iPhone 7 will offer twice as much storage as the iPhone 6s

Apple's iPhone 7 unveiling is just about two months away, and it still remains to be seen if the device will offer any exciting new features. While some sources from within the rumor mill have hinted that this year's iPhone refresh cycle will be short on new bells and whistles, the optimists among us hope Apple still has a trick or two up its sleeve come September.In the meantime, iPhone users in the market for an upgrade can smile at the fact that Apple with the iPhone 7 will finally be getting rid of its entry-level 16GB iPhone model. While 16GB may have been more than sufficient back in the early days of the smartphone era, it's decidedly lacking in today's age with 4K video, high-resolution photos and an endless number of apps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud

Microsoft is working on a new offering called Dynamics 365 that will combine its current ERP and CRM cloud services into a single bundle and include applications purpose-built for specific business functions.Due to be available this fall, Dynamics 365 will feature apps for functions including financials, field service, sales, operations, marketing, project service automation and customer service. The apps can be independently deployed, allowing users to buy only what they need.Microsoft's Power BI and Cortana Intelligence tools will be natively embedded for predictive capabilities. With Cortana Intelligence, for instance, sales reps will be able to predict which products and services a customer will need next, thereby helping to focus their cross-selling efforts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google fixes over 100 flaws in Android, many in chipset drivers

Google released a new batch of Android patches on Wednesday, fixing over 100 flaws in Android's own components and in chipset-specific drivers from different manufacturers.Android's mediaserver component, which handles the processing of video and audio streams and has been a source of many vulnerabilities in the past, is at the forefront of this security update. It accounts for 16 Android vulnerabilities, including 7 critical flaws that can allow an attacker to execute code with higher privileges. The bugs can be exploited by sending specifically crafted audio or video files to users' devices via the browser, email or messaging apps. Because of the repeated mediaserver flaws, Google Hangouts and the default Android Messenger applications no longer pass media to this component automatically.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google fixes over 100 flaws in Android, many in chipset drivers

Google released a new batch of Android patches on Wednesday, fixing over 100 flaws in Android's own components and in chipset-specific drivers from different manufacturers.Android's mediaserver component, which handles the processing of video and audio streams and has been a source of many vulnerabilities in the past, is at the forefront of this security update. It accounts for 16 Android vulnerabilities, including 7 critical flaws that can allow an attacker to execute code with higher privileges. The bugs can be exploited by sending specifically crafted audio or video files to users' devices via the browser, email or messaging apps. Because of the repeated mediaserver flaws, Google Hangouts and the default Android Messenger applications no longer pass media to this component automatically.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dreaming Of 100 Exaflops In 2030

The supercomputing industry is as insatiable as it is dreamy. We have not even reached our ambitions of hitting the exascale level of performance in a single system by the end of this decade, and we are stretching our vision out to the far future and wondering how the capacity of our largest machines will scale by many orders of magnitude more.

Dreaming is the foundation of the technology industry, and supercomputing has always been where the most REM action takes place among the best and brightest minds in computing, storage, and networking – as it should be. But to

Dreaming Of 100 Exaflops In 2030 was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Short Cuts

It was going to be a long evening, anyway—the flight check bird was coming in, and both Instrument Landing Systems (ILSs) needed to be tuned up and ready for the test. So we took some downtime, split into two teams, and worked our way through each piece of equipment—Localizer, Glide Slope, each marker in turn, VOR, TACAN—to make certain each was, as far as we could measure, sending the right signals to the right places. If flight check found even the smallest variance off what the ILS systems were supposed to be providing, they could shut the airfield down “until further notice.”

The team I was on was driving across one of the many roads out on the airfield, trying to catch up with the other half of the shop to find out what they had done, and what needed to be done. Off in the distance, we noted someone standing in the middle of a field between the roads, waving vigorously. We changed direction, driving across the bumpy field, through grass as high as the top of the hood (Base Ops was planning a burn, so they’d left the grass to grow a bit higher than normal). As Continue reading

RIP: The BlackBerry Classic (and its iconic keyboard) is dead

BlackBerry isn’t giving up on phones with physical keyboards, but the company does appear to be backing off the concept. The company recently announced that it will no longer make the BlackBerry Classic. The handset was first launched in late 2014 as a replacement for the BlackBerry Bold. This may be the end of the Classic handset but it isn't the end of physical keyboards for BlackBerry. The company still produces the Passport, which features a smaller physical keyboard to create more space for the phone’s touchscreen. There's also the Android-based BlackBerry Priv, which has a slide-out keyboard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Study: More than 50% of SMBs were breached in the past year

A new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by password management provider Keeper Security analyzed the state of cybersecurity in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and found that confidence in SMB security is shockingly low (just 14% of the companies surveyed rated their ability to mitigate cyber attacks as highly effective).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Study: More than 50% of SMBs were breached in the past year

A new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by password management provider Keeper Security analyzed the state of cybersecurity in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and found that confidence in SMB security is shockingly low (just 14% of the companies surveyed rated their ability to mitigate cyber attacks as highly effective)."We've conducted many surveys on enterprise cybersecurity in the past but this unique report on SMBs sheds light on the specific challenges this group faces," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder of the Ponemon Institute. "Considering the size of the SMB market in the United States alone, this information can be useful to diminish the risk of breach to millions of businesses."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Microsoft could overtake Amazon in the cloud, Morgan Stanley survey finds

In what could be foreshadowing a momentous shift in the IaaS public cloud computing market, investment bank Morgan Stanley’s survey of CIOs found they’re more likely to use Microsoft Azure compared to Amazon Web Services in the coming years.The results of the survey are noteworthy because since the dawn of the IaaS cloud computing market Amazon Web Services has been seen as the top vendor. Morgan Stanley’s 2016 State of the CIO report shows that could be changing though. Morgan Stanley More CIOs are using Amazon Web Services over Microsoft for IaaS cloud now, but in three years more expect to use Azure over AWS. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel scales back Android development

Android was once a big part of Intel's plans in mobile devices, but the company is now paying much less attention to the OS.Intel is moving away from developing Android for x86 processors used in smartphones, since it is exiting the handset market. The company's commitment to Android development for tablets, however, is also under question.The company still has a strong partnership with Google, with an Intel spokeswoman saying in email, "We continue to work with Google on supporting their OS for different product lines including Chromebooks, tablets and IOT products."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In Situ Analysis to Push Supercomputing Efficiency

As supercomputers expand in terms of processing, storage, and network capabilities, the size and scope of simulations is also expanding outward. While this is great news for scientific progress, this naturally creates some new bottlenecks, particularly on the analysis and visualization fronts.

Historically, most large-scale simulations would dump time step and other data at defined intervals onto disk for post-processing and visualization, but as the petabyte scale of that process adds more weight, that is becoming less practical. Further, for those who know what they want to find in that data, using an in situ approach to finding the answer

In Situ Analysis to Push Supercomputing Efficiency was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

CFAA anti-hacking law applies to using shared password, appeals court said

Millions of Americans willingly share passwords with family or friends to access devices or accounts, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said using a willingly shared password is covered under the anti-hacking Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).After previously being found guilty of violating the CFAA, David Nosal appealed because he doesn't believe he actually hacked his former employer, Korn/Ferry. Instead, he gained access through passwords that other employees voluntarily shared with him after he left the company and his credentials were revoked.But in a 2-1 decision, the federal appeals court may have set a dangerous precedent that could ultimately affect millions of Americans who use a willingly shared password. Password sharing was not allowed by Korn/Ferry, so Circuit Judge Margaret McKeowin wrote (pdf) that Nosal had acted “without authorization” and, therefore, falls under the CFAA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CFAA anti-hacking law applies to using shared password, appeals court said

Millions of Americans willingly share passwords with family or friends to access devices or accounts, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considered using a willingly shared password to be covered under the anti-hacking Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) law.After previously being found guilty, David Nosal appealed since he believed he should not have been found guilty of CFAA as he didn’t actually hack his former employer, Korn/Ferry. Instead, he gained access through passwords that had been voluntarily shared with him by other employees after he left the company and his credentials were revoked.But in a 2-1 decision, the federal appeals court may have set a dangerous precedent which could ultimately affect millions of Americans who use a willingly shared password. Password-sharing was not allowed by Korn/Ferry, so Circuit Judge Margaret McKeowin wrote (pdf) that Nosal had acted “without authorization” and therefore falls under the CFAA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DockerCon 2016 Videos: Docker, Docker, Docker track

We are excited to share the videos and slides from the Docker, Docker, Docker track at DockerCon 2016!

Note that the following sessions videos from the Docker, Docker, Docker track have already been published in previous blog post:

Check out the videos (and slides) from the remaining sessions below!

Continue reading

Machine Learning Driven Programming: A New Programming for a New World

 

If Google were created from scratch today, much of it would be learned, not coded. Around 10% of Google's 25,000 developers are proficient in ML; it should be 100% -- Jeff Dean

Like the weather, everybody complains about programming, but nobody does anything about it. That’s changing and like an unexpected storm the change comes from an unexpected direction: Machine Learning / Deep Learning.

I know, you are tired of hearing about Deep Learning. Who isn’t by now? But programming has been stuck in a rut for a very long time and it's time we do something about it.

Lots of silly little programming wars continue to be fought that decide nothing. Functions vs objects; this language vs that language; this public cloud vs that public cloud vs this private cloud vs that ‘fill in the blank’; REST vs unrest; this byte level encoding vs some different one; this framework vs that framework; this methodology vs that methodology; bare metal vs containers vs VMs vs unikernels; monoliths vs microservices vs nanoservices; eventually consistent vs transactional; mutable vs immutable; DevOps vs NoOps vs SysOps; scale-up vs scale-out; centralized vs decentralized; single threaded vs massively parallel; sync vs async. And so Continue reading

9 best technology jobs in the U.S.

The best tech jobs in 2016Image by ThinkstockComputers, smartphones, tablets, e-readers -- technology touches every aspect of our daily lives. It facilitates business, communication, travel, entertainment and healthcare, just to name a few, and the industry boasts high salaries and low unemployment rates. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that technology jobs will grow at a rate of 12 percent this decade, almost twice the growth rate of jobs growth overall. Here, based on the number of projected jobs from 2014 to 2024, the median salary and the unemployment rate are the nine best technology jobs as ranked by US News & World Report. 1. Computer systems analystImage by ThinkstockTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here