71633399
submission
itwbennett writes:
Samsung Electronics expects first quarter profits to drop by more than 30 percent, marking the sixth straight quarterly decline. The company is facing stiff competition at both ends of its business. At the low-end, a new wave of low-cost Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi are taking away market share, while on the high-end Samsung is locked in a fierce battle with Apple. Samsung will report its full quarterly results at the end of the month.
71632177
submission
itwbennett writes:
The U.S. Department of Defense hasn’t followed through on its commitment to convert to IPv6, the new Internet standard designed to make room for an explosion of new connected devices. The DoD demonstrated IPv6 in 2008 but then disabled the technology because it didn’t have enough people trained to use it and was worried about potential security risks, according to a report by the Inspector General of the department.
71624929
submission
itwbennett writes:
The most interesting people that Uber is now hiring aren’t drivers: they’re engineers. The mobile ride-hailing app has listed a slew of jobs at its new Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. In particular, Uber is looking for engineers in the areas of robotics, machine learning, communications, traffic simulation, vehicle testing, and software and hardware development.
71619163
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the weird quirks of Microsoft's Kinect motion detector is that there are actually two different devices sold under that name: one that works with PCs, and one that works with Xboxes. Now Microsoft will simplify the situation by offering only one: the Xbox version with an adapter for PCs.
71619047
submission
jfruh writes:
While self-driving cars from Google and others remain in the prototype stage, Korean carmaker Hyundai intends to release a premium sedan called the Equus this year that includes self-driving features. While a car's ability to navigate complex urban enviornments on its own is still a ways off, the Equus will allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel and feet off the brakes during highway driving.
71616301
submission
itwbennett writes:
Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich apparently thinks it could. 'It’s definitely possible,' Russinovich reportedly told an audience at the ChefCon conference in Santa Clara last week. 'It’s a new Microsoft.' While a company representative was quick to say that 'Microsoft has not made any open-source policy or business-model changes for Windows,' the mere fact that such a possibility could be seriously discussed in a public forum is a testament to how much has changed in the software world. 'Open source has gone from being a threat for my generation of executives to an asset for the next generation over the last decade and a half,' said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group. 'Another factor is Microsoft's need to make Windows competitive with Android — an area where 'being open source is a requirement,' Enderle said.
71616053
submission
itwbennett writes:
Even Google can't keep track of all its certificates. Some users reported Saturday that email clients like Microsoft Outlook and OS X Mail were displaying certificate errors when trying to send email messages through smtp.gmail.com. It seems that it wasn't the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server's certificate that expired, but one higher up in the chain that corresponded to Google Internet Certificate Authority G2 — an intermediate certificate authority operated by Google.
71539067
submission
jfruh writes:
Industrial control systems are designed for availability, not security — and the most commonly software that coordiantes between specialized components from different vendors only runs on Windows XP. Much of our infrastructure is based on the idea that important systems are connected directly to control panels by a single wire — an incredibly dangerous assumption in the era of IP networks.
71508955
submission
itwbennett writes:
The attack against GitHub was enabled by someone tampering with regular website traffic to unrelated Chinese websites, all of which used a JavaScript analytics and advertising related tool from Baidu. Somewhere on China’s network perimeter, that analytics code was swapped out for code that transparently sent data traffic to GitHub. The reason GitHub’s adversaries were able to swap out the code is because many of the Chinese websites weren’t encrypting their traffic.
71491791
submission
itwbennett writes:
You win some, you lose some. Microsoft this week dropped support for ARM processors from its Surface tablets with the Surface 3, but adoption of the chip architecture in Chromebooks is growing. Chromebooks from little-known companies HiSense and Haier went on sale this week for $149, and come with an ARM-based chip made by Rockchip. Asus also announced a new ARM-based 10.1-inch Chromebook Flip hybrid that will ship in a few months starting at $249. Acer announced a Chromebase, a 21.5-inch all-in-one PC with Chrome OS and an ARM-based processor from Nvidia.
71491631
submission
itwbennett writes:
Do you want a Raspberry Pi 2 laptop? A new hardware kit coming in May from Pi-Top will help you build one at home in a matter of minutes. The full Pi-Top kit includes a 13.3-inch screen, battery, trackpad, mousepad, laptop casings and Raspberry Pi 2, which would serve as the main motherboard.
71478899
submission
itwbennett writes:
Verizon said in January that it would allow subscribers to opt out of having a unique identifier placed on their phones that critics have labelled a ‘supercookie’ because it’s almost impossible to remove, but it didn’t say when. On Tuesday, Verizon said the identifier won’t be inserted for customers who opt out of its mobile advertising program: 'Verizon Wireless has updated its systems so that we will stop inserting the UIDH after a customer opts out of the relevant mobile advertising program or activates a line that is ineligible for the advertising program,” such as as a government or business line,' Verizon said in a change to its policies Tuesday.
71477925
submission
itwbennett writes:
A new GitHub repository traces the entire change history of France’s civil codes going back to the times of Napoleon.
71455729
submission
Lucas123 writes:
While the rest of the nation's solar power generation hovers around 1%, California clocked in with a record 5% of power coming from utility-grade (1MW or more) solar power sources, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group and the Energy Information Administration. That's three times the next closest state, Arizona. At the same time, 22 states have yet to deploy even one utility-grade solar power plant, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Meanwhile, the rest of the world saw a 14% uptick in solar power installations in 2014 for a total of 54.5GW of capacity, and that figure is expected to grow even faster in 2015. While China still leads the world in new solar capacity, Japan and the U.S. come in as a close second and third, respectively. In the U.S. distributed solar and utility-grade solar installations are soaring as the solar investment tax credit (ITC) is set to expire next year. The U.S. is expected to deploy 8.5GW of new solar capacity in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group.
71455569
submission
itwbennett writes:
The malware program, dubbed Trojan.Laziok by researchers from antivirus vendor Symantec, was used in spear-phishing attacks earlier this year against companies from the petroleum, gas and helium industries from many countries in the Middle East, but also from the U.S., India, the U.K., and others. The Trojan is spread via emails with malicious documents that exploit a Microsoft Office vulnerability for which a patch has existed since April 2012.
