Yelp sues positive review provider Revleap

Yelp has filed a lawsuit against Revleap, a company that says it can help businesses improve their ratings, though Yelp says it actually spams them and cons them out of money.Revleap, based in Los Angeles, operates a paid service that it says can “create a large constant flow of positive reviews that stay on top of your profile, and remove fake reviews,” according to its website.These sorts of messages are knowingly false, Yelp contends in a lawsuit filed Friday, because Revleap has no way of removing bad reviews or getting good ones to appear more prominently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yelp sues positive review provider Revleap

Yelp has filed a lawsuit against Revleap, a company that says it can help businesses improve their ratings, though Yelp says it actually spams them and cons them out of money.Revleap, based in Los Angeles, operates a paid service that it says can “create a large constant flow of positive reviews that stay on top of your profile, and remove fake reviews,” according to its website.These sorts of messages are knowingly false, Yelp contends in a lawsuit filed Friday, because Revleap has no way of removing bad reviews or getting good ones to appear more prominently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Live 2015 – Mike Rowe Announced as Keynote Speaker

mike-rowe-life-adviceCisco just announced to the Cisco Champion community that the guest speaker for the keynote is going to be none other than …… Mike Rowe!! In case you don’t know, Mike Rowe is an American TV host, narrator, actor, and former opera singer. He is best-known for his extensive work on the Discovery Channel. He has starred on the shows Dirty Jobs, and narrated many shows including Deadliest Catch, American Hot Rod, and Ghost Hunters. He also did a quick stint on the QVC Shopping Network where he was hired after talking about a pencil for nearly eight minutes. According to his bio,  he worked the graveyard shift for just three years, until he was ultimately fired for making fun of products and belittling viewers. I’ve included one of my favorite videos from his time at QVC down below, be sure to check out some of the other ones if you haven’t seen them.

Mike also founded the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which promotes hard work. Mike has long been a supporter of the skilled trades and his foundation works hard at awarding scholarships to men and women who demonstrate an aptitude for doing the work that America needs. He is also Continue reading

Vint Cerf worries about a ‘digital dark age,’ and your data could be at risk

In this era of the all-pervasive cloud, it’s easy to assume that the data we store will somehow be preserved forever. The only thing to fret about from a posterity perspective, we might think, is the analog information from days gone by—all the stuff on papers, tapes and other pre-digital formats that haven’t been explicitly converted.Vinton Cerf, often called “the father of the Internet,” has other ideas.Now chief Internet evangelist at Google, Cerf spoke this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he painted a very different picture.Rather than a world where longevity is a given, Cerf fears a “digital dark age” in which the rapid evolution of technology quickly makes storage formats obsolete thanks to a phenomenon he calls “bit rot.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Vint Cerf worries about a ‘digital dark age,’ and your data could be at risk

In this era of the all-pervasive cloud, it’s easy to assume that the data we store will somehow be preserved forever. The only thing to fret about from a posterity perspective, we might think, is the analog information from days gone by—all the stuff on papers, tapes and other pre-digital formats that haven’t been explicitly converted.Vinton Cerf, often called “the father of the Internet,” has other ideas.Now chief Internet evangelist at Google, Cerf spoke this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he painted a very different picture.Rather than a world where longevity is a given, Cerf fears a “digital dark age” in which the rapid evolution of technology quickly makes storage formats obsolete thanks to a phenomenon he calls “bit rot.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Huawei faces outcry over telecom towers in Zambia

China’s Huawei Technologies is facing a growing backlash in Zambia, following revelations that the company is erecting telecom towers that do not adhere to technical specifications.Lawmakers and consumer rights groups have urged the Zambian government to withhold payments to the company until it brings the towers up to the required standard.The Zambian Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA), awarded Huawei a contract to construct 169 telecom towers in rural areas of the country, at a cost of over $13.5 million. It has been established, however, that the coverage of the towers extends to a radius of 1.65 km (one mile) as opposed to the 5 km specification in the contract.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS Banner Fail

So I go to the IRS Page that allows taxpayers to check status of a refund. This is under the number “3” at the following URL–

http://www.irs.gov/Refunds

The following banner pops up prior to setting a browser cookie.

IRSBanner

I’m not a lawyer, so I have some questions regarding how to interpret this–

  1. Should this be read as–
    1. Use of this system constitutes consent to monitoring, interception, recording, reading, copying or capturing by authorized personnel of all activities. (or)
    2. Use of this system constitutes consent to monitoring, interception, recording, reading, copying or capturing by authorized personnel of all activities.
  2. And what does authorized personnel of all activities mean. If I use the system, I have to be authorized, or I’m breaking the law (as identified two sentences later–Unauthorized use is prohibited).
  3. So based on #2 above (authorized user). When I use that definition of authorized user in #1, the IRS isn’t accepting responsibility if I somehow happened to perform the following on another user’s information –  monitoring, interception, recording, reading, copying or capturing. (doesn’t exclude my accountability, but it certainly alleviates the IRS accountability)
  4. “There is no right to privacy in this system“?
    1. Continue reading

Apple is said to recruit engineers for car development project

Apple’s automotive ambitions may extend beyond CarPlay, its vehicle dashboard software.Managers from the company’s iPhone unit are leading employees in automotive research projects at a secret Silicon Valley lab, according to a report in the Financial Times Friday.Apple designers have met with executives and engineers at auto makers and in some cases recruited them, including the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon Valley research and development division, the report says.If Apple is indeed building a car it will quickly run into one of its biggest rivals—Google, which is far along in its development of an autonomous vehicle. Traditional automakers are also getting smarter about incorporating technology in their vehicles. Chevrolet’s cars can come with built-in LTE hotspots, and in January Audi ferried journalists from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas in a self-driving car.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Democratic Republic of Congo restores Internet throughout country

Internet connectivity and mobile communications throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been fully restored, but the country’s political turmoil is far from over.The government had moved to block communications in an attempt to quell public protests sparked by President Joseph Kabila’s political maneuvers to extend his tenure in office.The DRC government shut down Internet, social media and mobile phone communications on Jan. 19, restoring Internet service only to banks, government agencies and other corporate bodies 10 days later.People had been using text messages and social media networks to coordinate rallies to protest Kabila’s attempts to introduce an electoral bill and change the country’s constitution in order to continue his stay in office. The DRC government admitted that the debate over the bill would likely delay the next presidential election by at least one year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Obama pushes for more cyberthreat information sharing

U.S. businesses and government agencies need to work more closely together to combat the growing threat of cyberattacks, President Barack Obama said Friday.Calling on U.S. agencies and businesses to share more cyberthreat information, Obama said he had signed an executive order intended to encourage more cooperation.Protecting against cyberattacks “has to be a shared mission,” Obama said during a speech at Stanford University. “Government cannot do this alone, but the fact is, the private sector cannot do this alone either.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s Tim Cook warns that sacrificing privacy ‘risks our way of life’

Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned of “dire consequences” if tech companies can’t protect the privacy of those who use their products.Giving up our privacy to digital technologies exposes us to greater risks than just identity theft and financial losses—serious though those things are, Cook said in a brief speech at a cybersecurity summit in Silicon Valley on Friday.“History has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences,” Cook said.“We still live in a world where all people are not treated equally. Too many people do not feel free to practice their religion or express their opinion or love who they choose—or love who they choose,” he repeated for emphasis, “in a world in which that information can make the difference between life or death.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US government courts Silicon Valley on cybersecurity

Senior U.S. government officials came to Silicon Valley on Friday to deliver a direct appeal to executives from major companies and the cybersecurity industry: work with us so the nation will be better protected from cyberattacks.The charm offensive, which includes a speech by President Barack Obama, comes as a new government agency is being formed to oversee preventive and reactive response to cyberattacks: the U.S. Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. That’s part of the government’s response to the growing number of cyberattacks on large corporations, like Target and Sony Pictures, but the cooperation of industry is not guaranteed.Lisa Monaco, a senior advisor to President Obama on homeland security and counterterrorism, said she worried that the type of cyberattack that targeted Sony could become the norm in the future if more isn’t done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Newsreel reveals that even 1946 debut of ENIAC was greeted with ‘1984’-ish suspicion

A “today in history” post from The Poynter Institute includes an old newsreel showing that ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was also the first to raise the specter of government prying eyes ... or a least a look over your shoulder.Here’s that 20th Century Fox newsreel, with a transcript below for those who’d rather read: Transcript:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple bumps approved size for iOS apps, lets them eat twice the memory

People looking for richer mobile apps may cheer Apple’s decision to double the size limit of those approved for sale. But those whose iPhones and iPads have smaller amounts of memory will need to download carefully.On Thursday, Apple said it is bumping the maximum size of apps to 4GB from 2GB, marking the first time Apple has expanded the size limit since the App Store’s 2008 debut.Larger apps will be able to take advantage of the faster processors and improved screen resolutions found in iPhones and iPads. These hardware updates allow for apps with richer media experiences like high-resolution graphics—additional features that also mean bigger downloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Questions I’m Asking Myself About SD-WAN Solutions

There’s a lot to SD-WAN technology, and there are a number of devils in the implementation details that have been nagging at me as I listen to briefings and record podcasts from vendors in the space. SD-WAN technology questions that bother me… What’s the impact to hosts on virtual machine based endpoints, i.e. how much CPU does […]

PlexxiPulse—Leading the pack

This week, Facebook announced a new modular switch called the “6-pack,” which builds off of The Wedge (Facebook’s innovative piece of networking equipment announced last June.) The development of the “6-pack” comes on the heels of a relatively new white box movement within the networking industry where generic, off-the-shelf switching and routing hardware is used rather than custom-made infrastructure, making networks more manageable and easy to scale. Julie Bort covered this very topic earlier this week in her Cisco earnings roundup for Business Insider, and cited Plexxi as one of the startups leading the charge against complicated, legacy-type infrastructures like Cisco. Here at Plexxi, one of our top priorities is to provide our customers with the most efficient network possible and we’re proud to be recognized as an industry trailblazer.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

Streetwise Journal: Cisco CEO: We Will Crush Facebook and Have Fun Beating VMware
By Larry Banks
On fire since a decent quarterly earnings report in which Cisco revenues rose by 7% and forecast 3 to 5% growth next quarter, the company CEO John Chambers was hugely confident Continue reading

Fair-trade smartphone meant to last longer

Fairphone’s second smartphone will not only be built using conflict-free or fair trade minerals, but also offer better performance and be really easy to repair.After selling 60,000 units of its first phone, the Dutch company is now turning its attention to a new model that will go on sale in the latter half of the year. With the second phone, the goal is still to manufacture a smartphone that doesn’t use minerals from conflict zones, is recyclable and is made by workers who are treated well.Fairphone is also aiming to make product longevity a development goal. The longer a device lasts, the less waste it creates and the fewer resources it requires, founder and CEO Bas Van Abel said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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