66705013
submission
alphadogg writes:
It was a familiar top 10 released today by the authors of the twice-annual Top500 ranking of world supercomputers, http://www.top500.org/blog/blo... most entries largely unchanged from this summer’s list. China retains top spot for fourth consecutive Top500 list as the annual SuperComputing conference kicks off in New Orleans.
66543527
submission
alphadogg writes:
Three days after security company FireEye warned of an iPhone/iPad threat dubbed "Masque Attack", the U.S. government has issued a warning of its own about this new risk by malicious third-party apps to Apple iOS devices. US-CERT warned: https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/a... "This attack works by luring users to install an app from a source other than the iOS App Store or their organizations’ provisioning system. In order for the attack to succeed, a user must install an untrusted app, such as one delivered through a phishing link." Revelations of Masque came on the heels of a related exploit (that also threatens Macs) called WireLurker.
66539189
submission
alphadogg writes:
The Association for Computing Machinery has announced that its annual A.M. Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize in Computing, will now come with a $1M award courtesy of Google. Previously, the award came with a $250K prize funded by Google and Intel. The award, which goes to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community," is generally doled out in February or March. This past March, the winner was Microsoft Research principal Leslie Lambert. The ACM says the bigger prize should raise the award's visibility.
66404569
submission
alphadogg writes:
Juniper Networks has replaced recently appointed CEO Shaygan Kheradpir with Executive Vice President Rami Rahim effective immediately. Kheradpir was removed by the Juniper board following a review of “his leadership and his conduct in connection with a particular negotiation with a customer,” the company said in a statement. An internal memo from the company Chairman, obtained by Network World, states that the company had doubters when it came to industry leadership.
66394093
submission
alphadogg writes:
A North Carolina computer scientist and his son joined forces to collect data during this year's trick-or-treating that will be used to create a map for an optimized route for next year. It's gets a bit creepy, in the spirit of Halloween, in that they were able to figure out which houses to avoid, which to target based on everything from political affiliations to home value to the number of daughters in the house.
66284295
submission
alphadogg writes:
The WireLurker malware that may have infected hundreds of thousands of Mac OS and iOS devices is exactly similar to a proof-of-concept attack Apple was warned about at the beginning of this year, according to the researcher who first publicly described such attacks. The malware can siphon off data from iOS devices when they sync up with computers or are charged by computers via USB cables, but the potential for this type of attack can be much broader, says Tielei Wang, a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology who presented a paper https://www.usenix.org/system/... about such attacks at USENIX Security Symposium in August.
66191025
submission
alphadogg writes:
Cisco has joined the Open Compute Project, a Facebook-driven effort to develop open source servers and switches, 16 months after criticizing it. At that time, Cisco CEO John Chambers said OCP has “weaknesses” that Cisco can exploit. Chambers said efforts like Facebook’s to commoditize and wring cost out of hardware purchases will open up opportunities for Cisco to provide solutions that are better tailored to specific customer needs.
66159615
submission
alphadogg writes:
Some of the most widely used messaging apps in the world, including Google Hangouts, Facebook chat, Yahoo Messenger and Snapchat, flunked a best-practices security test by advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The organization evaluated 39 messaging products based on seven criteria it believes such tools should meet in order to ensure the privacy and security of digital communications. The reviewed products included mobile texting apps, instant messaging clients, voice and video calling software and email services. The results were published Tuesday under the form of a Secure Messaging Scorecard.https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard
65877395
submission
alphadogg writes:
A reporter got chipped together with nine other volunteers during an IT Innovation Day organized by IDG Netherlands. The volunteers will spend the next 12 months testing the use of an NFC chip in their daily lives to see whether having the chip implanted in their bodies is more useful than using a chip embedded on a card or in a smartphone.
65822785
submission
alphadogg writes:
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have released a tool designed to spot all-too-common errors in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that could lead to big problems. CheckCell, available as a free Excel software plug-in on GitHub, https://github.com/plasma-umas... is the brainchild of a computer science team whose approach uses "a threshold of unusualness" in which questionable data points are marked for spreadsheet designers to double check.
65749355
submission
alphadogg writes:
he contentious debate about net neutrality in the U.S. has sparked controversy over a lack of funding transparency for advocacy groups and think tanks, which critics say subverts the political process. News stories from a handful of publications in recent months have accused some think tanks and advocacy groups of "astroturfing" — quietly shilling for large broadband carriers. In a handful of cases, those criticisms appear to have some merit, although the term is so overused by people looking to discredit political opponents that it has nearly lost its original meaning. An IDG News Service investigation found that major groups opposing U.S. Federal Communications Commission reclassification and regulation of broadband as a public utility tend to be less transparent about their funding than the other side. Still, some big-name advocates of strong net neutrality rules also have limited transparency mechanisms in place.
65746295
submission
alphadogg writes:
Days after the launch of Apple Pay, Rite Aid has stopped accepting the payment system at 4,600 stores across the United States. The company, which is one of the biggest drug store chains in the country, said it is currently not accepting Apple Pay or the competing Google Wallet. Posts from customers on Twitter indicated that Apple Pay worked successfully when the system launched on Monday, but it was subsequently disabled by the retailer later in the week.
65721719
submission
alphadogg writes:
It's been a bit over a month since Microsoft shuttered its Microsoft Research lab in Silicon Valley as part of the company's broader restructuring that will include 18,000 layoffs. This week, Harry Shum, Microsoft EVP of Technology & Research, posted what he termed an "open letter to the academic research community" on the company's research blog.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msr_er/archive/2014/10/21/harry-shum-open-letter-to-academic-research-community.aspx In the post, Shum is suitably contrite about the painful job cut decisions that were made in closing the lab, which opened in 2001. He also stresses that Microsoft will continue to invest in and value "fundamental research".
65693951
submission
alphadogg writes:
WIkimedians — those people who contribute to the free Wikipedia website — were recognized for their selfless work on Wednesday in Slubice, Poland with the unveiling of a monument. The fiber-and-resin sculpture, designed by Armenian Mihran Hakobyan, depicts the Wikipedia globe held up by four people. Consistent with the Wikipedia logo's globe, the world is shown as being unfinished, ready to accept more knowledge. The sculpture stands 5-and-a-half feet high in Frankfurt Square.
65683651
submission
alphadogg writes:
EMC confirmed on Wednesday that its VCE converged infrastructure joint venture with Cisco and VMware is heading into a new phase, with EMC taking control of the business and Cisco drastically cutting its stake in it. "Expected to be finalized this quarter, VCE will become an EMC business. Cisco and VMware will continue as strategic partners and investors, with Cisco having an approximately 10% equity interest in VCE," according to an EMC statement, http://newsroom.cisco.com/pres... which emphasizes VCE's focus on helping customers deploy hybrid clouds.
