7 reasons mobile payments still aren’t mainstream

Despite the fact that they received plenty of media attention during the past few years, "proximity" mobile payments, or mobile payments made at retailers' points of sale (PoS), have yet to hit the mainstream. Multiple reasons why exist, but perhaps the most significant roadblock thus far: Today's mobile payment systems simply don't offer a strong enough value proposition to compel consumers to use them consistently.To date, the market has seen four alternative-payment success stories, according to Penny Gillespie, a research director of digital commerce with Gartner: PayPal, for online payments; Visa Signature debit cards; payroll cards; and gift cards. Each option offers "strong value propositions to consumers, as well as to merchants," Gillespie says, because they provide something new and beneficial that wasn't available before. Gift cards, for example, let consumers to easily send funds to friends and family, they make it easy for recipients to spend that money, and they drive recipients to stores, which benefits retailers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Many smartphones still left unpatched

Shaming carriers and smartphone manufacturers into applying patches faster is a step forward, but a lot more needs to be done to improve security of the Android platform, security experts say.Last month, Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, is considering releasing a list of vendors ranked by how up-to-date their headsets are.This has long been a problem for Android. Unlike Apple, which can unilaterally push out updates to its customers as they come out, the situation with Android is a lot more complicated.When a patch comes out, only Nexus phones get them automatically, said Kyle Lady, research and development engineer at Duo Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Many smartphones still left unpatched

Shaming carriers and smartphone manufacturers into applying patches faster is a step forward, but a lot more needs to be done to improve security of the Android platform, security experts say.Last month, Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, is considering releasing a list of vendors ranked by how up-to-date their headsets are.This has long been a problem for Android. Unlike Apple, which can unilaterally push out updates to its customers as they come out, the situation with Android is a lot more complicated.When a patch comes out, only Nexus phones get them automatically, said Kyle Lady, research and development engineer at Duo Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Copenhagen to sell public and private city data via exchange marketplace

Copenhagen has become the first city in the world to attempt to monetize its, and others’, data through a city data market.Traffic snarl-ups, home break-ins, whether it rained or snowed, and how much electricity the city dwellers use each day is among the data to be traded for cash, city officials announced. Interestingly, the city, which is partnering with Hitachi on the project, also wants to incorporate others’ data.City officials say the availability of municipal data through the City Data Exchange website will help companies “develop new, innovative solutions to create smarter cities.” But it’s both public and “private sector organization” data that will be made available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Massive DDoS attacks reach record levels as botnets make them cheaper to launch

There were 19 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that exceeded 100 Gbps during the first three months of the year, almost four times more than in the previous quarter. Even more concerning is that these mega attacks, which few companies can withstand on their own, were launched using so-called booter or stresser botnets that are common and cheap to rent. This means that more criminals can now afford to launch such crippling attacks. "In the past, very few attacks generated with booter/stresser tools exceeded the 100 Gbps mark," researchers from Akamai said in the company's State of the Internet security report for the first quarter of 2016 that was released Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Massive DDoS attacks reach record levels as botnets make them cheaper to launch

There were 19 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that exceeded 100 Gbps during the first three months of the year, almost four times more than in the previous quarter. Even more concerning is that these mega attacks, which few companies can withstand on their own, were launched using so-called booter or stresser botnets that are common and cheap to rent. This means that more criminals can now afford to launch such crippling attacks. "In the past, very few attacks generated with booter/stresser tools exceeded the 100 Gbps mark," researchers from Akamai said in the company's State of the Internet security report for the first quarter of 2016 that was released Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Musing: Cisco ACI Bosses Quit, Will it Survive ?

This article at Recode : In what appears to be a messy shakeup with hints of an internal power struggle nearing an end, Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani are leaving the company. This management team has been responsible for developing a range of Cisco products Nexus 5000, parts of Cisco UCS & […]

The post Musing: Cisco ACI Bosses Quit, Will it Survive ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

EIGRP RFC 7868

Finally, informational EIGRP RFC 7868 has been published.It is not anymore Cisco’s EIGRP, it is an open standard. Without a most critical feature of EIGRP,can we really say that? Why Cisco doesn’t share the most important feature which can help in large scale EIGRP design although industry has been asking from them for a long time ? […]

The post EIGRP RFC 7868 appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Prezi tries again to get companies to change their presentations

Prezi, the seven-year-old startup that aims to reinvent the way that people make presentations, has launched a new business-focused offering that's aimed at getting companies to use its software instead of rivals like PowerPoint. Teams that sign up for Prezi Business will get several new features, including the ability to present over the Web, analytics to understand how different parts of presentations fly with audiences, and real-time collaboration. It's a major push for the presentation software company, which is competing against the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple with a cloud-based tool that pans and zooms through a canvas, rather than showing an audience a series of slides. Prezi CEO Peter Arvai argued in an interview that the software's ability to easily show relationships between presentation elements makes it a more effective tool for convincing an audience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No, Musky, Feudalism is best for Mars

Recently, the press fawned all over Elon Musk's comments at a conference. Among them was Musk's claim that "direct democracy" would be the best system, where citizen's vote directly for laws, rather than voting for (corrupt) representatives/congressmen. This is nonsense. The best political system would be feudalism.

There is no such thing as "direct democracy". Our representatives in congress are only the first layer on top of a bureaucracy. Most rules that restrict us are not "laws" voted by congress but "regulations" decided by some bureaucrat.

Consider the BP Gulf Oil spill, as an example. It happened because oil companies got cozy with their regulators, the minerals Management Service (MMS), part of the Department of the Interior. The bureaucrats had a dual mandate: to protect the environment, and to promote economic activity. Oil companies lobbied them to risk the environment in favor of profits.

Consider  Obamcare's controversial mandate that health insurers must pay for abortions. This was not part of the law pass by congress, but a decision by the bureaucrats in charge of all the little details in carrying out the law.

Consider the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulation of the Internet. It bases its Continue reading

IBM targets data scientists with a new development platform based on Apache Spark

Making sense of data can involve a wide variety of tools, and IBM is hoping to make data scientists' lives easier by putting them all in one place. The company on Tuesday released what it calls Data Science Experience, a new development environment in the cloud for real-time, high-performance analytics. Based on data-processing framework Apache Spark, Data Science Experience is designed to speed and simplify the process of embedding data and machine learning into cloud applications. Included in the new offering are tools such as RStudio and Jupyter Notebooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How I went from zero to overclocking in 30 minutes

If you think overclocking is something that only hardcore PC enthusiasts can get into, think again. At Computex in Taipei last week I got the chance to try overclocking Intel's latest processor, the 10-core Broadwell-E chip, and it was a lot of fun.Thanks to Intel's XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) overclocking app, doing some basic overclocking was easy. But beware: If you're the type of person who likes a challenge and enjoys tinkering with computers, it can get addictive fast.Overclocking is the process of running a processor and other components faster than their rated speed. It's done to get more performance for heavy-duty applications like gaming and video processing, and there's even a competitive side to it, with international rankings and competitions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former NASA Exec Brings Stealth Machine Learning Chip to Light

Chip startups come and go. Generally, we cover them because of novel architectures or potential for specific applications. But in some cases, like today, it is for those reasons and because of the people behind an effort to bring a new architecture into a crowded, and ultimately limited, landscape.

With $100 million in “patience money” from a few individual investors who believe in the future of sparse matrix-based computing on low-power and reprogrammable devices, Austin-based Knupath, has spent a decade in stealth mode designing and fabricating a custom digital signal processor (DSP) chip to target deep learning training, machine …

Former NASA Exec Brings Stealth Machine Learning Chip to Light was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

13% off ThermaCELL Mosquito Repellent Pest Control Outdoor and Camping Lantern – Deal Alert

The Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern effectively repels mosquitoes and other biting insects in a 15 x 15-foot zone. It has no open flames, operates on a single butane cartidge, and is perfect for a deck, porch or campsite. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon and is currently discounted to $34.90. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Muhammad Ali & IBM sought to “shake up the world” with Linux

The late Muhammad Ali was not only a champion fighter and cultural figure, but also no slouch in the advertising ring. Ali sold pizzas, car batteries and even roach spray ("I can whup anything on two legs but even me, the greatest, needs help beating things with six legs...") While many have used Ali's image or voice in their ads, including Apple (Think Different commercial) and Gatorade, I'm not aware of Ali hawking much in the way of technology. One exception was this 2004 IBM Super Bowl ad during which the company pushes Linux and open source computing, something it had been behind since the late 1990s. The ad features a young boy (depicted as "Linux" in related IBM ads) soaking up vintage video of Ali boasting "I shook up the world!" and then sitting face-to-face with the boxer, who urges the kid to "shake things up" and "shake up the world."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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