Tim Cook’s first 5 years: Apple’s CEO on failure and why he still believes in surprises

We hear from Apple CEO Tim Cook during the company’s quarterly earnings calls, but lately the leader of Apple has been opening up in ways that non-analysts can understand. First he sat down with Fast Company, and on Monday an in-depth Washington Post interview on Cook’s 5-year anniversary as CEO offered more insight into the company’s past failures and future surprises. A lot has changed in the last five years, Cook told the Post. Steve Jobs passed away just six weeks after Cook took the reins, which came as a shock, he said. Apple expanded its product lineup after Jobs’s death, and some of those devices were conceived of and developed entirely without Jobs’s input. Apple just sold its 1 billionth iPhone, even as analysts and investors fret over the smartphone’s declining revenue. There are bigger changes in store, Cook said, though he played coy as usual.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Where Clinton and Trump stand on tech issues

This presidential election presents one of the clearest choices in U.S. history between two major-party candidates. But one thing has been rarely discussed: Where do the candidates stand on tech issues? Whether it’s net neutrality, investing in tech infrastructure, building an educational pipeline of tech workers, privacy or any of several other tech issues, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton take very different approaches. It’s worth looking at their varied stances. Let’s start with net neutrality. For Clinton, it’s straightforward. She supports the FCC’s rulings in favor of net neutrality. Trump opposes the concept. His primary statement on the matter came in a tweet in which he called President Obama’s support of net neutrality an “attack on the internet.” His full tweet is: “Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Expedia.com was built on machine learning

Expedia has grown far beyond a search engine for flights -- it's now the parent company of a dozen travel brands including Trivago and Hotels.com -- but according to VP of global product David Fleischman, machine learning has always been at the heart of the company's operations.The business of delivering quality flight search results is tough, and Fleischman describes it as an "unbounded computer science problem". The reason for this is because flight itineraries and schedules are constantly changing, and Expedia's proprietary 'best fare search' (BFS) has to 'learn' and adapt all the time.The extent of the problem can be summed up by one statistic. The average Expedia.com flight search will take three seconds to deliver results. In those three seconds you will see, on average, 16,000 flight options, in order of convenience or price or time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Expedia.com was built on machine learning

Expedia has grown far beyond a search engine for flights -- it's now the parent company of a dozen travel brands including Trivago and Hotels.com -- but according to VP of global product David Fleischman, machine learning has always been at the heart of the company's operations.The business of delivering quality flight search results is tough, and Fleischman describes it as an "unbounded computer science problem". The reason for this is because flight itineraries and schedules are constantly changing, and Expedia's proprietary 'best fare search' (BFS) has to 'learn' and adapt all the time.The extent of the problem can be summed up by one statistic. The average Expedia.com flight search will take three seconds to deliver results. In those three seconds you will see, on average, 16,000 flight options, in order of convenience or price or time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

End to free upgrade halts rapid Windows 10 growth

As expected, Windows 10's usage share growth sank after Microsoft ended the free upgrade it had offered customers for the past year. According to analytics vendor StatCounter, Windows 10's week-over-week gains in the first two weeks of August were 0.13 and 0.15 percentage points, respectively. The increases were the smallest of any two-week span this year, with the exception of two different times -- in April, again in July -- when Windows 10's share fell from one week to the next. If the remainder of August plays out the same as the first half, Windows 10 will post a one-month increase about a third of July's and approximately a fourth of June's.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft acknowledges Anniversary Update causes freezing

After a lot of anecdotal reports, Microsoft acknowledged there is a problem with the Anniversary Update to Windows 10 causing PCs to freeze up. However, it says the problem is isolated to a specific PC configuration.In a Windows forum post, Microsoft claims the freezing issue is experienced only on computers with SSDs where apps are installed on a different drive than the one where Windows 10 is installed. The obvious workaround is to move all apps to the drive where Windows 10 is located, and the company actually recommends this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel is leaving PCs behind to highlight VR and IoT at IDF

For decades, PCs were at the center of Intel's business, but not anymore.Self-driving cars, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are more attractive to Intel, which no longer views PCs as a priority. That's the message the company will try to deliver at Intel Developer Forum, starting on Tuesday.IDF attendees will see drones fly around and robots roaming the floor, and they will be able to try on cool wearables and VR and AR (augmented reality) headsets.Unlike past years, attendees won't be wowed with a lot of blazing laptops and desktops running upcoming PC processors. Instead, Intel will provide an insight into its internet-of-things and data-center strategies. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

36% off KDLINKS X1 Full-HD 1920×1080 Wide Angle Car Dashboard Cam with GPS – Deal Alert

The X1 car dash camera from KDLINKS currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 2,400 customers (read reviews). It records full-HD Video 1920x1080 at 30 fps, and features a super wide 165° viewing angle. It starts recording immediately after turning on the ignition, and records in a continuous loop, however there is an emergency "lock" feature that can be enabled and will prevent overwriting. It has a motion detection system as well as a night mode ensuring high quality recordings even in poor lighting conditions. A built-in GPS module records GPS data along with your video, so you can review vehicle location, route, and speed information using the KDLINKS software package. A suction-cup style mount allows the camera to rotate 360-degrees, so it can record inside the car, or even while facing the window if desired. The X1's typical list price of $270 has been reduced by 36% to $170 on Amazon. Learn more about the discounted X1 auto dash cam, or buy it now, on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Much ado about the ransomware scourge

The Federal Trade Commission said it will hold a public workshop about all things ransomware on Sept. 7.“With alarming frequency, ransomware hackers are sneaking into consumer and business computers, encrypting files containing photos, documents and other important data, and then demanding a ransom in exchange for the key needed to decrypt the files. Consumers, businesses, and government agencies are falling prey to these schemes, including hospitals whose servers may contain sensitive patient data. New forms of ransomware encrypt files of website operators, threatening not only their files containing stored data, but the very files needed to operate their websites. Other variants of ransomware are now targeting files on mobile devices,” the FTC wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Much ado about the ransomware scourge

The Federal Trade Commission said it will hold a public workshop about all things ransomware on Sept. 7.“With alarming frequency, ransomware hackers are sneaking into consumer and business computers, encrypting files containing photos, documents and other important data, and then demanding a ransom in exchange for the key needed to decrypt the files. Consumers, businesses, and government agencies are falling prey to these schemes, including hospitals whose servers may contain sensitive patient data. New forms of ransomware encrypt files of website operators, threatening not only their files containing stored data, but the very files needed to operate their websites. Other variants of ransomware are now targeting files on mobile devices,” the FTC wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Much ado about the ransomware scourge

The Federal Trade Commission said it will hold a public workshop about all things ransomware on Sept. 7.“With alarming frequency, ransomware hackers are sneaking into consumer and business computers, encrypting files containing photos, documents and other important data, and then demanding a ransom in exchange for the key needed to decrypt the files. Consumers, businesses, and government agencies are falling prey to these schemes, including hospitals whose servers may contain sensitive patient data. New forms of ransomware encrypt files of website operators, threatening not only their files containing stored data, but the very files needed to operate their websites. Other variants of ransomware are now targeting files on mobile devices,” the FTC wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s big cloud win

IBM today announced that Workday, the popular SaaS-based enterprise application company, will use the SoftLayer cloud as its primary development platform for new applications as part of a multi-year deal worth an undisclosed amount.The move is significant because it comes on the heels of another major SaaS vendor – Salesforce.com – announcing it chose Amazon Web Services as its development partner earlier this year. SaaS vendors are buddying up with IaaS providers to help build out their future applications.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Why Salesforce linking up with Amazon is a big deal in the cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

12% off Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Graphics Calculator – Deal Alert

If a graphic calculator is somewhere on your list, consider this 12% discount on the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus graphing calculator. Building on the hugely popular TI-83 Plus, which is perhaps the best-selling calculator of all time, the TI-84 Plus is completely compatible with its predecessor. From that well-established platform, this new model adds more speed (a processor that's 2.5 times faster), more memory (24 KB RAM and 480 KB of Flash ROM), an enhanced high-contrast display (eight lines by 16 characters), and more Apps. Newly added "USB on the go" feature lets you share with other calculators, or connect to a PC or presentation tool. Ideal for middle school through college. The TI-84 Plus currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 2,900 customers (read reviews). Save 12% off the regular $100 list price on Amazon, and buy it now for $88. Oh, and it might not hurt to drop this in your cart while you're there: Ti-84 Plus Graphing Calculator For Dummies. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

snaproute Go BGP Code Dive (8): Moving to Open

Last week we left off with our BGP peer in connect state after looking through what this code, around line 261 of fsm.go in snaproute’s Go BGP implementation—

func (st *ConnectState) processEvent(event BGPFSMEvent, data interface{}) {
  switch event {
  ....
    case BGPEventConnRetryTimerExp:
      st.fsm.StopConnToPeer()
      st.fsm.StartConnectRetryTimer()
      st.fsm.InitiateConnToPeer()
....

What we want to do this week is pick up our BGP peering process, and figure out what the code does next. In this particular case, the next step in the process is fairly simple to find, because it’s just another case in the switch statement in (st *ConnectState) processEvent—

case BGPEventTcpCrAcked, BGPEventTcpConnConfirmed:
  st.fsm.StopConnectRetryTimer()
  st.fsm.SetPeerConn(data)
  st.fsm.sendOpenMessage()
  st.fsm.SetHoldTime(st.fsm.neighborConf.RunningConf.HoldTime,
    st.fsm.neighborConf.RunningConf.KeepaliveTime)
  st.fsm.StartHoldTimer()
  st.BaseState.fsm.ChangeState(NewOpenSentState(st.BaseState.fsm))
....

This looks like the right place—we’re looking at events that occur while in the connect state, and the result seems to be sending an open message. Before we move down this path, however, I’d like to be certain I’m chasing the right call chain, or logical thread. How can I do this? This code is called when (st *ConnectState) processEvent is called with an event Continue reading

Cisco uncovers security threat in industrial control system

Cisco’s security intelligence and research group Talos, said that it had reported a serious vulnerability in Rockwell Automation’s industrial control system – the MicroLogix 1400 programmable logic controller (PLC).The Simple Network Management Protocol exploit could let an attacker take complete remote control of the MicroLogix system and modify the device firmware, letting an invader run his own malicious code on the device.   Rockwell Automation Rockwell Automation’s MicroLogix systemTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco uncovers security threat in industrial control system

Cisco’s security intelligence and research group Talos, said that it had reported a serious vulnerability in Rockwell Automation’s industrial control system – the MicroLogix 1400 programmable logic controller (PLC).The Simple Network Management Protocol exploit could let an attacker take complete remote control of the MicroLogix system and modify the device firmware, letting an invader run his own malicious code on the device.   Rockwell Automation Rockwell Automation’s MicroLogix systemTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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