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Submission + - EasyJet Turning To Drones for Aircraft Inspections

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Would you trust your aircraft inspection to a drone? Budget airline easyJet is testing just such a system, aimed at reducing the amount of time an aircraft is out of service. Instead of having humans perform on-site visual inspections, the drone will 'fly around an aircraft snapping images, which will then be fed to engineers for analysis.'

Submission + - Microsoft Will Help Iowa Caucuses Go High-Tech

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Poltical party caucuses are one of the quirkier aspects of American political life: local party members gather in small rooms across the state, discuss their preferences, and send a report of how many delegates for each candidate will attend later county and statewide caucuses to ultimately choose delegates to the national convention. It's also a system with a lot of room for error in reporting, as local precinct leaders have traditionally sent in reports of votes via telephone touch-tone menus and paper mail. In 2016, Microsoft will help both Democrats and Republicans streamline the process in a fashion that will hopefully avoid the embarassing result from 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night only for Rick Santorum to emerge as the true victor when all votes were counted weeks later.

Submission + - Japanese Startup Aims To Provde Low-Cost 3-D Printed Artificial Limbs (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: An advanced prosthetic limb that can move in response to a person's muscle movements can cost an amputee as much as $10,000. But now a Japanese startup is aiming to use 3-D printing technology and open source Arduino computers to radically decrease the cost, with materials for each limb only running into a few hundred dollars.

Comment personal responsibility (Score 5, Interesting) 1032

by jfruh (#49866825) Attached to: Writer: "Why I Defaulted On My Student Loans"

Funny how when a corporation defaults on its debt and files for bankruptcy so that it can break union contracts and pay workers less, it's seen as a sharp business move, a recognition that their expenditures have come to surpass their income in a structural and unsustainable way. But when an individual decides the same, perhaps after coming to the conclusion that an investment in a home or university education wasn't as lucrative as it seemed it would be at the time, people start thundering about the moral necessity of paying back loans.

Submission + - NSA Said To Increase Monitoring of US 'Net Traffic To Catch Hackers (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The U.S. National Security Agency is reportedly intercepting Internet communications from U.S. residents without getting court-ordered warrants, in an effort to hunt down malicious hackers. The previously undisclosed NSA program monitors Internet traffic for data about cyberattacks originating outside the U.S., according to a New York Times article published Thursday and based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Submission + - The HP Split By the Numbers: 2,800 Apps and 75,000 APIs

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Hewlett-Packard has given a glimpse of what the company’s separation looks like from an internal IT perspective, and not surprisingly, there are some big numbers involved. The ongoing task involves dividing up or retooling 2,800 applications and 75,000 APIs (application programming interfaces) before the company becomes Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. on Nov. 1. Then there's the 50,000 servers in 6 data centers. And, of course, the layoffs.

Submission + - Microsoft Lets EU Governments Inspect Source Code for Security Issues

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: European governments will be able to review the source code of Microsoft products to confirm they don’t contain security backdoors, at a transparency center the company opened in Brussels on Wednesday. The center is the second of its kind. Last June, the company opened a center in Redmond, Washington. The centers are part of Microsoft’s Government Security Program, launched in 2003 to help create trust with governments that want to use Microsoft products.

Submission + - Malware Creators Use Paid Apple Program To Bypass iOS Security (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: One of the selling points iOS is that apps can only be downloaded via the App Store, which vets them for malware, thus creating a very safe environment. There is a way to bypass those security checks, though: pay $299 to sign up for the iOS Developer Enterprise Program. The program is meant for companies that want to distribute custom in-house apps to their employees, but Japanese fraudsters are now using it to get fraudware onto unsuspecting users' phones.

Submission + - Microsoft Hasn't Given Up On The Non-Smart Phones It Inherited From Nokia

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's handset business was mostly focused on gaining a hardware line that ran the company's Windows Phone OS; but in the process, Microsoft also gained ownership of some model lines that are classified as "feature phones" and some that are straight up dumb, and they're still coming out with new models, confusingly still bearing the "Nokia" brand. The $20 Nokia 105 as billed as "long-lasting backup device" and comes with an FM radio, while the $30 Nokia 215 is "Internet-ready" and comes with Facebook and Twitter apps.

Submission + - Facebook Sued In US Court for Blocking Page In India (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Facebook has been sued in California by the non-profit organization Sikhs For Justice for blocking their page in India. The group has charged Facebook with engaging in 'a pattern of civil rights violation and blatant discriminatory conduct' by blocking its content in the whole of India. It has asked the court for a permanent injunction on further blocking of the page, access to Facebook’s correspondence with the Indian government about the block, and an award of damages, besides other relief.

Submission + - Security Startup Finds Stolen Data On the 'Dark Web'

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: A Baltimore-based startup says it has developed a faster and more secure way to find stolen data on the Internet. The company uses data fingerprinting techniques to create hashes of an organization's data in fragments as small as 14 bytes. Only those hashes — which can't be transformed back into the original data — are stored by Terbium.

Submission + - Pinterest To Start Testing "Buyable Pins" (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Pinterest is a site where users can collect images and links to things that interest them — often, things they're interested in buying. The potential ability to monetize that interest has been the driving force behind massive investment in the stie, and now the company is rolling out buyable pins, which will allow you to purchase pinned items without ever having to leave the Pinterest site or app.

Submission + - Nokia Shifts To Selling Back-End Systems To Mobile Networks (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: With Nokia's handset business now sold off to Microsoft, you might be wondering what the remainder of the company does, exactly. The company is trying to use its expertise at other end of its old business, offering data centers and virtualized infrastructure to wireless networking companies to make their businesses more efficient. Competitors include Ericsson, another mobile phone also-ran.

Submission + - What do you wish you'd known when starting your first 'real' job? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: ITworld's Josh Fruhlinger asked seasoned (and some not-so-seasoned) tech professionals what they wished they knew back when they were newly minted graduates entering the workforce. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the best advice has more to do with soft skills than with tech skills. To wit: 'When [managers] say they are suggesting you do something, it's not really a suggestion — it is an order disguised as a suggestion. Plain-speaking is a lost art at big companies and corporate double talk is the name of the game.' What's your best piece of advice for the newest among you?

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