Amazon Echo and its competitors will be a $2.1 billion market by 2020

The Amazon Echo and newly announced Google Home may seem like toys today, but research firm Gartner believes these kinds of wireless speakers enabled with virtual personal assistant (VPA) technology are poised for significant growth.According to Gartner, natural language chat-bot VPA interfaces (including Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana) will power the market from just $360 million in 2015 (almost entirely dominated by the Echo) to more than $2 billion in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ETSI Releases Its Open Source MANO Software Stack

Think of it as ETSI NFV's cousin.

Yahoo may have allowed US government to search user emails

Yahoo has reportedly searched through all of its users' incoming emails with a secret software program that's designed to ferret out information for U.S. government agencies.The software program, which was created last year, has scanned hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, according to a Tuesday report from Reuters.Yahoo reportedly created the program to comply with a U.S. classified government directive. It's unclear if the mass email searching program is still in use."Yahoo is a law-abiding company and complies with the laws of the United States," the company said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Palo Alto Networks Thinks It Can Grow Just Fine Without Acquisitions

30% annual growth is the long-term target.

Reaction: The Power of Unintended Consequences #49687

Warning, some philosophy may have unintentionally slipped into this post…

There are few things in life that ever really change; rather, we are held captive to what appears to be a surprisingly small set of rules that have lasted at least as long as writing seems to have been around, and—if the history of humanity described in writing is any guide—as long as humans have existed (regardless of your thoughts on that particular topic). One of them, for instance, is that there’s nothing truly new; take these few lines, for instance—

A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what Continue reading

Ericsson Slashes 3,000 Jobs in Sweden, Consolidates Manufacturing Sites

About 800 of the job cuts will occur in R&D.

After Mozilla inquiry, Apple untrusts Chinese certificate authority

Following a Mozilla-led investigation that found multiple problems in the SSL certificate issuance process of WoSign, a China-based certificate authority, Apple will make modifications to the iOS and macOS to block future certificates issued by the company.Although there is no WoSign root certificate in Apple's trusted certificate store, a WoSign intermediate CA certificate is cross-signed by two other CAs that Apple trusts: StartCom and Comodo. This means that until now Apple products have automatically trusted certificates issued through the WoSign intermediate CA.Because WoSign experienced multiple control failures in their certificate issuance processes for the WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2 intermediate CA, "we are taking action to protect users in an upcoming security update," Apple said in support notes for both iOS and macOS. "Apple products will no longer trust the WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2 intermediate CA."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Level 3 acknowledges network outage

Social networks exploded Tuesday morning with customer inquiries and complaints because of a Level 3 Communications network outage across the United States.Though by noon, reports had started spilling out that service was returning in certain spots.MORE: 2016 Technology Industry GraveyardIt appears the outage started around 11AM EST, and according to the outage tracker Downdetector, hot spots on a heat map appear particularly colorful up and down the east coast and in California. Reports also surfaced of outages at Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and other service providers, possibly because of their use of Level 3 infrastructure, a major Internet backbone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Automation: Disrupt or be disrupted

IDG Contributor Network: Compuware says there’s life left in mainframes

I spend a lot of time talking to organizations about disruption and the fact that no matter what industry they’re in, there is an equivalent to Uber breathing down their neck just waiting to destroy them. Normally these conversations end up with defensive legacy IT practitioners finding a million reasons why agile and innovative couldn’t happen in their setting—to much compliance, too many core systems, too much of a “slow and steady” business.Don't get me wrong: While I’m a huge fan of webscale approaches to IT, commodity infrastructure, and moving up the value chain, I’m still well aware that many of the world’s most critical systems—from banking to air travel—run on big old traditional mainframes and that forklifting these applications onto new architectures is hard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Decryption mandates and global internet freedom

The debate over law enforcement and widespread strong encryption implicates powerful competing values. On one side, the liberty, privacy, and cybersecurity of American consumers and companies; on the other, the need to investigate serious crimes and protect the country against terrorism. Should companies be compelled to weaken their products (as most technologists see it)? Does the Fourth Amendment’s “balance” require that law enforcement retain the ability to access data covered by a search warrant? Does law enforcement really need such a mandate to investigate effectively? Does the First Amendment permit Congress to enact a ban on encoding one’s communications? Would such a ban be effective given the proliferation of new, powerful, easily accessible encryption technologies, including many created by foreign companies? —Hoover Institute

The post Worth Reading: Decryption mandates and global internet freedom appeared first on 'net work.

52% off Blitzu Cyborg Ultra Bright USB Rechargable Bike Light – Deal Alert

The Blitzu Cyborg 168T Bike Tail light features 50 micro-LED chips, and emits up to 168 Lumens. It is simple to install and you can mount this rear light anywhere you want in seconds, such as the handlebar, the seat post or anywhere on the frame.Stop wasting your money and never buy batteries again. The Cyborg 168T bicycle rear light charges from your computer or any device with a USB port. It only takes 2 hours to fully charge.  The Blitzu Cyborg 168T Bike Light averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews) from over 1,000 customers.  Amazon indicates that its typical list price of $39.99 has been reduced by 52% to just $18.82. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

You have one month to buy a Windows 7 (or 8.1) PC

It's time to bow to the inevitable: PC OEMs will cease selling machines pre-loaded with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 at the end of this month. The only PCs for sale after that will be leftover inventory, and once they are gone, it's an all-Windows 10 world.Microsoft does this with every operating system, and given that Windows 7 is now 7 years old, it was certainly time. It had pushed off its end of life by two years after the Windows 8 disaster, just like it had to extend Windows XP following Vista.Business users will still have the option of downgrading your Windows 10 machine to Windows 7, of course, and Microsoft is committed to supporting Windows 7 until 2020. You need installation media for Windows 7, and you’ll have to activate the system manually, but you probably already knew that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers can remotely exploit insulin pump for unauthorized insulin injections

Rapid7 and Johnson & Johnson disclosed three vulnerabilities in the Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump system, flaws which could be remotely exploited. However, the attack is sophisticated and both say the risk of exploitation is “relatively low.”OneTouch Ping is a medical device which comes with a wireless remote control that patients can use to deliver insulin instead of accessing the device under their clothes. The Johnson & Johnson Animas device is described as a “two-part system;” the pump and a meter remote which communicates wirelessly via RF communication “to deliver insulin from the pump.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

These 5 states account for half of business R&D spending

California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas and Washington account for more than half of the $255 billion in corporate R&D paid for and conducted in the United States, according to the National Science Foundation. California alone accounted for 30% of the funding. As with so many government reports, the data in this report is actually based on information a few years old due to the collection and analysis process, so in this case we're talking 2013. You can get into the gory details in the new report from the NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. MORE: Microsoft puts AI front and center with research overhaulTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tight IT job market means employers will pay more

It's common knowledge that an IT career pays well. But if you're an IT pro looking for a new role, your paycheck could get a whole lot heftier.IT staffing company Modis surveyed 500 IT professionals responsible for key decisions, including hiring, between August 1 and August 9, 2016. The research, Tech Trends: IT Leaders and the Employment Market, shows that approximately 32 percent of IT organizations are willing to offer a 10 percent to 15 percent salary increase to currently employed IT professionals in an effort to attract elite talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Making The Case For Containers

Linux container technology is IT’s shiny new thing. Containers promise to ease application development and deployment, a necessity in a business environment where getting ahead of application demand can mean the difference between staying in business or not. Containers offer many benefits, but they are not a panacea, and it’s important to understand why, where and when to use them.

Most IT pros recognize that application containers can provide a technological edge, one that translates into a clear business advantage. Containers unify and streamline application components – including the libraries and binaries upon which individual applications depend. Combining isolation with …

Making The Case For Containers was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Salesforce will buy Krux to expand behavioral tracking capabilities

Salesforce.com has agreed to buy user data management platform Krux Digital, potentially allowing businesses to process even more data in their CRM systems.Krux describes its business as "capturing, unifying, and activating data signatures across every device and every channel, in real time."Essentially, it performs the tracking underlying behavioral advertising, handling 200 billion "data collection events" on three billion browsers and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet and set-top) each month.With that staggering volume of data, "Krux will extend the Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s audience segmentation and targeting capabilities to power consumer marketing with even more precision, at scale," Krux CEO and co-founder Tom Chavez wrote on the company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: SoftLayer founder’s new company, StackPath, releases app security product

It’s always interesting to see what happens when a high-profile CEO sells his company and then finishes up his earn-out period. There are a few different models: some individuals go buy an island, start making films or go on permanent vacation. Others take some time to work out what they’re going to do and maybe take an entrepreneur-in-residence position for a time, while others jump straight back into the shark tank.+ Also on Network World: Application-layer DDoS attacks will increase, Kaspersky Labs predicts +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Salesforce kicks off its conference with mobile, IoT updates and more

Salesforce's annual Dreamforce mega-conference kicks off in San Francisco on Tuesday morning, and the company will announce a slew of updates to its apps and services. The company is enhancing its mobile apps, launching deeper integrations between Salesforce and Quip and improving its services for processing IoT data. All of these new features are aimed at leveling up Salesforce's feature set at a time when the company faces fierce competition from tech titans like Microsoft and Oracle, along with a fleet of startups. The Salesforce1 app for iOS will be updated to let managers see how their employees are matching up against their quotas and how sales are stacking up against projections and quotas. In addition, companies will be able to pay extra for a My Salesforce1 functionality that lets them deploy their own version of the app with their own branding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here