App makers should take responsibility for the effects of their creations

Imagine you’re a parent, living with your family in a quiet suburban subdivision. With very little traffic, your kids happily play in the street in front of your house. And then one day, construction begins on a distant thoroughfare, and suddenly hundreds of cars are racing down your formerly sleepy side street seeking to avoid the backup. And those cars didn’t arrive there randomly, they were sent there by traffic and navigation apps like Google’s Waze.For increasing numbers of people around the country, there’s no need to imagine this scenario, they’re already living it. And it brings up a couple of important questions: Who’s fault is this problem, and what can—and should—be done about it? The answers, unfortunately, aren’t simple.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Challenge Of Coding Across HPC Architectures

With the International Supercomputing 2016 conference fast approaching, the HPC community is champing at the bit to share insights on the latest technologies and techniques to make simulation and modeling applications scale further and run faster.

The hot topic of conversation is often hardware at such conferences, but hardware is easy. Software is the hard part, and techniques for exploiting the compute throughput of an increasingly diverse collection of engines – from multicore CPUs to GPUs to DSPs and to FPGAs – evolve more slowly than hardware. And they do so by necessity.

The OpenACC group is getting out ahead …

The Challenge Of Coding Across HPC Architectures was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

App stores and Linux repositories: Maybe the worst ideas ever

Eight years ago, Nokia released a Linux-powered tablet dubbed the N810. It’s a very cool little device, with a rather pleasant-to-use slide-out keyboard, running a Debian-based distribution known as Maemo.That little tablet went everywhere with me. At one point I—no joke— owned two of them. I could do some pretty remarkable things with that little beauty—from making Skype calls (back when I still used Skype) to running a full-blown version of Gimp. It was a complete, powerful desktop computer in my pocket.Recently, I decide to dust off my trusty old N810 to use it again. It’s a Linux-based computer, so why not. Right?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A popular cloud privacy bill stalls in the Senate

A bill to give email and other documents stored in the cloud new protections from government searches may be dead in the U.S. Senate over a proposed amendment to expand the FBI's surveillance powers.The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other data stored with third parties for longer than six months.Under U.S. law, police need warrants to get their hands on paper files in a suspect's home or office and on electronic files stored on his computer or in the cloud for less than 180 days. But under the 30-year-old ECPA, police agencies need only a subpoena, not reviewed by a judge, to demand files stored in the cloud or with other third-party providers for longer than 180 days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A popular cloud privacy bill stalls in the Senate

A bill to give email and other documents stored in the cloud new protections from government searches may be dead in the U.S. Senate over a proposed amendment to expand the FBI's surveillance powers.The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other data stored with third parties for longer than six months.Under U.S. law, police need warrants to get their hands on paper files in a suspect's home or office and on electronic files stored on his computer or in the cloud for less than 180 days. But under the 30-year-old ECPA, police agencies need only a subpoena, not reviewed by a judge, to demand files stored in the cloud or with other third-party providers for longer than 180 days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware buys Arkin to help increase virtual networking adoption

VMware Monday announced plans to acquire Arkin, a specialist in helping customers manage physical and virtual networks, for an undisclosed sum.Arkin says its tools provide “cross-domain visibility,” which means that it can aggregate operational data from both virtual and physical infrastructures. Correlating this data can help organizations root out the cause of problems and fix them faster.+MORE M&A: Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion | Symantec scoops up Blue Coat for $4.65 billion +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2B to expand its business products

Microsoft has made a big bet on LinkedIn, announcing Monday that it will spend nearly $26.2 billion in cash to purchase the enterprise-focused social networking and recruiting company. The acquisition -- which is the largest in Microsoft's history and one of the biggest tech acquisitions ever -- will combine the world's largest enterprise-focused social network with one of the biggest enterprise software companies.It's more than just a social play, though. In addition to LinkedIn's core professional networking product, Microsoft also gains access to products including presentation- sharing software SlideShare and professional training service Lynda.com. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Machine learning could help companies react faster to ransomware

File-encrypting ransomware programs have become one of the biggest threats to corporate networks worldwide and are constantly evolving by adding increasingly sophisticated detection-evasion and propagation techniques.In a world where any self-respecting malware author makes sure that his creations bypass antivirus detection before releasing them, enterprise security teams are forced to focus on improving their response times to infections rather than trying to prevent them all, which is likely to be a losing game.Exabeam, a provider of user and entity behavior analytics, believes that machine-learning algorithms can significantly improve ransomware detection and reaction time, preventing such programs from spreading inside the network and affecting a larger number of systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Machine learning could help companies react faster to ransomware

File-encrypting ransomware programs have become one of the biggest threats to corporate networks worldwide and are constantly evolving by adding increasingly sophisticated detection-evasion and propagation techniques.In a world where any self-respecting malware author makes sure that his creations bypass antivirus detection before releasing them, enterprise security teams are forced to focus on improving their response times to infections rather than trying to prevent them all, which is likely to be a losing game.Exabeam, a provider of user and entity behavior analytics, believes that machine-learning algorithms can significantly improve ransomware detection and reaction time, preventing such programs from spreading inside the network and affecting a larger number of systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT badges: A new path to better pay?

If you’re an IT pro looking for a new gig, that old "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" line about not needing no stinking badges may soon no longer apply, thanks to a relatively new credentialing system finding favor with some large companies and a growing number of job applicants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Microsoft’s open source .Net Foundation eats Cake

Cake, a C#-based cross-platform build automation framework, has moved to the jurisdiction of the .Net Foundation.Joining the foundation ensures the long-term viability of the project, according to Cake builders. The independent foundation, formed to promote open source technologies for Microsoft's .Net Framework, will provide support and guidance while the team currently maintaining the project continues to do so.[ Free tools! Get the most out of Windows with 15 open source tools for system admins. | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with InfoWorld's Windows newsletter. ] Supporting builds on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, Cake was built on top of the Roslyn and Mono compiler. "It's a DSL (domain specific language) that uses C# and it lets you do things like compile code and copy folders," said Scott Hanselman, Microsoft principal manager for Visual Studio and .Net. Cake also lets developers build NuGet packages, run unit tests, and compress files.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Meet Microsoft’s ‘planet scale’ NoSQL database

Given the strength of SQL Server in business, you might be surprised to learn that Microsoft has spent the last five years building a distributed NoSQL database – until you remember that services like Power BI, Bing and the Office Web apps face the same challenges as services like Netflix. They’re problems more and more enterprises have to deal with too: the deluge of data, the demands of mobility and the need for low latency even though you’re relying on cloud services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Apple: Want apps? Then subscribe

Apple announced that by this fall it will let nearly all iOS app makers switch to a subscription-based business model, a move that could make it easier for some small-scale developers to turn a profit but risks backlash from consumers burdened by subscription fatigue."Ultimately, this should lead to more apps, better apps and more innovation," Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, said of Apple's plans.As revealed in a pair of interviews that marketing chief Philip Schiller did with The Verge and Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball -- an unusual tactic for Apple -- the Cupertino, Calif., company will expand subscription pricing to all app categories, after previously restricting the model to just a handful: periodicals, business apps and media content services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Millennials are shaking up workplace communication

Millennials are now the largest generation in America, and as they work their way into the corporate world, they are driving change in business communication, says Jeff Corbin, CEO and founder of APPrise Mobile, a provider of mobile communication apps."As the workplace evolves and millennials continue to comprise the vast majority of the workforce, the importance of communicating and engaging with employees has never been more important. There is definitely a shift taking place from 'old school' and legacy communications solutions like email and corporate intranets to newer, more mobile friendly tools," Corbin says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Study: Most companies can’t protect confidential documents

A majority of companies don't have the technology in place to keep employees from sharing confidential documents, according to a study released today.In particular, only 36 percent of over 600 IT practitioners at large companies said that their companies were able to restrict the sharing of confidential documents with third parties, and only 27 percent were able to restrict sharing between employees."A lot of people focus on regulatory compliance, like personally identifiable information or PCI," said Ron Arden, COO at data security vendor Fasoo, which sponsored the study. PCI DSS, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, spells out how companies must protect credit card data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Study: Most companies can’t protect confidential documents

A majority of companies don't have the technology in place to keep employees from sharing confidential documents, according to a study released today.In particular, only 36 percent of over 600 IT practitioners at large companies said that their companies were able to restrict the sharing of confidential documents with third parties, and only 27 percent were able to restrict sharing between employees."A lot of people focus on regulatory compliance, like personally identifiable information or PCI," said Ron Arden, COO at data security vendor Fasoo, which sponsored the study. PCI DSS, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, spells out how companies must protect credit card data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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