62687473
submission
jfruh writes:
While several U.S. judges have refused as overbroad warrants that sought to grant police access to a suspects complete Gmail account, a federal judge in New York State OK'd such an order this week. Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.
62687109
submission
jfruh writes:
Google's "don't be evil" mantra already seemed pretty dated last year December when it purchased Boston Dynamics, a company that designs actual robot soldiers. But since the takeover, Boston Dynamics income from military and government sources has dropped dramatically. It may be that Google as an international corporation can't be tied too closely to any single state or its military; it may also be possible that Google has other uses in mind for Boston Dynamics robots.
62543161
submission
jfruh writes:
Point-of-sale systems aren't cheap, so it's not unusual for smaller merchants to buy used terminals second-hand. An HP security researcher bought one such unit on eBay to see what a used POS system will get you, and what he found was distrubing: default passwords, a security flaw, and names, addresses, and social security numbers of employees of the terminal's previous owner.
62542699
submission
jfruh writes:
The tech press has been shocked by the scale of layoffs proposed by new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — tens of thousands of workers representing 14 percent of company headcount. But the numbers somewhat obscure the fact that a significant majority of those losing their jobs — almost 70 percent — are former Nokia employees who only came over in the course of Microsoft's acquistion of their company in the past year. The cuts may primarily represent Nadella's rejection of the Nokia merger, signalled by his changing Microsoft's mission from being a "devices and services" provider to instead focusing on "productivity and platform".
62495713
submission
jfruh writes:
The world of internal corporate budgeting is Darwinian and zero-sum. If you want to get a big project IT project funded by your company, one that will involve spending money up front, you can't just compare it to technical projects: you need to prove it's better than everything else the company could be spending money on, based on some metrics that aren't technical at all.
62425919
submission
jfruh writes:
A quarter of Japan's population is over 65, and Yahoo Japan sees that as a growth market. They're offering Yahoo Ending to help the elderly manage all electronic aspects of their deaths, from archiving their online existence to sending a pre-written note to their loved ones. The company hopes that eventually the site can be a portal to help simply the process of having an IRL funeral, too.
62425353
submission
jfruh writes:
In 1998, the US Congress passed a law that temporarily banned all taxes imposed by federal, state, and local governments on Internet access and Internet-only services, a ban that has been faithfully renewed every year since. Now the US House has passed a permanent version of the ban, which also applies to several states that had passed Internet taxes before 1998 and were grandfathered in under the temporary law. The Senate must pass the bill as well by November 1 or the temporary ban will lapse.
62367411
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the biggest losers in the rise of lightweight big data databases like NoSQL and Hadoop has been Oracle, whose lucrative business lies on selling SQL tools. Proving that if you can't beat 'em you should join 'em, Oracle is now offering tools that allow you to query multiple kinds of databases with a single SQL query. The hope is that Oracle's SQL products will still remain the default, or at least in the mix.
62366973
submission
jfruh writes:
Yes, we all know that we have a lot of personally identifying information on our phones that maybe we shouldn't. But even if our data is locked down and encrypted, we're all leaving biological footprints on our phones, which are basically extensions of our personal bacterial ecosystem. A study has concluded that phones could be a less invasive source of information in studying individual microbiomes than current techniques.
62289137
submission
jfruh writes:
The process of picking a password is an increasingly burdensome one for many users. Here's one suggestion: if you're already going to have to pick something long and unweildy, don't get hung up on the "word" part. Why not pick a phrase, and, if you're doing that, why not pick a mantra that will improve your mood? Work out your frustrations ("I want to yell @ U 2"), affirm your self-worth ("I yam ! my j0b", with "!" for "not") — the possibilities are limitless.
62289051
submission
jfruh writes:
Korean electronics manufacturer LG has shown off experimental see-through, roll-up displays, paper thin and flexible and capable of letting through about 30% of the light that strikes it. The company is eager to sell the concept and promises it'll be arriving soon, though they've shown of similar (though less capable) technology over the past few years and have yet to bring any products to market.
62193157
submission
itwbennett writes:
At the recent Society of Information Displays (SID), Nokia showed off displays that could be bent up to two times, and still continue to work. Well, Korea's LG Display just one upped them in a big way. It has just shown off an 18-inch flexible OLED panel that you can roll up like a newspaper to a radius of just 3 cm and still work. The company also showed off an 18-inch transparent OLED panel
62192957
submission
itwbennett writes:
When unknown television maker Seiki released the world’s cheapest 4K TV, many programmers jumped at the opportunity to gain a cheap 4K monitor. Early reports touted vast screen real estate and sharp picture as a massive productivity boost for developers. So when ITworld's Matt Mombrea saw a 50” Seiki 4K TV for $429, he had to give it a try. Consider this your chance to learn from his mistakes: Despite tweaking every possible thing there was to tweak, the TV still made for a sub-standard monitor — it was slow and laggy with a noticeable flickr. As a TV, though, it's just fine.
62192049
submission
itwbennett writes:
The Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 party-line vote Friday, approved a plan to revamp the 17-year-old E-Rate program, which pays for telecom services for schools and libraries, by phasing out funding for voice service, Web hosting and paging services, and redirecting money to Wi-Fi. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had proposed a $5 billion budget for Wi-Fi, but Republican commissioners and some lawmakers had questioned where the money would come from. Still, the E-Rate revamp approved Friday contemplates a $1 billion-a-year target for Wi-Fi projects 'year after year,' Wheeler said.
62176635
submission
jfruh writes:
We already have the Internet of Things, so why not the Security Breaches of Things? A security research firm released a case study of a company that ordered inventory scanners that ended up coming already infected with malware. Once the scanners were connected to the company's wireless network, the malware searched out Linux-based ERP servers with "finance" in their names and then went after known security holes.
