65081565
submission
jfruh writes:
A good way to sell someone a new technology? Prove to them that you believe in it enough to use it yourself. IBM has been trying to get customers to buy into the concept of the "Internet of Things," in which tiny distributed networked sensors would improve manufacturing processes. To prove its point, Big Blue implemented such a system in one of its Malaysian factories, and claimed $9 million in savings.
65081495
submission
jfruh writes:
An iOS trojan called Xsser mRAT seems to be targeting people in Hong Kong protesting China's plan to restrict elections there, and Lacoon Mobile Security says it has trademarks of being developed by a nation-state. A similar piece of malware masqueraded as a tool for coordinating protests and attacked Android users. The trojan collects SMS messages, call logs, location data, photos, and address books data.
65068205
submission
itwbennett writes:
Four alleged members of an international computer hacking ring face charges in the U.S. of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. Army and several tech companies and stealing several software packages, including programs used to train Army helicopter pilots, as well as software and data related to the Xbox One gaming console, the Xbox Live online gaming service and popular games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War 3.
65062255
submission
itwbennett writes:
China has effectively cleared the iPhone 6 for sale in the country, granting the product a license, but not before a government regulator demanded Apple make some security changes in the iOS operating system to fix suspected flaws in the software. These flaws involved "three background services" that can be exploited to retrieve users' private information, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in its posting.
65054023
submission
jfruh writes:
In 2011, the Maricopa County Community College District suffered a data breach, with 400 people's information stolen. The district was warned that it needed to improve its security. An audit in 2012 revealed that it hadn't. In 2013, the FBI found 14 of the district's databases for sale online, with data including names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, and birth dates. Now electronic privacy watchdog EPIC is demanding that the FTC bring a legal enforcement action against the district for its negligence.
65053877
submission
jfruh writes:
While Windows-based tablets haven't exactly set the world on fire, Microsoft hasn't given up on them, and its hardware partners haven't either. HP has announced a series of Windows tablets, with the 7-inch low-end model, the Stream 7, priced at $99. The Stream brand is also being used for low-priced laptops intended to compete with Chromebooks (which HP also sells). All are running Intel chips and full Windows, not Windows RT.
65039913
submission
jfruh writes:
Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, or WinHEC, was an annual staple of the '90s and '00s: every year, execs from Redmond would tell OEMs what to expect when it came to Windows servers and PCs. The conference was wrapped with software into Build in 2009, but now it's being revived to deal with not just computers but also the tablets and cell phone Microsoft has found itself in the business of selling and even making. It's also being moved from the U.S. to China, as an acknowledgement of where the heart of the tech hardware business is now.
65039835
submission
jfruh writes:
Softbank is the scrappy number three mobile phone company in Japan, and, since it bought Sprint last year, fills a similar niche in the United States. Dreamworks Animation has produced hits like "Shrek" and "Kung Fu Panda" but has never matched its rival Pixar. They seem to make an unlikely pair, but that hasn't stopped Softbank from trying to buy the animation studio.
64896087
submission
itwbennett writes:
In a letter to Google (PDF) that was published Thursday, the Article 29 Working Party, an umbrella group for European data protection authorities, said Google's privacy policy, in addition to being clear and unambiguous, should also include an exhaustive list of the types of personal data processed. But if all that information is overwhelming to users, Google should personalize the privacy policy to show users only the data processing it is performing on their data.
64890915
submission
jfruh writes:
Yahoo has seen a marked decline recently in government requests for the variety of personal data it stores about users of services ranging from Yahoo Mail to Flickr to Yahoo Answers. While it might be tempting to say that the government is laying off on the spying, Google saw an increase in requests during that period, which might just mean that Yahoo's declining popularity is a boon to its remaining users' privacy.
64890843
submission
jfruh writes:
The U-blox SARA-U260 chip module is only 16 by 26 millimeters — and it's just been certified to work with AT&T's 3G network. While consumers want 4G speeds for their browsing needs, 3G is plenty fast for the innumerable automated systems that will be necessary for the Internet of Things to work. So look out, because with chips this tiny, pretty much everything's going to be online soon.
64833939
submission
jfruh writes:
Tech companies in the U.S. Midwest have had a problem retaining talented young workers who migrate to the coasts seeking excitement and cultural offerings. But many are discovering that the solution was nearby all along, and are moving from suburban campuses to downtown offices, where the excitement of city life can happily co-exist with a reasonable Midwest cost of living.
64784183
submission
jfruh writes:
You've just graduated from college with a technical degree, and you're more mobile than you've ever been in your life or ever will be again. How do you decide where to settle? If you're trying to advance your technical career, you might want to try working through the checklist offered by Fred Shilmover. Shilmover is the CEO of a cloud-based company but his guidelines could apply to anyone in a technical field. (He picked Boston, by the way.)
64784011
submission
jfruh writes:
If Dell has a reputation in the PC market, it's as the company that got low-end PCs to customers cheaply. But after the great drama of founder Michael Dell taking the company private, the company is following a new path, adding higher-quality (and more expensive) products like the Venue 8 7000, the thinnest tablet on the market today, to its lineup. One analyst notes that "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."
64722669
submission
jfruh writes:
The so-called Internet of Things (IoT), under which tens of thousands of smart objects will interact with each other seamlessly, has a problem: a lack of uniform communication standards that will allow all those things to speak a common language. The IEEE is embarking on an ambitious effort to solve this problem, creating a standards group to bring order to IoT chaos.
