Diamonds could be building blocks for quantum computers

Diamonds are among the most expensive gems in the world, but they could also serve as a building block for quantum computers.Because diamonds are structurally sound, researchers believe they could eliminate some of the challenges involved in making stable quantum computers.The potential of quantum computers is enormous -- they could bring massive gains in computational power and ultimately replace today's PCs and servers.But universal quantum computers are still decades away, partly because of the complexity involved in building such systems. Quantum computers are considered notoriously unstable, but researchers working on ways to resolve existing material, programming, and hardware challenges.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft patent hints at a more human-like Cortana

A newly discovered Microsoft patent hints that Microsoft is developing more personalized, "human-like" responses for Cortana, so she sounds less generic and speaks to the user directly using personal information.  The patent describes how user-specific information and contextual information is retrieved by querying a user profile database and one or more services, which generates a personalized greeting based on user-specific information, such as user inferences and interests, and the contextual information to generate the personalized greetings for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best Deals of the Week, October 31st – November 4th – Deal Alert

Best Deals of the Week, October 31st - November 4thCheck out this roundup of the best deals on gadgets, gear and other cool stuff we have found this week, the week of October 24th. All items are highly rated, and dramatically discounted.43% off NETGEAR AC750 WiFi Range ExtenderBoost the range of your existing WiFi and create a stronger signal in hard-to-reach areas with a WiFi range extender like this one from Netgear, which is highly rated and currently discounted 43% on Amazon. . This compact AC750 wall-plug WiFi booster delivers AC dual band WiFi up to 750 Mbps, and is small and discreet, easily blending into your home decor. Well over 13,000 people have reviewed the AC750 on Amazon (read reviews) and have given it an average of 4 out of 5 stars. Right now its list price of $70 has been reduced to $40. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best Deals of the Week, October 31st – November 4th – Deal Alert

Best Deals of the Week, October 31st - November 4thCheck out this roundup of the best deals on gadgets, gear and other cool stuff we have found this week, the week of October 24th. All items are highly rated, and dramatically discounted.43% off NETGEAR AC750 WiFi Range ExtenderBoost the range of your existing WiFi and create a stronger signal in hard-to-reach areas with a WiFi range extender like this one from Netgear, which is highly rated and currently discounted 43% on Amazon. . This compact AC750 wall-plug WiFi booster delivers AC dual band WiFi up to 750 Mbps, and is small and discreet, easily blending into your home decor. Well over 13,000 people have reviewed the AC750 on Amazon (read reviews) and have given it an average of 4 out of 5 stars. Right now its list price of $70 has been reduced to $40. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BGP Tools for the DFZ (1)

Why isn’t inbound load balancing working the way I expect? Why are users having a hard time reaching my web site? What is that strange advertisement I see in my local routing table, and where does it lead? The Default Free Zone (DFZ), the land where there is no default route from the edge of the Internet to the core, can seem like an intimidating place to work. There are, however, a number of tools that can help you discover what is going on with your routes, where routes are coming from, and other information. This short series of posts will provide an overview of these tools, and some use cases along the way to help you understand how and where to use them.

Note: throughout this series, I’m going to be using the LinkedIn AS number and routes, as well as the AS numbers of other public companies for illustration. I’m deviating from my normal practice of using addresses and AS numbers reserved for documentation in order to make it possible for readers to perform the same actions and get something like the same results. Do not use these addresses or AS numbers in your network!

Let’s start by Continue reading

US election day faces specter of cyberattacks

Don't be surprised if hackers make their presence felt on U.S. Election Day. Distributed denial-of-service attacks and high-profile leaks are among the tactics they might use if they try to influence Tuesday's vote. Cybersecurity experts stress it would be incredibly difficult to hack the U.S. election. The system itself is distributed across the country over thousands of voting jurisdictions, making it hard to tamper with on a wide scale.     But hackers could still attempt to sow chaos on Election Day in other ways. The tools and infrastructure to do so are already in place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US election day faces specter of cyberattacks

Don't be surprised if hackers make their presence felt on U.S. Election Day. Distributed denial-of-service attacks and high-profile leaks are among the tactics they might use if they try to influence Tuesday's vote. Cybersecurity experts stress it would be incredibly difficult to hack the U.S. election. The system itself is distributed across the country over thousands of voting jurisdictions, making it hard to tamper with on a wide scale.     But hackers could still attempt to sow chaos on Election Day in other ways. The tools and infrastructure to do so are already in place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to reduce Windows 10’s on-disk footprint

While certain areas of the Windows file structure may be off-limits to direct action — most notably, deleting files inside the C:\Windows (or %windir%) folder — that doesn’t mean that savvy Windows admins and power users can’t selectively prune excess or obsolete files. You just need the right tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

No, Apple and Microsoft aren’t trading places

For the past couple of weeks, the interwebs have been buzzing with talk that Microsoft and Apple have somehow switched positions in the tech world. The formerly staid folks in Redmond, so the theory goes, are now the cool technology innovators, while the once audacious corps in Cupertino has been reduced to milking existing cash cows.The idea got rolling in reaction to a provocative post by legendary entrepreneur Steve Blank, who compared Tim Cook’s regime as Apple’s designated caretaker following Steve Jobs to the long, slow decline at Microsoft under Steve Ballmer, Bill Gate’s designated replacement. And the meme took off with the dueling announcements of Microsoft’s slick new Surface Studio computer and Apple’s underwhelming update of its Macbook Pro laptop. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers can abuse LTE protocols to knock phones off networks

When you travel between countries, the mobile operators that temporarily provide service to your phone need to communicate with your operator back home. This is done over a global interconnection network where most traffic still uses an ageing protocol, called SS7, that's known to be vulnerable to location tracking, eavesdropping, fraud, denial of service (DoS), SMS interception and other attacks.With the advance of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks, some roaming traffic is switching to a newer protocol, called Diameter, that's more secure than SS7 in theory, but which still allows for attacks if it's not deployed with additional security mechanisms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers can abuse LTE protocols to knock phones off networks

When you travel between countries, the mobile operators that temporarily provide service to your phone need to communicate with your operator back home. This is done over a global interconnection network where most traffic still uses an ageing protocol, called SS7, that's known to be vulnerable to location tracking, eavesdropping, fraud, denial of service (DoS), SMS interception and other attacks.With the advance of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks, some roaming traffic is switching to a newer protocol, called Diameter, that's more secure than SS7 in theory, but which still allows for attacks if it's not deployed with additional security mechanisms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What’s with application monitoring? Another company picks up a monster funding round

An interesting thing is going on in the application and infrastructure monitoring space. A ton of money is being poured into the various vendors in the market, and all of those vendors are rapidly morphing their platforms to provide holistic monitoring functionality. No longer is it just about application monitoring or infrastructure monitoring in isolation. What is de rigueur today is combined monitoring that provides the often-talked about “single pane of glass” across all of an organizations assets.+ Also on Network World: Infrastructure monitoring products: Users pinpoint the best and worst features + It’s a fairly busy space—New Relic, DataDog, AppDynamics and a host of others compete. And to that list we must add Wavefront, a Silicon Valley company that recently scored an impressive $52 million by way of a Series B funding round. The company advises that their valuation increased four times compared to their Series A round—no down valuations for this player. It also scored top-shelf investors, existing investors Sequoia Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures were joined by new investor Tenaya Capital and other equity holders.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Tesco Bank breach causes 20,000 customers to lose money

The fine details are still murky, but news surfaced in the last day or two that Tesco Bank, a U.K.-based bank owned by the Tesco supermarket chain, suffered some sort of widespread fraud. The bank’s CEO, Benny Higgins, told Radio 4 that around 40,000 of the bank’s 7 million accounts had seen “some sort of suspicious transactions.” Of those, around 20,000 customers have actually lost money from their bank accounts. In the interview, the CEO told the BBC he was “very hopeful” that customers would be refunded the lost funds. What he didn’t say is that I am sure he is also “very hopeful” that once this all washes up he and his IT team will still have jobs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Tesco Bank breach causes 20,000 customers to lose money

The fine details are still murky, but news surfaced in the last day or two that Tesco Bank, a U.K.-based bank owned by the Tesco supermarket chain, suffered some sort of widespread fraud. The bank’s CEO, Benny Higgins, told Radio 4 that around 40,000 of the bank’s 7 million accounts had seen “some sort of suspicious transactions.” Of those, around 20,000 customers have actually lost money from their bank accounts. In the interview, the CEO told the BBC he was “very hopeful” that customers would be refunded the lost funds. What he didn’t say is that I am sure he is also “very hopeful” that once this all washes up he and his IT team will still have jobs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New app for HoloLens targets architects

Architects have a new reason to pick up Microsoft's HoloLens, after the launch of an app aimed at helping them explore 3D models of buildings.Trimble launched its SketchUp Viewer app for Microsoft's headset on Monday, which will allow people to use the HoloLens's augmented reality capabilities for viewing models created in SketchUp. The app will have two modes: one that allows people to view a scaled-down version of the model using the HoloLens, and another that allows them to view what a building modeled in SketchUp would look like from the inside.Deploying a HoloLens with SketchUp Viewer will cost businesses a pretty penny. The app costs US$1,500, on top of the HoloLens's whopping $3,000 price tag. Still, it's a new and different way for people to visualize models in a way they couldn't before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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