Don’t Trust Hotel Currency Conversion

Experienced travelers will already know this, but it bears repeating: Don’t trust your hotel to perform currency conversions for credit card transactions. They will rip you off. Leave it to the credit card company.

A few months ago I stayed at a Sheraton hotel in Australia. They swiped my credit card when I checked in, and on check out they asked if I wished to pay with that same card. I did, so I didn’t need to swipe my card again. They sent me an invoice for approximately $265 AUD.

A few weeks later I was processing my expenses, and I realised I’d been charged over $300 NZD. With the exchange rate at the time, it should have been about $275. Looking closer, I realised that they had charged me in New Zealand dollars. They should have charged me in Australian dollars, and let my credit card company sort out the exchange rate.

What’s going on?

Some hotels offer you a choice of currency when paying your bill. This should be an option when you enter your PIN. Do not take this option. It is almost never a good idea. Your credit card company will charge you a fee for Continue reading

Don’t Trust Hotel Currency Conversion

Experienced travelers will already know this, but it bears repeating: Don’t trust your hotel to perform currency conversions for credit card transactions. They will rip you off. Leave it to the credit card company.

A few months ago I stayed at a Sheraton hotel in Australia. They swiped my credit card when I checked in, and on check out they asked if I wished to pay with that same card. I did, so I didn’t need to swipe my card again. They sent me an invoice for approximately $265 AUD.

A few weeks later I was processing my expenses, and I realised I’d been charged over $300 NZD. With the exchange rate at the time, it should have been about $275. Looking closer, I realised that they had charged me in New Zealand dollars. They should have charged me in Australian dollars, and let my credit card company sort out the exchange rate.

What’s going on?

Some hotels offer you a choice of currency when paying your bill. This should be an option when you enter your PIN. Do not take this option. It is almost never a good idea. Your credit card company will charge you a fee for Continue reading

Meet Apache Spot, a new open source project for cybersecurity

Hard on the heels of the discovery of the largest known data breach in history, Cloudera and Intel on Wednesday announced that they've donated a new open source project to the Apache Software Foundation with a focus on using big data analytics and machine learning for cybersecurity.Originally created by Intel and launched as the Open Network Insight (ONI) project in February, the effort is now called Apache Spot and has been accepted into the ASF Incubator."The idea is, let's create a common data model that any application developer can take advantage of to bring new analytic capabilities to bear on cybersecurity problems," Mike Olson, Cloudera co-founder and chief strategy officer, told an audience at the Strata+Hadoop World show in New York. "This is a big deal, and could have a huge impact around the world."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Meet Apache Spot, a new open source project for cybersecurity

Hard on the heels of the discovery of the largest known data breach in history, Cloudera and Intel on Wednesday announced that they've donated a new open source project to the Apache Software Foundation with a focus on using big data analytics and machine learning for cybersecurity.Originally created by Intel and launched as the Open Network Insight (ONI) project in February, the effort is now called Apache Spot and has been accepted into the ASF Incubator."The idea is, let's create a common data model that any application developer can take advantage of to bring new analytic capabilities to bear on cybersecurity problems," Mike Olson, Cloudera co-founder and chief strategy officer, told an audience at the Strata+Hadoop World show in New York. "This is a big deal, and could have a huge impact around the world."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Exascale Capabilities Underpin Future of Energy Sector

Oil and natural resource discovery and production is an incredibly risky endeavor, with the cost of simply finding a new barrel of oil tripling over the last ten years. Discovery teams want to ensure they are only drilling in the most lucrative locations, which these days means looking to increasingly inaccessible (for a bevy of reasons) sources for hydrocarbons.

Even with renewable resources like wind, there are still major financial risks. An accurate prediction of shifting output and location for expensive turbines are two early-stage challenges, and maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing those turbines is an ongoing pressure.

The common thread …

Exascale Capabilities Underpin Future of Energy Sector was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

How Uber Manages a Million Writes Per Second Using Mesos and Cassandra Across Multiple Datacenters

If you are Uber and you need to store the location data that is sent out every 30 seconds by both driver and rider apps, what do you do? That’s a lot of real-time data that needs to be used in real-time.

Uber’s solution is comprehensive. They built their own system that runs Cassandra on top of Mesos. It’s all explained in a good talk by Abhishek Verma, Software Engineer at Uber: Cassandra on Mesos Across Multiple Datacenters at Uber (slides).

Is this something you should do too? That’s an interesting thought that comes to mind when listening to Abhishek’s talk.

Developers have a lot of difficult choices to make these days. Should we go all in on the cloud? Which one? Isn’t it too expensive? Do we worry about lock-in? Or should we try to have it both ways and craft brew a hybrid architecture? Or should we just do it all ourselves for fear of being cloud shamed by our board for not reaching 50 percent gross margins?

Uber decided to build their own. Or rather they decided to weld together their own system by fusing together two very capable open source components. What was Continue reading

Save 30% on Bowers & Wilkins P5 Mobile Headphones By Going Recertified – Deal Alert

In leading recording studios around the world, music that will soon be heard everywhere is first heard through Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers. With these P5 mobile hi-fi headphones, the sound you hear is completely natural – as close to the sound of the original recording as they can possibly take you. There are no gimmicky effects like exaggerated bass or artificially enhanced treble, which become tiring with extended listening. A closed-back design with rigid metal faceplates and sealed earpads ensures that all the detail and dynamic range of your music is kept intact, while preserving just enough ambient sound to give you a sense of place. Perfect for listening to music on the go, P5's high-quality sound and luxury materials are supported by smart design and user-friendly features. The P5s average 4 out of 5 stars from over 280 people on Amazon (read reviews). Their typical list price is $241.53, but if you buy them recertified you save 30% and get them for just $167.99. B&W recertified products have been tested and updated to ensure they meet Bowers & Wilkins high quality standards, and all recertified products come with a two-year warranty. See the recertified P5s now on Continue reading

Down the rabbit hole, part 2: To ensure security and privacy, open source is required

I am currently embarking on a quest to make my entire life as private and secure as possible—while still having a good time and enjoying the fruits of the modern world. In this article, I won’t go into why I am doing this. For that, see my article introducing this endeavor.What I’d like to talk about right now are some pretty high-level things—laying out the ground rules, if you will, for what I’m trying to accomplish.First, let me start by saying none of this is about open source or free software. Licensing of software, while extremely important, is not the focus here. This is about privacy and security and absolutely nothing else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Down the rabbit hole, part 2: To ensure security and privacy, open source is required

I am currently embarking on a quest to make my entire life as private and secure as possible—while still having a good time and enjoying the fruits of the modern world. In this article, I won’t go into why I am doing this. For that, see my article introducing this endeavor.What I’d like to talk about right now are some pretty high-level things—laying out the ground rules, if you will, for what I’m trying to accomplish.First, let me start by saying none of this is about open source or free software. Licensing of software, while extremely important, is not the focus here. This is about privacy and security and absolutely nothing else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Hollywood and ‘net neutrality

70% of all U.S. bandwidth – is consumed by video streaming. Netflix all by itself – uses 37%. Netflix and YouTube-owning-Google all by themselves – use 50%. And Amazon – in addition to their inordinately busy online shopping mega-mall – offers video-content-streaming Amazon Prime. And thanks to uber-stupid Net Neutrality – these bandwidth hogs don’t have to pay for their unlimited time at the trough. Even though they’re consuming more than half the bill of fare. —Heartland

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Creepy clowns cause sheriff to consult with FBI and Homeland Security

If you are going to be dressing up in a costume for Halloween, you might want to avoid dressing like a creepy clown, considering the sinister clown hysteria sweeping the nation. You don’t want to wear a clown costume in Kentucky where a sheriff contacted the FBI and Homeland Security over the “creepy clown” threat. In fact, in Gallatin County, Kentucky, the sheriff warned that people behind “clown threats” might face charges of “inducing panic and terroristic threatening.”Pennywise from Stephen King’s It really ruined clowns for a lot of people, changing their opinion of clowns from funny or cute to scary and creepy as can be. When the evil clown craze first started cranking up, some people suggested the clown sightings were pranks tied to some sort of promotion for the upcoming film It. Others suggested the clown sightings were inspired by Rob Zombie’s film 31, which includes kidnapped hostages trying to survive a violent game against a gang of sadistic clowns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Creepy clowns cause sheriff to consult with FBI and Homeland Security

If you are going to be dressing up in a costume for Halloween, then you might want to avoid dressing like a creepy clown, considering the sinister clown hysteria sweeping the nation. You don’t want to wear a clown costume in Kentucky where a sheriff contacted the FBI and Homeland Security over the “creepy clown” threat. In fact, in Gallatin County, Kentucky, the sheriff warned that people behind “clown threats” might face charges of “inducing panic and terroristic threatening.”Pennywise from Stephen King’s It really ruined clowns for a lot of people, changing their opinion of clowns from funny or cute to scary and creepy as can be. When the evil clown craze first started cranking up, some people suggested the clown sightings were pranks tied to some sort of promotion for the upcoming film It. Others suggested the clown sightings were inspired by Rob Zombie’s film 31, which includes kidnapped hostages trying to survive a violent game against a gang of sadistic clowns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BlackBerry stops making hardware, but BlackBerry phones live on

BlackBerry is getting out of the hardware business, but this isn’t the end of BlackBerry phones—or at least not yet.As part of its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, the company announced that it would soon end all hardware development. Instead, BlackBerry phone production and design will be outsourced to third parties.“We are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in a written statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How UPS delivers predictive analytics

UPS operates in more than 220 countries and territories with more than 1,800 facilities, with a delivery fleet of over 100,000 ground vehicles and over 500 aircraft (both owned and charter). So when the company’s vice president of IT Kim Felix talks about the challenge of building a business intelligence system to manage UPS’s transportation network, you can imagine the size and scale of data she’s dealing with — 8,700 events per second, every second of the day, Felix says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Customers have a love/hate relationship with IT outsourcing providers

HPE Outsourcing once again garnered the highest Net Promoter (NPS) score among IT service providers according to a 2016 analysis of NPS scores among corporate technology vendors recently published by the Temkin Group. However, its merger with CSC could shakes its customer experience standing.A company’s NPS is considered a measure of customer loyalty and has been proven by some to be a leading indicator of corporate growth. Customers are asked to rank the likelihood they would recommend a brand to a friend or colleague on a scale of 1-10. Those who answer 9 or 10 are considered promoters: loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others the company, thereby fueling growth. Respondents who answer 7 or 8 are considered passive customers: satisfied, but unenthusiastic and vulnerable to competitive offerings. Those who answer between 0 and 6 are detractors: unhappy customers who can damage a brand and impede growth with their negative word of mouth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Matching IT priorities with IT realities

Fall is back-to-school time, though for those of us who aren’t going back to school, it’s a really good time to reassess 2016 priorities and budgets to see what projects can get done by the end of the year. It’s good to take stock to see what’s been accomplished this year, and see what priorities should take precedence before the new year (and a new budget) approaches.At the beginning of 2016, some CIO priorities for the year included standardization, integration, faster service delivery, more innovation and better IT and business alignment. No problem, right? Right—unless you’re actually working, day to day, to keep networks and apps up and running for users. That makes it a lot harder to achieve those lofty goals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Matching IT priorities with IT realities

Fall is back-to-school time, though for those of us who aren’t going back to school, it’s a really good time to reassess 2016 priorities and budgets to see what projects can get done by the end of the year. It’s good to take stock to see what’s been accomplished this year, and see what priorities should take precedence before the new year (and a new budget) approaches.At the beginning of 2016, some CIO priorities for the year included standardization, integration, faster service delivery, more innovation and better IT and business alignment. No problem, right? Right—unless you’re actually working, day to day, to keep networks and apps up and running for users. That makes it a lot harder to achieve those lofty goals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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