63637053
submission
itwbennett writes:
Telecom equipment vendor Adtran has developed a technology that will make it easier for operators to roll out broadband speeds close to 500Mbps over copper lines. Adtran's FDV (Frequency Division Vectoring), enhances the capabilities of two technologies — VDSL2 with vectoring and G.fast — by enabling them to better coexist over a single subscriber line, the company said. VDSL2 with vectoring, which improves speeds by reducing noise and can deliver up to 150Mbps, is currently being rolled out by operators, while G.fast, which is capable of 500Mbps, is still under development, with the first deployments coming in mid-2015. FDV will make it easier for operators to roll out G.fast once it's ready and expand where it can be used, according to Adtran.
63632369
submission
jfruh writes:
In September of 2012, SmartThings took to Kickstarter with the promise of delivering an "Internet of things" package to backers, including a hub device that would control various home gadgets via the user's smartphone. They aimed to raise $250,000. They got $1.2 million. And now they've been bought by Samsung for a reported $200 million, as the South Korean electronics market tries to get a foothold into this emerging market.
63607633
submission
itwbennett writes:
Leo Polovets, a former LinkedIn and Google engineer turned VC, recently examined data from AngelList, an online community for startups, looking at the self-reported use of technologies by startups. Here's a sampling of what came out on top: JavaScript is by far the dominant programming language choice, followed by Ruby and Python. MongoDB is tops in databases, followed by MySQL. And AWS was the clear top choice for infrastructure and hosting.
63607187
submission
jfruh writes:
Apple put a lot of work into making the iOS secure, but by designing it so that it has to occasionally connect to a PC, they left some crucial holes open. "We believe that Apple kind of overtrusted the USB connection," said security researcher Tielei Wang.
63607063
submission
jfruh writes:
Since 2000, many U.S. companies have signed on to the voluntary EU Safe Harbor framework, agreeing to treat the personal data of European citizens with more care and privacy than they otherwise would. The problem, as one might expect from an entirely voluntary agreement that runs against a company's finacial interests, is that many of the companies are simply ignoring their own promises. Violators include Adobe, AOL, and Salesforce.com.
63589713
submission
itwbennett writes:
Cisco Systems will cut as many as 6,000 jobs over the next 12 months, saying it needs to shift resources to growing businesses such as cloud, software and security. Cisco has about 74,000 employees, so the cuts will affect about 8 percent of its staff. The move will be a reorganization rather than a net reduction, the company said. It needs to cut jobs because the product categories where it sees the strongest growth, such as security, require special skills, so it needs to make room for workers in those areas, it said.
63589255
submission
itwbennett writes:
Japan is one of the last countries in the world where telegrams are still widely used. A combination of traditional manners, market liberalization and innovation has kept alive this age-old form of messaging. Companies affiliated with the country's three mobile carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank, offer telegrams, which are sent via modern server networks instead of the dedicated electrical wires of the past (Morse telegraphy hasn't been used since 1962), and then printed out with modern printers instead of tape glued on paper. But customers are still charged according to the length of the message, which is delivered within three hours. A basic NTT telegram up to 25 characters long can be sent for ¥440 ($4.30) when ordered online.
63579665
submission
jfruh writes:
A casual observer at the latest DEFCON conference in Las Vegas might not have noticed much change from last year — still tons of leather, piercing, and body art, still groups of men gathered in darkened ballroons furiously typing commands. But this year there's a new focus: hacking not just for the lulz, but focusing specifically on highlighting comptuer security problems that have the potential to do real-world physical harm to human beings.
63546095
submission
itwbennett writes:
The first large-scale analysis of firmware has revealed poor security practices that could present opportunities for hackers probing the Internet of Things. Researchers with Eurecom, a technology-focused graduate school in France, developed a web crawler that plucked more than 30,000 firmware images from the websites of manufacturers including Siemens, Xerox, Bosch, Philips, D-Link, Samsung, LG and Belkin. In one instance, the researchers found a Linux kernel that was 10 years out of date bundled in a recently released firmware image. They also uncovered 41 digital certificates in firmware that were self-signed and contained a private RSA encryption key and 326 instances of terms that could indicate the presence of a backdoor.
63515957
submission
itwbennett writes:
Blaming 'bureaucratic dysfunction,’ Oracle has sued Oregon for breach of contract, seeking more than $20 million in fees the state is withholding for its work on Cover Oregon, a troubled insurance exchange website developed as part of President Barack Obama's health care policy overhaul. The move is a preemptive strike by Oracle against Oregon, whose governor, John Kitzhaber, has advocated suing Oracle.
63455499
submission
jfruh writes:
Many security experts agree that our current authentication system, in which end users are forced to remember (or, more often, write down) a dizzying array of passwords is broken. DARPA, the U.S. Defense Department research arm that developed the Internet, is trying to work past the problem by eliminating passwords altogether, replacing them with biometric and other cues, using off-the-shelf technology available today.
63455447
submission
jfruh writes:
The Xbox one isn't just a game console: it's also a nifty media set-top box, and it interacts very well with your TV service — as long as you have cable. Cord-cutters will soon be able to attach their Xbox to an antenna — but only in Europe.
63421175
submission
jfruh writes:
Not everyone in tech has a job like Homer Simpson, who's been replaced at various times by a brick tied to a lever and a chicken named Queenie. But many IT workers have come up against mind-numbing, repetitive tasks that probably could be automated. So: what to do about it? Well, the answer depends on how much power you have in an organization and how much your bosses respect your opinion.
63412341
submission
itwbennett writes:
Google is taking Internet security into its own hands, punishing sites that don't use encryption by giving them lower search rankings. The use of https is now one of the signals, like whether a Web page has unique content, that Google uses to determine where a site will appear in search rankings, although it will be a 'lightweight' signal and applies to about 1 percent of search queries now, wrote Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, both Google webmaster trends analysts, in a blog post.
63411891
submission
itwbennett writes:
China is tightening control over mobile messaging services with new rules that limit their role in spreading news. Under the new regulations, only news agencies and other groups with official approval can publish whatever the government considers political news via public accounts. 'All other public accounts that have not been approved cannot release or reprint political news,' the regulations said. Users of the instant messaging services will also have to register with their official IDs, and agree to follow relevant laws.
