56451251
submission
rjmarvin writes:
What plans, if any, does new CEO Satya Nadella have for Microsoft’s collection of products http://sdt.bz/68714 that have no future? Defunct products like Silverlight, Groove, SourceSafe, Visio and even a billion-dollar business like SharePoint are far from the many outright mistakes http://sdt.bz/68695 made during the up-and-down Ballmer Era http://sdt.bz/68685. Yet these legacy technologies are either stagnant or languishing, with little focus from the top and updates few and far between. How will these products fit into Microsoft's cloud and mobile-first strategy?
56339537
submission
rjmarvin writes:
As Satya Nadella assumes the throne of Microsoft, analysts and ex-MSFTers are reflecting back http://sdt.bz/68685 on the past 13 years with Steve Ballmer at the helm. Ballmer leaves his stamp on Microsoft with a mixed legacy complete with bold product and management strategies, high-profile successes and failures, and a loud, bombastic personality that spawned many a viral video. The greatest (and worst) hits include everything from Windows Vista, the Zune, Bing and the Surface RT to Windows Phone 8, Office 365 and Windows Azure. Nadella's immediate takeover http://sdt.bz/68684 sends Ballmer into swift retirement, yet the outgoing CEO, looking tired but excited, is happy to hand over both the reins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... and the burden.
56336305
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Microsoft officially announced http://sdt.bz/68684 Satya Nadella as its new CEO today. Also, as previously reported http://sdt.bz/68674, Bill Gates will step down as chairman of the board into the new role of technology adviser http://www.microsoft.com/en-us.... Nadella will take over as CEO immediately, allowing Steve Ballmer to retire early.
56184775
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Researchers in the MIT Media Lab have combined a connected book http://sdt.bz/68665 with a wearable vest-like sensory device to give the reader a storytelling experience complete with physical sensations and emotions timed with plot development. The "Sensory Fiction" http://scifi2scifab.media.mit.... project involves the reader wearing a vest equipped with mechanisms like a body compression system, heartbeat and shiver simulator, and localized body temperature control controlled by preprogrammed responses that convey physical sensations when a page is turned.
56143925
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Researchers Ari Juels and Thomas Ristenpart have developed a new form of deceptive encryption called 'Honey Encryption" http://sdt.bz/68654, which presents hackers with fake data that resembles real information every time they enter an incorrect password. The idea behind "Honey Encryption” is that each time a brute force hacker makes multiple attempts to access an account, the software generates a piece of fake data that looks like the user’s real information. If the intruder does ultimately enter the correct password and breach the account, the real data will be indistinguishable from the fake data. Juels and Ristenpart will present their paper, “Honey Encryption: Security Beyond the Brute-Force Bound,” at the Eurocrypt Conference http://ec14.compute.dtu.dk/ in Copenhagen, Denmark in May.
56106073
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo that until now were bound a gag order from saying anything about NSA data collection, can now publicly disclose http://sdt.bz/67646 the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests they receive for customer data in a given year...eventually. The catch is that they have to wait two years after a new data request to reveal the information publicly to give law enforcement agencies the time to act. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made a joint statement http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/... with intelligence director James Clapper about the deal, and in response the tech companies have withdrawn their FISA lawsuits.
56039857
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Google is releasing mini-games http://sdt.bz/67634 to developers to show off Google Glass' gaming capabilities. The mini games include Tennis, Balance, Clay Shooter, Matcher and Shape Shooter, built to showcase how Glass' voice invocation, sensors and simplicity lend themselves to quick, easy gameplay.
55933463
submission
rjmarvin writes:
President Obama has commissioned a comprehensive review of Big Data and privacy http://sdt.bz/67631. Senior White House advisor John Podesta has been tasked with leading a group including Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, presidential science adviser John Holdren, Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker to look at how data collection and analysis are affecting everyday privacy. According to Podesta's blog post http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog..., upon completing their review the group expects to provide the president a report on future technological trends examining the questions of collection, availability and the use of Big Data for the government and nation.
55895065
submission
rjmarvin writes:
JavaScript leapfrogged Java as the top-ranked programming language http://sdt.bz/67625, with PHP, C# and Python rounding out the Top 5. The RedMonk bi-annual rankings were devised by selecting and counting repository languages from GitHub and StackOverflow. In the January 2014 Programming Language Rankings just released http://redmonk.com/sogrady/201..., Python fell one spot from last year while Ruby fell two to #7, as C# and C++ both moved up and CSS made its first appearance at #10.
55883585
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Intel and NVIDIA are taking diverging paths in 2014. The two companies, brought together back in the mid-90s by OpenMP, are pulling away from each other, pushing supplemental high performance computing capabilities. Intel's HPC offering is its new line of Xeon Phi coprocessors. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is taking a different route by pushing OpenACC support into the GNU Compiler Collection http://sdt.bz/67623. NVIDIA looks to compile OpenACC applications with GCC, with the ultimate development goal of implementing OpenACC 2.0.
55844881
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Smartphone and password software provider SplashData compiled the “Worst Passwords of 2013” http://sdt.bz/67621 list from files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online in the past year. The most popular password of the year was '123456,' in a upset over the reigning champ, 'password.' The company stated that this year’s list was influenced by the 38 million passwords released in the Adobe breach http://sdt.bz/65281, accounting for passwords such as “adobe123” and “photoshop.”
http://sdt.bz/67621
55796389
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Recounting the breach http://sdt.bz/67613 to a House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee panel last week, TrustedSec CEO David Kennedy called his attack "rudimentary." Kennedy previously testified about the security vulnerabilities in Healthcare.gov last November, and said it has only gotten worse. Along with 8 other white hat hackers, they signed and released a joint statement https://www.trustedsec.com/fil... about how the glaring vulnerabilities in Healthcare.gov and the lack of security best practices have made a massive identity theft breach all but inevitable.
55785455
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Microsoft released the final version http://sdt.bz/67610 of Update 1 for Visual Studio 2013, targeting a few key areas for fixes and improvements based on customer feedback. The main components of the update were for better Internet Explorer support for older versions than IE10, along with fixes in debugging, Direct Graph Markup Language, Visual C++, ASP.NET frameworks and tools and XAML tools.
55541669
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Google released version 1.1 of its Dart open-source web programming language today, with new features and improved tools http://sdt.bz/67599. The Dart Editor is updated with improved debugging, code implementation and more descriptive toolkits, and new UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and documentation support command-line and server-side Dart applications. Google also highlighted benchmarks such as the Richards benchmark where Dart 1.1 is running 25% faster than JavaScript http://news.dartlang.org/2014/01/dart-11-features-up-to-25-faster.html, as part of the larger competition between Dart and JavaScript http://sdt.bz/67591 in creating more complex applications in the web development space.
55534035
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Google's Dart programming language looks to rewrite the rules of web development http://sdt.bz/67591. Dart co-creator Lars Bak explains how exactly Dart is designed to improve on JavaScript, particularly in writing larger, more complex web applications. On the other side of the web development space, Mozilla research fellow and ECMAScript project editor Allen Wirfs-Brock talks about the current state of JavaScript and how ECMAScript 6, targeted for implementation this December, addresses many of Google's criticisms with the first major enhancement to the language since 1999.
