Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

Microsoft knows you are rubbish

Posted on July 17, 2014 by - News

Microsoft campusResearchers at Microsoft think they have found the secret of when someone is accidently introducing a bug into the software they are developing.

Microsoft researcher Andrew Begel said that instead of trying to go through a developers rubbish code looking for bugs it is possible to tell by looking into the developers eyes.

He hit on the idea of measuring the attributes of the developers themselves to see what cognitive or emotional issues lead to buggy code or lowered productivity.

This would enable employers to intervene and stop them from causing developers to make mistakes in the first place.

Begel has carried out tests using psycho-physiological sensors to measure developers’ reactions to tasks. He used eye-tracking technology, electrodermal-activity sensors (which measure changes in the skin’s ability to conduct electricity), and electroencephalogram sensors (which evaluate electrical activity in the brain).

Using this data, Begel was able to predict the difficulty of a task for a new developer with a precision of nearly 65 per cent. For new tasks the precision was even greater – almost 85 per cent.

Begel suggests that reducing the contrast on the display and making the fonts harder to read would force the developer to apply more brainpower to read and understand the code.

He added that Begel’s system makes no distinction between critical mistakes and minor mistakes, inevitably leading to unnecessary delays.

“I’m pretty sure that the industry could take pieces of the research that would help us understand better why mistakes are happening and when, and therefore how to try and avoid that,” said Shulman.

 

Laptop users should disable Chrome

Posted on July 16, 2014 by - News

windersLaptop using Windows users might be better off uninstalling Google’s Chrome, according to Forbes magazine.

Apparently Chrome can drastically affect battery life, and even slow down your computer.

The problem is the “system clock tick rate.” Chrome sets the rate to 1.000ms. The idle, under Windows, should be 15.625ms. This means that the chip is waking far more often than at 15.625ms.

Vole warns that tick rates of 1.000ms might increase power consumption by “as much as 25 per cent.”

Macs and Linux machines don’t have the problem because they have “tickless timers.” IE and Firefox don’t exhibit this issue at all, instead they up the refresh when needed.

Noone seems to be keen to do much about it. It was apparently first seen in 2010, but the last confirmed bug addition was made yesterday.

If you must use Chrome it is probably a good idea to turn your browser off whenever possible. You could use Firefox which hogs memory or IE which is still IE unless Google does pull finger.

 

Dell puts Hammer on the table

Posted on July 15, 2014 by - News

Hammer logoMajor channel player Dell said it has appointed distie Hammer as an international OEM covering its complete portfolio.

The partnership means Hammer will sell into 40 verticals including military, defence, media, entertainments and telecommunications.

Gerard Marlow, general manaer at Hammer said that his company’s experience in bespoke server design helps it to be a Dell OEM.  The company has over 50 sales and technical professionals in house.

Dermot O’Connell, executive director of OEM business at Dell says that the partnership means Hammer will be part of his company’s overall channel strategy.

Russia insists that data is kept at home

Posted on July 7, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeThe Russian government has enacted a law which means that all cloud data must be kept within the confines of the country.

The move will mean that if US cloud operators want to work in Mother Russia they cannot send the data to their main warehouses in the US or EU.

Bill number 553424-6  specifies that “when collecting personal data, including information and telecommunications network, the Internet, the operator must ensure that record, systematisation, accumulation, storage, updated, modified, removing the personal data of citizens of the Russian Federation, in databases, of information located in the territory of the Russian Federation.”

On the face of it, it looks like the Russians are protecting their citizens from being spied on by the evil US spooks, but it also makes it easier for the government to spy on its own citizens.

Russia Today said the law could provide businesses with some major headaches.  Airlines, for example, rely on hosted software and software-as-a-service providers are not going to be keen to have to build new data centres.

The law comes into force on September 1st, 2016, giving Russian companies plenty of time to set something up.  It could be a boom time for local hosting companies.

NSA snooping is not targeted at terrorists

Posted on July 7, 2014 by - News

skullkThe Washington Post  has poured cold water on the idea that ordinary people have nothing to fear from NSA snooping.

After a four month investigation it turns out that ordinary internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from US digital networks.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Nearly half of the surveillance files, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to US citizens or residents.

The reason for this is because to be effective the spooks have to track alias accounts. Months of tracking communications across more than 50 alias accounts, the files show, led directly to the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder, and Umar Patek, a suspect in a 2002 terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali.

But a huge chunk of useless files have been retained. This include what the Post calls “stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes “.

The daily lives of more than 10,000 people who were not targeted, not connected to any terrorist activity are catalogued and recorded.

The sweep is huge.  If a real target entered an online chat room, the NSA collected the words and identities of every person who posted there, as well as every person who simply “lurked.”

US tech workers are revolting

Posted on July 7, 2014 by - News

India_flagThree US tech worker groups have launched a labour boycott of IBM, Infosys and Manpower.
Bright Future Jobs, the Programmers Guild and WashTech claim that the outfits discourage US workers from applying for US IT jobs by tailoring employment ads toward overseas workers, writes Nick Farrell.

In one case a Manpower subsidiary has advertised for Indian IT workers to come to the US for openings anticipated more than a year in advance. The advertisements in India are being placed even though the nature of the tech industry is so fast-paced that staffing projections cannot be adequately foreseen.

Not surprisingly the three groups believe that companies should look first for US workers to fill US IT jobs.

The main goals of the boycott are “attention getting” and putting pressure on the IT staffing firms to change their practice.

Infosys denied that it avoids recruiting US IT workers and pointed to job adverts for 440 active openings across 20 states in the US.  Many of the jobs require a US master’s degree in business administration.

However there is a general concern that tech companies are lobbying for a relaxation of visa restrictions to cope with a “tech skills shortage” which is not really there.  Instead they are bringing in foreign developers who are cheaper than their US counterparts.

Humanity will be replaced by machines

Posted on July 7, 2014 by - News

TheTerminatorLouis Del Monte, physicist, entrepreneur, and author of “The Artificial Intelligence Revolution” and nothing to do with orange juice has warned that since there is no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be, machines will start to replace humans as the top species in 2040.

Del Monte,had a cheerful chat to Business Insider.

He said that humanity and machines will reach a point when a singularity is possible between 2040, though Del Monte says it might be as late as 2045.

He said that it will not be a ‘Terminator’ scenario, or a war.  In the early part of the post-singularity world, one scenario is that the machines will seek to turn humans into cyborgs. This is nearly happening now, replacing faulty limbs with artificial parts. We’ll see the machines as a useful tool. Productivity in business based on automation will be increased dramatically in various countries. In China it doubled, just based on GDP per employee due to use of machines.”

He said that by the end of this century most of the human race will have become cyborgs who will have the promise of immortality. Machines will make breakthroughs in medical technology, most of the human race will have more leisure time, and we’ll think we’ve never had it better. The concern he has is that the machines will view us as an unpredictable and dangerous.

Del Monte believes machines will become self-conscious and have the capabilities to protect themselves.

Eventually they might view humanity in the same way we view harmful insects. Humans are an unstable species that creates wars, has weapons to wipe out the world twice over, and makes computer viruses.

He said he wrote the book as “a warning.” Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more capable, and we’re adopting it as quickly as it appears. A pacemaker operation is “quite routine,” he said, but “it uses sensors and AI to regulate your heart.”

AI machines can learn self-preservation and whether or not they’re conscious is a moot point.

Flat battery? You don’t fly

Posted on July 7, 2014 by - News

pressieThe self-feeding paranoia of US airport security checks has just reached a new level as Homeland Security has become worried about computers which do not switch on.

According to Gizmodo, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson woke up in a cold sweat worried about all those people who get onto planes with flat batteries on their electronic devices.
Johnson said devices that won’t turn on will be confiscated, and passengers may be diverted for “additional questioning”.

The fear is that a terrorist will be on a plane with smartphone or laptop with a flat battery and this will mean… well we are not quite sure. The whole point of checking electronic gear was to make sure that it could not be used as part of a terrorist attack, however if it does not work then it can’t be.

However Johnson thinks that people who don’t charge their gear before they get on a flight must be terrorists and should not be allowed to board a plane.  Our next bet is that he will wake up in the morning with a fear that those who don’t wash their hands before they get on board a plane are terrorists.

Practically this means that if you are dumb enough to bring any electronics on a plane on US soil you should have it fully charged beforehand.   It is much safer to stick your electronics inside your suitcase, where if it is a bomb it is not going to be probed by TSA officials.

AP mentions that American intelligence officials have been worried about terrorists finding new ways to bring explosives onto airplanes undetected and apparently they have vivid imaginations.  Already we have that dumb rule about water bottles, and toiletries, you can’t wear a belt, or high heels.  The process of getting on the plane is now longer than the flight.

IBM says Andy Murray was doomed

Posted on July 4, 2014 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue has been running its divination software trying to work out who is going to win Wimbledon.

According to IBM, British tennis hope Andy Murray was doomed from the outset and was always going to lose to Grigor Dimitrov.

IBM credited Dimitrov with 50 aggressive forehands to 44 for Murray during Wednesday’s men’s quarter-final match, in which Bulgarian Dimitrov knocked out last year’s men’s champion in straight sets.

In short the IBM system claims the Briton was a less aggressive player than opponent Grigor Dimitrov and was due for a good kicking.

These figures tallied with our own predictions that were based on a simple algorithm. If player is British, then player = loser.   Our algorithm was highly successful in the World Cup where we accurately predicted England being sent home.

This year’s Wimbledon marks the first time IBM has used the system which was developed from data combined from last year’s Wimbledon championship, the US Open, as well as this year’s Australian Open.

It defines an aggressive shot based on speed, landing location of the ball, distance the opponent had to move to get to the shot; and the opponent’s position for the return.

The statistics cannot be used to predict with certainty who will win a  match, but they can help to analyse why a particular match against a particular player went the way it did, and also to prepare for an opponent, IBM says.

Bill Jinks, an IBM engineer working on the project, said that data was changing the way the game was played.

Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard, who is ranked 13th in the world but beat Germany’s Angelique Kerber, ranked 7th, on Wednesday to reach the women’s semi-finals, said her coach looks at the IBM data.

The system predicted 38 aggressive forehands for Bouchard during the match against 29 for Kerber, and 23 aggressive backhands versus just 15 for the seventh seed.

At this rate the sports people will not have to actually play a game, the computer will predict who wins, everyone applauds and goes for strawberry and cream.

Enterprise social networking is a waste of time

Posted on July 4, 2014 by - News

crystalballBig companies which thought that it would be a wizard wheeze to set up social networking sites on their corporate nets are regretting the investment.

It is not because the social networking sites are being misused, but rather that they are not being used at all.

Enterprise social networking (ESN) software, designed to boost interaction and collaboration, is being completely ignored.

It sounds so good on paper. A successful ESN deployment means you get a Facebook- and Twitter-like system for your workplace, with employee profiles, activity streams, document sharing, groups, discussion forums and microblogging and employee’s that work together.

The managers thought that staff could use it for brainstorming ideas, answering each other’s questions, discovering colleagues with valuable expertise, co-editing marketing materials, sharing sales leads and collaborating on a new product design.

Carol Rozwell, a Gartner analyst, told IT World   that between 70 percent and 80 percent of companies are struggling with Enterprise Social Networking.

She said it is often rolled out by leaders who are thrilled with the technology, and they see how quickly consumer social networks like Facebook have grown. They think they’ll accomplish the same growth rate and participation if they buy the right tool and staff will use it.

However Gartner predicts that through 2015, 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve their intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.

However despite the fact that no one is using them, it seems that management still think they are a brilliant idea. MarketsandMarkets claims that spending on this type of software is expected to grow from $4.77 billion this year to $8.14 billion in 2019.  It sounds like it would be money better spend on a horse.

NSA dubs Linux forum a home for terrorists

Posted on July 4, 2014 by - News

National-Security-Agency--008US spooks have classed an open source Linux forum alongside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and is targeting its visitors for special treatment.

The Linux Journal is a happy place where weirdy beardy types can get together to discuss the Linux operating system and slag off Microsoft.  IT is the go-to site for headlines like “How YARN Changed Hadoop Job Scheduling” and “rc.local, Cron Style”.

It turns out that NSA has a programme called XKEYSCORE which decides which traffic to keep indefinitely. XKEYSCORE uses specific selectors to flag traffic, and the article reveals that Web searches for Tor and Tails software.

It is something that the Linux Journal has run a number of articles on because it helps to protect a user’s anonymity and privacy on the Internet.

According to DasErste.de which found the XKEYSCORE source code, and if you look closely at the rule definitions, you will see linuxjournal.com/content/linux* listed alongside Tails and Tor. This means that the NSA considers Linux Journal an “extremist forum”,

This means that merely looking for any Linux content on Linux Journal, not just content about anonymizing software or encryption, is considered suspicious and means your Internet traffic may be stored indefinitely.

Ironically it means that the best way to peruse the Linux Journal is to use Tor, which actually does look jolly suspicious and might flag a response from a curious NSA.

Encryption foils coppers nine times in the US

Posted on July 4, 2014 by - News

pressieIt appears that while coppers using wiretaps are fairly effective, streetwise criminals are starting to adopt better encryption mentions.

According to Wired in nine cases during 2013, state police were unable to break the encryption used by criminal suspects they were investigating.

This is not high, but it is more than twice as many cases as in 2012, when police reported encryption preventing them from successfully spying on a criminal suspect for the first time.

To put the figure into perspective, Federal and state police eavesdropped on US suspects’ phone calls, text messages, and other communications at least 3,500 times in 2013. Of those thousands of cases, only 41 involved encryption at all. In 32 cases police managed to get around suspects’ privacy protections to eavesdrop on their targets.

The figures seem to suggest that warnings from government agencies like the FBI that the free availability of encryption tools will eventually lead to a dystopian future where criminals and terrorists use privacy tools to make their communications invisible to police.

This complaint has become common. Last year the Drug Enforcement Agency leaked an internal report complaining that Apple’s iMessage encryption was blocking their investigations of drug dealers.

However the statistics from police reports shows that encryption use is on the rise, even if the number of cases remains small and most encryption use is pointless.

Intel fined for illegal wi-fi use

Posted on July 3, 2014 by - News

intel_log_reversedChipmaker Intel has written a $144,000 cheque to make the US Federal Communications Commission watchdog stop snapping at its heels.

An FCC investigation found the chip maker operated prototype wireless devices without FCC clearance.

It can’t have been much of an investigation given that Intel itself reported its non-compliance to the regulator.

Apparently Intel was worried in 2012 that it might have violated the agency’s rules when it tested prototype digital device models in residential areas without the FCC’s blessing.

The company also showed off  a prototype device at a trade show without proper labelling.

An Intel spokesman characterised the incident as a terrible mistake and not something it would do normally.

He said that the company had created a programme that gives the FCC confidence that it is doing its best to help ensure future compliance with the rules.

AMD releases A series APU

Posted on July 3, 2014 by - News

AMD_lassAMD has added the AMD A10-7800 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) to its A-Series 4th generation APU lineup.

The new chip has 12 compute cores (4CPU + 8 GPU) which AMD claims will unlock the designs full APU potential and Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) features.

The AMD A10-7800 is based around AMD Radeon R7 Series graphics and AMD’s Mantle API.
It can enable accelerated performance across select AMD Gaming Evolved partner titles.

Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Business Unit, AMD said that the 2014 AMD A-Series APUs were the most advanced and developer friendly performance APUs from AMD to date.

The AMD A10-7800 APU supports UltraHD (4K) resolutions and new video post processing enhancements that will make 1080p videos look better when upscaled on an UltraHD-enabled monitor or TV.

The chip comes with a configurable thermal design power option (cTDP) to allow the overclocker crowd to tinker with it.

Sales will start in Japan today with worldwide availability at the end of July.

In addition, AMD announced the introduction of the AMD A6-7400K and AMD A4-7300 APUs, for the home and office market.

With the unifying FM2+ infrastructure for AMD APUs, users are enabled to build smaller lower power form factors for gaming and home theatre PCs.

ISPs sue the spooks over network spying

Posted on July 3, 2014 by - News

snowdenISPs from the US, UK, Netherlands and South Korea with campaigners Privacy International are to sue UK spooks GCHQ for attacking their networks.

According to the BBC, it is the first time that GCHQ has faced such action and is based on allegations about government snooping made by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

What appears to have got the ISP’s goat is attacks which were outlined in a series of articles in Der Spiegel.  They claim that the Intercept, were illegal and “undermine the goodwill the organisations rely on”.

They say that Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom was targeted by GCHQ and infected with malware to gain access to network infrastructure

GCHQ and the US National Security Agency, where Snowden worked, had a range of network exploitation and intrusion capabilities, including technique that injected data into existing data streams to create connections that will enable the targeted infection of users,

The ISPs claim that the intelligence agencies used an automated system, codenamed Turbine, that allowed them to scale up network implants

German internet exchange points were targeted, allowing agencies to spy on all internet traffic coming through those nodes.

Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, said that the widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust everyone put on the internet and greatly endangers the world’s most powerful tool for democracy and free expression.

The ISPs involved in the action are UK-based GreenNet, Riseup (US), Greenhost (Netherlands), Mango (Zimbabwe), Jinbonet (South Korea), May First/People Link (US)and the Chaos Computer Club (Germany).

GCHQ insists that all its work was conducted in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities were “authorised, necessary and proportionate.”