Category: News

Jeb Bush leaks supporters details

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

JebBushFunnyFaceFormer Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is trying to position himself as a master of tech,  has made a serious of blunders almost as inspired and clever as his brother’s.

Bush touts his technical prowess, referring to himself as “The eGovernor” for how easy it was to email with him when he was in office.  He is expected to declare his desire to run for president in 2016, but he’s already created a major privacy blunder.

Bush’s latest project, which is designed to show the world that he is really hip and knows technology, is called Jeb Emails.  It is a huge open database of correspondence to and from his jeb@jeb.org email address, publishes the names, messages, and email addresses of his constituents who emailed him during his eight years in office.

However it is a huge misuse of the data sent to him because people did not expect them to be made public.

One woman said that she emailed Governor Bush when the state was going through the initial insurance crisis but she never gave permission to publish the emails.

She was a little embarrassed that one of the emails showed her worried about “illegal immigrants” as her feelings had changed on that subject and she hated to unduly upset anyone.

However he has had two internet related cock-ups in as many days from his campaign. His office admitted that they had asked their new Chief Technology Officer to delete jokes he’d tweeted about “sluts”.

Now the Verge  has uncovered emails that contain Social Security numbers, home addresses, and other personal information from Floridians.

ARM does better than expected

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

ARM-Cortex-A15-chipIt seems that the British chip designer ARM has done a lot better than the cocaine nose-jobs of Wall Street have predicted.

ARM posted a 25 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, ahead of expectations, helped by a strong year end in companies licensing its technology and growing royalty revenues.

The Tame Apple press  claims that the ARM success has all been down to Apple’s iPhone 6, although ARM powers most of the world’s smartphones.

ARM reported pre-tax profit of 118.9 million pounds on revenue of 225.9 million pounds, up 19 percent.

Licensing revenue was up 27 per cent on the year mainly based on 53 licences signed for processors.

“We anticipate that total group dollar revenues for Q1 will be up about 10 percent year on year, based on strengthening royalty revenue growth, and our expectation of the profile of license revenue through the year,” the company said.

Analysts were predicting pre-tax profit of £113 million, according to a consensus compiled by Thomson Reuters.

 

Microsoft offers start ups Azure credits

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeMicrosoft has launched a package to lure start-ups and SME’s to its Azure profile by offering them $500,000 in Azure credits. 

The deal, announced by partner Y Combinator, is only available to Y Combinator-backed companies and will be offered to the 2015 Winter and future batches.

It seems that Microsoft is following Google, AWS and IBM which already offer incentives for start-ups to join them.

Microsoft is giving Y Combinator start-ups a three years Office 365 subscription, access to Microsoft developer staff and one year of free CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services.

It is starting to look like Microsoft is getting more aggressive in its competition with Amazon Web Services and Google, both of whom already offer credits and freebies.

Amazon offers $25,000 in AWS credits and other freebies, while Google offers $100,000 in Google platform credits and IBM offers $120,000 in credit for SoftLayer infrastructure of BlueMix PaaS.

Writing in his company’s bog Sam Altman said that this brings the total value of special offers extended to each YC company to well over $1,000,000. “The relentless nagging from partners to grow faster we throw in for free,” he said.

It is likely that the YC deal is the first of many which will be rolled out worldwide to Microsoft’s partners.

 

Dating applications expose businesses

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

1930s-couple-620x400Big Blue is warning that millions of people using dating apps on company smartphones could be exposing their employers to hacking, spying and theft.

IBM security researchers said 26 of 41 dating apps they analysed on Google Android mobile platform had medium or high severity vulnerabilities.  Curiously the IBM team did not look at dating applications on Apple gear, probably because the company signed a deal to push Apple gear in the workplace.

Unfortunately IBM did not name and shame the vulnerable apps but said it had alerted the app publishers to problems.

Apparently Tinder, OkCupid and Match have become hugely popular in the past few years due to their instant messaging, photo and geolocation services. In 2013 it was estimated that 31 million Americans have used a dating site or app.

IBM found employees used vulnerable dating apps in nearly 50 percent of the companies sampled for its research. By using the same phone for work and play or “bring your own device,” it means that companies are wide open for such attack vectors.

Am IBM report said that while BYOD was seen as a way that companies could save cash by allowing employees to use their home gear on corporate networks , if not managed properly, the organizations might be leaking sensitive corporate data via employee-owned devices.

IBM said the problem is that people on dating apps let their guard down and are not as sensitive to potential security problems as they might be on email or websites.

If an app is compromised, hackers can take advantage of users waiting eagerly to hear back from a potential love interest by sending bogus “phishing” messages to glean sensitive information or install malware, IBM said.

A phone’s camera or microphone could be turned on remotely through a vulnerable app, which IBM warned could be used to eavesdrop on personal conversations or confidential business meetings. Vulnerable GPS data could also lead to stalking, and a user’s billing information could be hacked to purchase things on other apps or websites.

Strangely, despite its dire warnings to Android users, IBM said it had not so far seen a rash of security breaches due to dating apps as opposed to any other kind of social media.

Meanwhile, it recommends that dating app users limit the personal information they divulge, use unique passwords on every online account, apply the latest software patches and keep track of what permissions each app has.

UK presses ahead on driverless cars

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-11 at 10.41.23The Department for Transport said that it had given the green light to test driverless cars on public roads.

Transport minister Claire Perry said she believes “driverless cars are the future. I want Britain to be at the forefront of this exciting new development to embrace a technology that could transform our roads and open up a brand new route for global investment”.

The coalition government launched a competition to research and develop driverless cars with pilots in Greenwich, Bristol, Milton Keynes and Coventry.

Business secretary Vince Cable said he believed that the industry will be worth as much as £900 billion in 10 years time.

Perry and Cable are visiting the Greenwich project, which is following up research conducted by Oxford University and Nissan.

They will unveil a driverless pod that will be tested in Milton Keynes (pictured).

The government will introduce a code of practice to give industry a framework to trial cars, to be published this spring.

SMEs want investigation into Capita

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

parliamentA report said 12 small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are asking the government to investigate IT giant Capita for allegedly damaging their business.

According to the Independent, the Cabinet Office has started an investigation into Capita after the group of SMEs alleged that it was exploiting their suppliers over a civil service training scheme.

Capita secured a £250 million deal three years ago to provide civil service training in a move that was intended to open the public sector to SMEs.

But the SMEs have made a number of allegations including paying invoices late, taking big fees for training contracts, and hiring sub contractors to work directly for Capita rather than farming the work out to the small businesses.

Capita is also alleged to have introduced non competing clauses for SMEs involved in business which precluded them getting work without its permission.

The Cabinet Office said it was taking the allegations seriously. It said government policy is to support SMEs. Capita said it had changed its policies on late payment and it had abandoned its policy of non compete clauses.

BBC to stream to Roku devices

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

tvA Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request made by TechEye has revealed that the BBC is to offer live streaming on Roku devices.
Roku gizmos are tiny devices that use your internet connection to stream content to your TV.
Currrently, in the UK, there are few live news services available for the Roku, apart from Sky News. The BBC supports iPlayer for the Roku, but without live channel feeds.
But, the BBC said in its response to our request that it will make BBC channels available in the next few months.
The response said: “Whilst we have made live streaming available for our mobile and PC users, we have not prioritised this for TV audiences.  This is because most TV audiences have the ability to playback live via the tuner.
“However, I am pleased to say that the BBC is currently working on being able to provide the service to allow live streaming of the iPlayer for the Roku device.”

DRAM market shows unseasonal growth

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

nand-chipsSales of DRAM rose by 8.2 percent in the fourth quarter, bucking the usual pattern in the memory market.
DRAM Exchange, which tracks the memory market said manufacturers of devices migrated fast to 20 and 25 nanometre production, and the additional output meant quarterly revenues worldwide amounted to $13 billion.
The firm said that Samsung has shown the most profit from making DRAM, with typical operating margins of 47 percent.
SK Hynix also makes healthy margins of 42  percent, while American DRAM maker Micron managed to turn in margins of 29.5 percent.
Although Micron is still manufacturing using 30 nanometre technology, it raised production of DRAM for servers, which is the most lucrative application.
Samsung started volume production on 20 nanometre in the fourth quarter and the yield rate and output of chips made at 25 nanometre has increased.
Micron has begun sampling on the 20 nanometre process but plans to migrate so fast that there will be 80,000 wafer starts a month by the end of this year.

 

Biometric spending on the up

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

fingerprintRevenues for biometric identification to access computer systems will be worth as much as $13.8 million this year.
So said market intelligence company ABI Research.
Spending on biometric technology is because both consumer and enterprise segments are rapidly catching up with spending by governments.
A growing perception of terrorist threats in both Europe and the USA are also accelerating sales of biometric identification gear.
Fingerprint identification remains the dominant type of system and is more acceptable to people than other methods, although it is not the most accurate type of system.
Demand from enterprises and the use of smartphone and wearable technology is also increasing the trend.
3M Cogent, MorphoTrak and NEC are the leaders in the field but Apple and Samsung are also prominent as companies that will support these kind of technologies.

 

Dell intros support for PCs and tablets

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

Dell logoDell said it has extended its ProSupport Plus service for both PCs and for tablets.
The company claimed it’s the first to offer proactive and predictive support for these devices.
It also claimed that with this package in place, people will spend up to 84 percent less time on technical support calls.
The company claimed that IT departments spend around 80 percent of their time on routine operations and support.
The service will be available to both Dell customers and to its channel partners – and includes cover for a number of situations.
Those include coverage for drops, spill and electrical surges;  hard drive retention after replacement and workflow management for support cases, as well as self service case management and parts dispatch.

 

Amazon sells fake AMD CPUs

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

FireOnTheAmazonPosterAMD chip buyers using Amazon’s service have found themselves buying fake AMD A8-7600s.

When they receive the chips, the CPUs aren’t working and when they looked at the bottom of the chips they twigged that someone was taking older or less expensive CPUs and delidding them.

They were then taking newer CPUs that have more value, delidding those, and then putting the IHS from the new CPUs on the old CPUs. Unless you look at the pins before you buy, you would never spot the difference.

The cores being used are the AM2 Athlon X2 cores.

The scam is exclusive to the AMD A8-7600, and the situation appears to be limited to Amazon in the United Kingdom.

The danger is that this could spread over to other products if the scam is successful. c’t magazine said it would be a doddle to do with Haswell products, switching the IHS of a Celeron with a Core i7, because both products are LGA1150.

Amazon have not commented but AMD is furious and while refusing to confirm the scam it said:

“It is apparent that this isolated incident is not related in any way to AMD’s manufacturing or packaging, however AMD takes any reports of product tampering very seriously. As part of our ongoing efforts to help ensure consumers and businesses are sold only genuine AMD processors, we thoroughly investigate these extremely rare incidents in an effort to determine the source of the altered products, and consider all available legal remedies – including both civil and criminal prosecution – against persons found to have engaged in fraudulent actions affecting AMD products.”

AMD said it’s been on the blower to Amazon and the local enforcement authorities to fix this incident quickly and “ensure that the rigorous quality and reliability standards that AMD is known for are maintained.

“AMD already implements extensive security measures to ensure the authenticity of our products, we are currently evaluating further measures to implement additional security measures for maximum future support,” a spokesperson said.

AMD has a guide listed on its website to help verify the legitimacy of CPUs.

 

Microsoft and Samsung settle over royalties

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

 9545A court case between Microsoft and Samsung over patent royalties appears to have sorted itself out.

Microsoft  sued Samsung last year claiming the spy TV maker had breached a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments.

This was soon after Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business in September 2013.

The lawsuit claimed Samsung still owed $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying. Samsung has countered that the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 collaboration deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft has not said how much Samsung is paying it. In 2011, a technology analyst at Citigroup estimated that Microsoft was getting $5 per Android handset sold by phone maker HTC under a patent agreement, and that Microsoft was looking for up to $12.50 per phone from other handset makers it had yet to come to an agreement with.

Microsoft denied this figure but if it applied the $5 price to Samsung, the Korean company could be paying Microsoft about $1.6 billion per year.

Samsung said it had agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering phones that ran Google Android operating system. Samsung also agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft, according to court filings.

 

Varonis scores University of Liverpool file sharing contract

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

liverpoolVaronis has confirmed that it has scored a contract working with the University of Liverpool to overcome the challenge of students moving sensitive data to personal cloud-based storage.

Using Varonis DatAnywhere,  the university gives its 32,000 students and 4,700 staff the “flexibility” to sync its file share data across all of their devices with the added ability to securely share files with external collaborators.

It has proved popular with people –  within eight days of rolling out the software, the university had 1,366 new DatAnywhere users.

Andy Williams, Systems Manager, University of Liverpool said that there were major headaches moving data online to file sharing services.

“In addition to the data being vulnerable offsite, concerns of document version control needed to be addressed, plus the complication that when people leave the university, it is virtually impossible to retain or even revoke access to data stored in uncontrolled repositories.”

It also means that with DatAnywhere in place, the university can now offer a viable alternative to Dropbox and has recently introduced a policy stating ‘confidential documents are not to be stored on other platforms.’

The software uses the university’s existing Active Directory permissions, and no one now has access to shared data, unless they already had it or are provisioned access.

“IT still retains control over who can and can’t access files, particularly those deemed confidential. We can also revoke access centrally, and it will replicate across everything at once, saving time and reducing complexity,” he said

 

Windows on subscription gets closer

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseMicrosoft seems to be moving closer to the idea that its Windows operating system will be sold using a subscription as a service.

The subscription, much like Office 365, will be paid once a year but appeared to have been abandoned when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be free, for anyone upgrading from Windows 7 or 8.

Even though Microsoft has not fully detailed its Windows 10 pricing strategy, it recently filed for a trademark for ‘Windows 365’, which adds a bit of fuel to the subscription based version of Windows.

A trademark might have been lodged to stop other people using it, but when Microsoft does announce a subscription version of Windows, ‘Windows 365″ would likely be the name.

So far, there has been no sign that Redmond is rushing to release ‘Windows 365’ in the immediate future, as it is pushing Windows 10 at every possible instance. For now, know that Microsoft has claimed this branding right, it could be something seen in the future.

 

Google gets Glass customer

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

Joe_90_(TV)Even if the project has been mothballed, Google has found a partner for its Glass project.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, is trialling Google Glass for use by airport authority officers as a hands-free way to look up gate and airplane information.

Apparently its security officers are testing Google’s wearable computer on travellers passing through the terminal in a bid to better understand the ‘customer journey’.

What this suggests is that the project is never going to be mass market, but will have a function for niche industrial and service industry applications.

Google pulled ‘Glass for the masses’ when it shuttered its Glass Explorer program last month.

The airport started its trial of Glass last month, and has developed a Glass app which lets staff ask the device for gate or aircraft data and have the results displayed via the headset or on their smartphone. The airport hopes to measure the placement distance of barriers on the taxiway just by looking at them, rather than officers having to take measurements manually.

The airport is not committed to Glass beyond trialling it at this point. Any decision about whether the face computers will become a permanent fixture on staff will be taken next year, it said.