AI just co-wrote its first horror movie, and you can help make it real

AI has already been dabbling in the arts for some time, but recently it took a big step further and helped write its first feature-length horror film. Now its co-creators are seeking funding to bring the movie to life.Titled "Impossible Things," the story focuses on a family that moves to a secluded country home following the death of a young daughter. Madeline, the mother, stays home to renovate the house and care for her remaining two children, but she begins to hear voices. She also sees visions of a deranged woman and the ghost of a child remarkably similar to the one she lost.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft gives Office 365 a major upgrade

Microsoft has announced a number of features to be added to Office 365 users as part of the July 2016 update that are a group of "cloud-powered intelligent services" designed to save time and improve productivity for users of Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. The news came in an Office blog post by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.New to Word Word is getting two significant new features, called Researcher and Editor. As its name implies, Researcher is designed to help the user find reliable sources of information by using the Bing Knowledge Graph to search for sources, and it will properly cite them in the Word document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft just launched an iPhone camera app

There's a new iPhone camera application on the block that's supposed to be better at taking pictures than the one Apple ships with its phones ... and it's built by Microsoft. The company's research arm launched Pix, which enhances the photos that users take in a variety of ways, on Wednesday morning. The app is  designed to make photos look better and even improves on Apple's Live Photos ability to capture scenes that have moving elements in them. It's part of Microsoft's continued push to build applications for platforms beyond those that it controls directly, especially iOS and Android. The free app was built by members of Microsoft Research, and released for free on the iOS App Store.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NYTimes vs. DNCleaks

People keep citing this New York Times article by David Sanger that attributes the DNCleaks to Russia. As I've written before, this is propaganda, not journalism. It's against basic journalistic ethics to quote anonymous "federal officials" in a story like this. The Society of Professional Journalists repudiates this [1] [2]. The NYTime's own ombudsman has itself criticized David Sanger for this practice, and written guidelines to specifically ban it.

Quoting anonymous federal officials is great, when they disagree with government, when revealing government malfeasance, when it's something that people will get fired over.

But the opposite is happening here. It's either Obama himself or some faction within the administration that wants us to believe Russia is involved. They want us to believe the propaganda, then hide behind anonymity so we can't question them. This evades obvious questions, like whether all their information comes from the same public sources that already point to Russia, or whether they have their own information from the CIA or NSA that points to Russia.

Everyone knows the Washington press works this way, and that David Sanger in particular is a journalistic whore. The NetFlix series House of Cards portrays this accurately in its Continue reading

Dropbox aims for enterprise with new team and IT admin features

Continuing its effort to better appeal to enterprise users, Dropbox Wednesday announced new features aimed at making its cloud-based storage and collaboration platform easier for teams of workers to use and IT administrators to centrally control. +MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: The CIA, NSA and Pokémon Go | 10 ways to celebrate Sysadmin Day + Dropbox was one of the pioneers of the cloud computing market, beginning in 2007 as a consumer-oriented storage service with a simple user interface and automatic synchronization across devices. In 2013 the company launched Dropbox Business, it’s foray into the business market. Two years later Dropbox introduced its Enterprise edition. In the past few years Dropbox has hired an entire enterprise sales team and has devoted a portion of its engineering team to build products specifically for the enterprise market. The fruits of that work were announced today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky researchers love “Mr. Robot” hacker but claim no Snowden ties

Malware researchers for Kaspersky Lab took to Reddit’s IAmA chat today and pronounced an affection for the hacker-hero TV show “Mr. Robot” but not NSA hacker Edward Snowden.Responding to a question about how they like it, the team’s global director Costin Raiu says, “Mr Robot is a strong 9.5 for me. Most of the scenes are top class and the usage of tools, operating systems and other tiny details, from social engineering to opsec is very good. I guess having help from some real world security experts (the folks at Avast did a great job!”+More on Network World: Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky researchers love “Mr. Robot” hacker but claim no Snowden ties

Malware researchers for Kaspersky Lab took to Reddit’s IAmA chat today and pronounced an affection for the hacker-hero TV show “Mr. Robot” but not NSA hacker Edward Snowden.Responding to a question about how they like it, the team’s global director Costin Raiu says, “Mr Robot is a strong 9.5 for me. Most of the scenes are top class and the usage of tools, operating systems and other tiny details, from social engineering to opsec is very good. I guess having help from some real world security experts (the folks at Avast did a great job!”+More on Network World: Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How ‘citizen developers’ are closing the skills gap

Everyone's learning to code nowadays, but the rise of low-code development platforms are putting application and solution creation capabilities in the hands of even the least programming-savvy employees to help close the IT skills gap, drive efficiency and greater productivity. Welcome to the world of the "citizen developers."Power to the people In September 2015, QuickBase, an organization that has developed a low-code platform to allow for citizen development of enterprisurveyed 140 IT companiesse software, at its annual user conference and found that they were tapping into the expertise of "citizen developers," business pros who create apps and technology solutions for their organization, without any prior traditional coding skills. These professionals work together with IT to design apps tailored to their unique set of business and job role requirements to enable digital transformation and help reduce IT's growing application backlog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to benchmark your IT outsourcing vendor management skills

In the attempt to keep up with the pace of technology and business change today, most IT organizations are relying on a variety of external vendors. But orchestrating a mix of IT traditional providers, offshore outsourcing firms, and new cloud computing suppliers while keeping up with business demands requires a robust vendor management and governance practice.Outsourcing consultancy Alsbridge recently introduced a vendor management and governance self-assessment tool to help IT organizations gauge their effectiveness in the areas of contract management, financial management, performance management, relationship management, risk management and general strategy. Multi-sourcing management is an emerging discipline, says Alsbridge managing director Jeff Augustin, and companies are looking for ways to assess their own strengths and weaknesses in order to improve their service delivery management.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

After delays, Lenovo finally ships its first OLED laptop

After months of delays, Lenovo's first laptop with an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen is now shipping, but it's unclear whether the PC maker will bring out additional OLED models anytime soon.The ThinkPad X1 Yoga with a 14-inch OLED screen is now shipping for US$1,682, which is a premium price compared to the same model with a conventional LED screen, priced at $1,394. Both laptops have Intel Core i5 Skylake processors.The laptop has the largest OLED screen available. HP's Spectre x360 Convertible Laptop and Dell's Alienware 13 gaming laptop have 13.3-inch OLED screens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox levels up its features for administrators

IT administrators managing Dropbox deployments are supposed to have an easier time with it soon, thanks to improvements that the company announced Wednesday.The company is rolling out a redesigned interface for examining logs of user activity within an organization, new folders that make it easier to create and manage a shared workspace for teams and mobile access management capabilities.The move is part of Dropbox's push to get its product used by more large organizations, in addition to its strong base of consumer users. The company recently announced that it has more than 200,000 organizations subscribed to its business offering, and improving these capabilities is not only a means of helping existing users, but also a way to prove to new ones that the company is serious about reaching businesses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Donald Trump encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has called on Russia to hack his rival Hillary Clinton’s email. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. “I think you’ll probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Trumps remarks came as reporters questioned him about ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Security experts and government officials have suggested Russian hackers were behind a breach at the Democratic National Committee that lead to WikiLeaks publishing unflattering internal campaign emails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Donald Trump encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has called on Russia to hack his rival Hillary Clinton’s email. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. “I think you’ll probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Trumps remarks came as reporters questioned him about ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Security experts and government officials have suggested Russian hackers were behind a breach at the Democratic National Committee that lead to WikiLeaks publishing unflattering internal campaign emails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump eggs on Russian email hackers. What must David Kernell think?

Do you remember David Kernell? If not, we’ll get back to him in a second.First, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald Trump, this morning cheered Russian cybercriminals who are alleged to have hacked his Democratic opponent’s email and urged them to make public whatever they have stolen. Trump did this not over beers but in front of reporters at a press conference, after which he scolded one of the reporters to “be quiet” after she had the temerity to press him on whether a presidential candidate should be encouraging cybercrime.From a report on Talking Points Memo:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump eggs on Russian email hackers. What must David Kernell think?

Do you remember David Kernell? If not, we’ll get back to him in a second.First, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald Trump, this morning cheered Russian cybercriminals who are alleged to have hacked his Democratic opponent’s email and urged them to make public whatever they have stolen. Trump did this not over beers but in front of reporters at a press conference, after which he scolded one of the reporters to “be quiet” after she had the temerity to press him on whether a presidential candidate should be encouraging cybercrime.From a report on Talking Points Memo:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump eggs on Russian email hackers. What must David Kernell think?

Do you remember David Kernell? If not, we’ll get back to him in a second.First, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald Trump, this morning cheered Russian cybercriminals who are alleged to have hacked his Democratic opponent’s email and urged them to make public whatever they have stolen. Trump did this not over beers but in front of reporters at a press conference, after which he scolded one of the reporters to “be quiet” after she had the temerity to press him on whether a presidential candidate should be encouraging cybercrime.From a report on Talking Points Memo:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Blockchain to revolutionize elections?

Shell-shocked from the startling Brexit vote, followed by back-to-back political convention diatribes coddling Twitter streams and big screens, one could ask—surfacing briefly from a media device—have elections changed all that much over the years?The answer must be yes, and that’s partly because of the speed at which public opinion gets spread by social media. We all knew the Brits regretted Brexit within moments of the result being called. And we haven’t needed journalists to tell us what some, collectively, think of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.+ Also on Network World: Google wants you to be able to vote online +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Russian involvement in DNC WikiLeaks email heist unproven

Almost 20,000 emails were stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s Microsoft Exchange server. Not enough information has been made public, however, to determine if only the Russian state penetrated the DNC’s network and were the actor that stole the email files.I spent two days digging through WikiLeaks, monitoring the news, talking to security analysts and reading English and Russian message boards. The picture is incomplete because the DNC has not released enough data to conclude that the Russians stole the email files.  + Also on Network World: U.S. cyber incident directive follows DNC hack +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rival gang leaks decryption keys for Chimera ransomware

Aside from the efforts of security researchers and antivirus companies, malware victims can sometimes also benefit from the fighting between rival cybercriminal groups.That happened this week when the creators of the Petya and Mischa ransomware programs leaked about 3,500 RSA private keys allegedly corresponding to systems infected with Chimera, another ransomware application.In a post Tuesday on Pastebin, Mischa's developers claimed that earlier this year they got access to big parts of the development system used by Chimera's creators.As a result of that hack, they obtained the source code for Chimera and integrated some of it into their own ransomware project, according to the Pastebin message.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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