Microsoft relents on shorter Windows 7 support decree

Microsoft today repudiated an early retirement date for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support, saying that it will patch those operating systems on PCs running Intel's Skylake silicon until 2020 and 2023, respectively.The move was a complete rollback of a January degree that Microsoft called a "clarification" of its support policy. Under the January plan, Microsoft would have ended most support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on July 17, 2017, if the operating systems were powering machines equipped with Intel's now-current Skylake processor family.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Syria goes to extremes to foil cheaters

Early this morning in Syria, the Internet was almost entirely down for four hours.  It was the ninth such outage since 31 July 2016 — each one lasting from approximately 4am to 8am local time.  And, according to sources inside Syria, the objective of these outages was to prevent cheating on national High School exams.  The motivation for today’s national outage: a Chemistry final.

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Below is the High School exam schedule that was evidently driving these national Internet blackouts.

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Last year, we first reported on country-wide Internet blackouts in Iraq to prevent cheating during their national 6th grade placement exams.  The Atlantic magazine covered this story when Iraq began conducting Internet outages again earlier this year for more exams.  Also Algeria, Uzbekistan, and the Gujarat region of India have also all recently blocked mobile service to prevent students from cheating on their exams.

It is striking how far we have come since Egypt in 2011, when their country-wide outage was a huge international story.  National Internet blackouts are so routine and banal that they are now becoming a common tactic to prevent cheating among youth.  In fact, this latest round Continue reading

iPhone 7 to be unveiled Sept. 7 ahead of Sept. 16 release date

With September steadily approaching, we're inching ever closer to the grand unveiling of Apple's iPhone 7. While the iPhone 7 likely won't introduce a radical new redesign or futuristic features, the device will undoubtedly carry a number of internal enhancements, along with much-improved cameras on both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models.Last week, we detailed how Apple's iPhone will likely hit store shelves on Friday, Sept. 16. And now comes word via Bloomberg that the device will officially be unveiled on Wednesday, Sept. 7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 to be unveiled on September 7 ahead of September 16 release date

With September steadily approaching, we're inching ever closer to the grand unveiling of Apple's iPhone 7. While the iPhone 7 likely won't introduce a radical new redesign or futuristic features, the device will undoubtedly carry a number of internal enhancements along with much improved cameras on both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models.Last week, we detailed how Apple's iPhone will likely hit store shelves on Friday, September 16. And now comes word via Bloomberg that the device will officially be unveiled on Wednesday, September 7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s new Atom chips for cars and IoT could shed ugly mobile past

Intel's Atom chips are on their way out of mobile devices, and the next generation of the chip line will instead be targeted toward drones, self-driving cars, and IoT devices.The new Atom chips will retain the line's focus on low power consumption, with an emphasis on graphics and visual computing. The chip line, to be announced next week at Intel Developer Forum, will be used to maneuver cars, drones, and robots and to also help them recognize objects.Many Atom mobile and server chips have been on Intel's chopping block. The troubled chip's future now is in the growing markets of IoT and virtual reality. The chips will integrate into devices with the company's 3D RealSense cameras, according to a technical session description at IDF. That points to the chips also being used in low-power virtual reality headsets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech giants aren’t as innovative as you think

Many titans of technology today have well-known reputations of being innovative and creative. However, new research based on the experiences of employees who work at these firms suggests external perceptions may not represent reality. Facebook, for example, doesn't prioritize creativity in the workplace as well as its peers, and Microsoft is more specific than Facebook and Google when it looks for certain traits in employees, according a report from Good&Co, a firm that surveys professionals on their work histories and tries to match people with appropriate employers. The company recently evaluated responses from 4,364 users who work at the tech companies featured in the study and compared findings to develop profiles of tech's biggest stars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Golden keys’ that unlock Windows’ Secure Boot protection discovered

Microsoft just offered a masterclass on why building back doors into secure systems are a bad idea. Two security researchers who go by the handles @never_released and @TheWack0lian on Twitter recently announced in a blog post that malicious actors can bypass Windows’ Secure Boot feature on vulnerable machines, as first reported by ZDNet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Golden keys’ that unlock Windows’ Secure Boot protection discovered

Microsoft just offered a masterclass on why building back doors into secure systems are a bad idea. Two security researchers who go by the handles @never_released and @TheWack0lian on Twitter recently announced in a blog post that malicious actors can bypass Windows’ Secure Boot feature on vulnerable machines, as first reported by ZDNet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Snowden and Huang hope to help smartphones go dark

“Privacy is dead,” has been a mantra, for different reasons, for generations. In the cybersecurity community, it has been conventional wisdom for at least a decade. But Edward Snowden and Andrew “bunnie” Huang apparently think they can revive it a bit, at least if you own an iPhone 6. Their goal, they say in a white paper titled, “Against the Law – Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance,” is to create an add-on hardware component that will protect “front-line journalists” in repressive regimes where governments have demonstrated the capability to track people through their smartphones even if the devices are set to “Airplane Mode.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Snowden and Huang hope to help smartphones go dark

“Privacy is dead,” has been a mantra, for different reasons, for generations. In the cybersecurity community, it has been conventional wisdom for at least a decade. But Edward Snowden and Andrew “bunnie” Huang apparently think they can revive it a bit, at least if you own an iPhone 6. Their goal, they say in a white paper titled, “Against the Law – Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance,” is to create an add-on hardware component that will protect “front-line journalists” in repressive regimes where governments have demonstrated the capability to track people through their smartphones even if the devices are set to “Airplane Mode.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open source R extension simplifies data science with IBM Watson

With the release of CognizeR, an open source extension for the statistical computing-focused R programming language, Columbus Collaboratory is aiming to simplify data science with IBM Watson."Our goal was to connect data scientists everywhere with cognitive computing in a software environment they already know and love: R," Ty Henkaline, chief analytics innovator at Columbus Collaboratory, said in a statement yesterday. "CognizeR now shortens the journey toward building real cognitive solutions by providing quick and easy access to Watson services. Releasing this code to the open source community advances our mission of delivering accelerated business value to our member companies and beyond."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Four free tools for handling Amazon Web Services security incident response

Responding to security incidents that involve deployments within Amazon Web Services is a lot different from responding to incidents that happen on corporate-owned gear, and two researchers have come up with free tools to make that process easier.Obtaining forensic evidence is different, primarily because security pros can’t obtain physical access to the machines on which their AWS instances are running.+More on Network World: Black Hat: 9 free security tools for defense & attacking+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Four free tools for handling Amazon Web Services security incident response

Responding to security incidents that involve deployments within Amazon Web Services is a lot different from responding to incidents that happen on corporate-owned gear, and two researchers have come up with free tools to make that process easier.Obtaining forensic evidence is different, primarily because security pros can’t obtain physical access to the machines on which their AWS instances are running.+More on Network World: Black Hat: 9 free security tools for defense & attacking+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open vSwitch finds new home at the Linux Foundation

The developers of open source virtual networking technology Open vSwitch (OVS) said this week they will move future development to the Linux Foundation Project.The move releases Open vSwitch, which usually runs on hypervisors, up to a greater number of developers who can use it to further develop tools and applications for the virtual networking world. OVS works on a wide variety of systems, including Linux, DPDK, Hyper-V, and FreeBSD. The technology is used in a variety of Software Defined Networking applications, including NFV and network virtualization and it is the most widely used networking back-end in OpenStack, the foundation said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

66% off CrossOver, and Run Windows Apps On Your Mac – Deal Alert

It’s no secret that Windows, Mac, and Linux are the three major operating systems dominating the market today—and that their incompatibility often creates issues for users. For the inevitable moments when you need to use a Windows app on your Linux or Mac, there’s CrossOver 15 for Mac and Linux, now only $19.99.With CrossOver 15, you can launch Windows apps, from productivity software to games, natively on your Mac or Linux PC. You’ll be able to operate Windows software at native speed and integrate seamlessly with your native desktop environment, as well as backup your software and move it between machines with bottles.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Big data for guide dogs. IBM helps train service dogs

I love the idea of big data. Being able to derive insights from the ever-increasing stream of information out there is an awesome promise. But alas, a good proportion of the case studies we hear about big data end up being about how big data is used to tailor sales and marketing messages and eke out a few cents extra on every transaction. It may be the reality of our commercial world, but it's sad to see a promising technology applied this way.So, it was nice to receive a pitch from IBM's cloud computing division about how it is partnering with Guiding Eyes for the Blind to bring dogs and data together. While it may sound like an April Fool's joke, IBM is taking structured and unstructured canine data and putting it on the IBM cloud to crunch numbers and generate insights.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AWS CTO on How Startups Define Large-Scale Competitiveness

Not long ago, we took a look back at the last decade of Amazon Web Services and its growth, particularly in terms of its reach into high performance computing and large-scale enterprise workloads. While the startup story is easier to tell for AWS in terms of the capex/opex advantage to compete with far larger companies, the enterprise use case growth of AWS is still a stunning story over time.

This morning during his AWS Summit New York keynote, AWS Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels shared growth highlights of the company over the last ten years, noting that the message is …

AWS CTO on How Startups Define Large-Scale Competitiveness was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

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