Tag: newstrack

US wants to make unlocking phones legal again

Posted on July 11, 2014 by - News

pressieThe US Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a plan which would give mobile-phone users the right to “unlock” their devices and use them on competitors’ networks.

The bill by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, is similar to legislation passed by the House of Representatives in February and is expected to have bipartisan support when it reaches the Senate floor for a vote.

In 2012 ruling by the Library of Congress, who looks after US copyright law, made phone-unlocking illegal. Unlocking could sent you to jail where you cannot pass go or collect $200.

The move supported US wireless carriers who were “locking” smartphones to their networks to encourage consumers to renew mobile contracts.

However, there is some move amongst the wireless carriers to make it easier for consumers to unlock their phones after their contracts expire.

Leahy’s bill reinstates the exemption given to mobile phones in the copyright law before the 2012 ruling and calls on the officials there to reconsider the issue during its next round of reviews in 2015, potentially expanding the exemption to tablets and other devices.

In addition to allowing consumers to unlock devices themselves, Leahy’s bill would allow consumers to authorise someone else to do it for them.

 

IBM invests in big chip breakthrough

Posted on July 10, 2014 by - News

ibm-officeIBM, which has remodelled itself as a business services outfit, has surprised everyone by wanting to be a big player in the chip market again.

Biggish Blue said it will invest $3 billion over the next five years in chip research and development. It wants to find a breakthrough that can help revive its slumping hardware unit.

The plan was announced a week before its second quarter earnings, which, if they are anything like last quarter, will be dire for hardware.

Last quarter sales in its hardware sector plunged 23 percent from a year earlier and the company posted its lowest quarterly revenue in five years.

IBM thinks it can find ways to scale and shrink silicon chips to make them more efficient. The money will be spent researching new materials to use in making chips, such as carbon nanotubes, which are more stable than silicon, are also heat resistant, and can provide faster connections.

Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group said that the announcement was a message to investors is that IBM was committed to chips and thinks great innovation possible.

The investment is equal to half of all IBM’s research and development last year.

Oddly the company is preparing to divest its chip manufacturing business to focus on intellectual property so any developments will be in the nature of being fabless chipmaker. IBM was rumoured to be close to a deal with chipmaker Globalfoundries.

US Senate committee approves company snooping

Posted on July 9, 2014 by - News

Despite fears about personal data, the US Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill to encourage companies to exchange information with the government.

The move is supposed to help share information on hacking attempts and cybersecurity threats, the only problem is that you have to trust the US government not to misuse the situation.

Experts see the bill as the best chance for the current congress to pass some type of legislation to encourage better cooperation between the government and private companies to boost the cyber defences of critical industries.

It is a serious problem as cyber-attacks by a determined enemy could be the greatest threat to US national and economic security.

However, comprehensive cyber bills have been delayed by rows over liability and concerns about privacy. In the middle of it, came the news of the government surveillance programmes.

The bill must be approved by the full Senate and reconciled with similar legislation that passed the House of Representatives in April.

There are already signs that the measure has bipartisan support in the House. The Republican chairman and top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee issued a statement on Tuesday backing the measure and urging the full Senate to vote quickly.

Under the bill, companies and individuals can monitor their own and consenting customers’ networks for hacking and voluntarily share cyber threat data, stripped of personally identifiable information, with the government and each other for cybersecurity reasons.

In return, the US director of national intelligence to increase the amount of information the government shares with private firms and the Department of Homeland Security to set up and manage a data-sharing portal.

The bill offers liability protections to companies that appropriately monitor their networks or share cyber threat data and limit the government’s ability to use data it receives.

However, privacy advocates are worried about giving companies any form of immunity and the long history of abuse of consumer data by both the private sector and the government.

Chinese worked out Siri first

Posted on July 9, 2014 by - News

ipad3Apple’s attempts to get the rights for its Siri voice activated search technology recognised behind the bamboo curtain have failed.

A Beijing court has ruled that a Chinese company invented the technology and this was copied by Apple.

This clears the way for the Chinese company to continue its own case against Apple for infringing intellectual property rights.

Zhizhen sued the US firm in 2012 for intellectual property rights infringement, saying Apple’s Siri used on devices including the iPhone violated Zhizhen’s own voice system patents.

Apple had sued Zhizhen Internet Technology and China’s State Intellectual Property Office to court to seek a ruling that Zhizhen’s patent rights to a speech recognition technology were invalid.
According to the People’s Daily state newspaper the Beijing First Intermediate Court ruled in Zhizhen’s favour.

Apple said it intended to take the case to the Beijing Higher People’s Court.
In a statement, Apple said it did not know about Zhizhen’s patent before it introduced Siri and it did not believe it was using it anyway.

US arrests Russian hacker

Posted on July 9, 2014 by - News

skullkThe US has arrested a Russian national and charged him with hacking.

The Department of Homeland Security said Roman Valerevich Seleznev hacked into American retailers’ computer systems to steal credit card data from 2009 to 2011.

It has taken the Secret Service a while to find Seleznev, who was indicted in Washington state in March 2011 on charges including bank fraud, causing damage to a protected computer, obtaining information from a protected computer and aggravated identity theft.

At that time it was suggested that Seleznev hacked into websites ranging from those run by the Phoenix Zoo, a branch of Schlotzsky’s Deli and many other small restaurants and entertainment venues.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson implied that the hacks were the work of organised crime and that Seleznev was probably working for the Russian mafia.

“This important arrest sends a clear message: despite the increasingly borderless nature of transitional organized crime, the long arm of justice – and this Department – will continue to disrupt and dismantle sophisticated criminal organizations,” Johnson said.

 

 

 

KitKat will always be in Jelly Bean shadow

Posted on July 8, 2014 by - News

android-china-communistHopes that the use of Android 4.4 KitKat would continue to grow dramatically appear to be unfounded.

In May there was a sudden rise in the use of Android 4.4 by five percent.  That led many to predict a meteoric rise in the use of the operating system.

However figures reported this month show a much more modest growth.

Google said that based on data collected in a 7-day period ending 7th July, which shows that Android 4.4 KitKat is sitting at a 17.9 per cent distribution. This is a slight increase from before but the increase of 4.3% is slightly less than the 5.1 percent from May.

Numbers for older builds of Android have started to decrease as well. Gingerbread has fallen from 14.9 per cent to 13.5 per cent which finally allowed KitKat to overtake it. Froyo has dropped as well from 0.8 per cent  to 0.7 per cent  Ice Cream Sandwich from 12.3 per cent to 11.4 per cent; and Jelly Bean from 58.4 per cent to 56.5 per cent which still puts it in the majority.

Various OEMs such as Motorola and OnePlus promise to update their products to Android L it seems unlikely that Android 4.4 KitKat will ever do as well as  Jelly Bean.

Samsung smartphone sales slump

Posted on July 8, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericThere are signs that the rise of electronic’s giant Samsung is losing its impetus after it issued unexpectedly weak quarterly earnings guidance.

It is looking as like the outfit is headed for its worst results in two years and that its plans to deal with cheaper Chinese rivals are not working.

The South Korean company said it saw better business conditions in the third quarter,  butit faces slowing market growth, intensifying price competition from the cheap and cheerful market.

While smartphones drove Samsung to record profits last year, the market is maturing. Research firm IDC predicts global shipments growth will slow to 19.3 percent this year from 39.2 percent in 2013, while average sales prices will also drop.

Some analysts said Samsung may have no choice but to slash prices for mid-to-low tier devices, where growth is stronger, and target Huawei and Lenovo.

That will help defend market share it would also hurt margins, curbing its earnings recovery in the short term.

Samsung said that it cautiously expects a better third-quarter outlook with the release of a new smartphone lineup, lower marketing costs and a seasonal lift in demand for its memory business. Its flagship Galaxy Note 4 is expected to hit the market in September.

Samsung estimated on Tuesday that its April-June operating profit likely fell 24.5 percent from a year earlier to $7.12 billion, the sharpest percentage drop since the first quarter of 2011 and the weakest level since the second quarter of 2012.

In a separate statement, Samsung said second-quarter earnings would be hit by slower global smartphone market growth, competition in China, inventory buildup in Europe and the strength of the won.

 

Intel scores Panasonic fab contract

Posted on July 8, 2014 by - News

intel_log_reversedThe sales teams at Chipzilla have opened the champers after scoring a key contract with Panasonic.

Intel chips will now be under the bonnect of Panasonic’s upcoming TVs, stereos and other audiovisual gear.

Intel signed an agreement with Panasonic to make next-generation system-on-chips to process audio and video. The chips will be made using Intel’s 14-nanometer process.

Under the plan Chipzilla will work with Panasonic’s System LSI division, which makes video encoding/decoding and chips for TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes and other products.

It seems that Panasonic will design the chips, which will then be sent to Intel’s fabrication plants for manufacturing. The Panasonic SOCs will be based around 3D transistors.

Intel said that adding a high-profile customer like Panasonic will enhance the visibility of Intel’s fledgling chip manufacturing operations.

The company has been slowly expanding its custom-chip business, opening up its factories to external companies as a way of making back some of the costs of upgrading factories.

 

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.

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.