tuesday. It also points out that some consumer IoT devices ship with weak built-in usernames and passwords like “admin” and “password,” can’t do authentication or encryption, or can easily be taken over by malware that turns them into bots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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