Tag: techeye

IT industry back to bubble days

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

Ggb_in_soap_bubble_1The IT industry seems to be back to the heady days of 2000, according to beancounters at EY (Ernst & Young).

EY counted 3,512 mergers or acquisitions in the tech sector in 2014, for a total value of $237.6 billion, the highest figure since 2000. The report said the outlook for deals in 2015 remains “robust”.

This time the deal making is mobile tech, security and cloud computing. Startups like Uber and Snapchat meanwhile have seen their values soar with new capital inflows.

Last year 38 tech companies entered the billion-dollar club last year, including 25 in the US.

The consultancy PwC said 2014 was the “best year of the decade for global technology IPOs.”

The only thing which has not touched its March 2000 highs is the Nasdaq stock index in New York City, which is seen as an indicator of the tech sector.

There are also some concerned that some of the deals are overvalued – such as Facebook’s $22 billion deal to buy the messaging service WhatsApp.

The EY report says insists that this time, values are grounded in reality as if people expect a bubble to burst later on.

“Unlike 2000, it was no bubble,” the report said. “Despite the occasional ‘moonshot’ from a handful of deep-pocketed buyers, the vast majority of deals were measured in reality-based multiples of good-old-fashioned revenue, profit or cash flow.”

 

Help! My Mini needs a patch

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

350350000patch37As a sign of a 21st century problem, car maker BMW has rolled out a patch for a security flaw that could have allowed hackers to open the doors of some 2.2 million vehicles.

The problem affects BMW, Mini and Rolls Royce models that come equipped with ConnectedDrive – a technology that allows car owners to access internet, navigation and other services via a SIM card installed directly into vehicles.

Security experts were able to create a fake mobile phone base station to intercept network traffic from the car, and use that information to send commands to the car telling it to lower windows or open the doors.

Other boffins working for German automobile association ADAC discovered the security vulnerabilities and the potential for vehicles to be broken into last summer, but kept quiet about them until now to give BMW a chance to produce a fix.

Hackers would only need a few minutes to open a car from outside, without leaving any physical trace of unauthorised entry – which is a lot better than a brick through the window or a bent coat hanger.

ConnectedDrive appBMW issued a statement to the press congratulating itself on its rapid response, how it is “increasing the security of data transmission in its vehicles” in response to what it describes as the “potential security gap” in ConnectedDrive.

The vulnerability revolved around the insecure transmission of data, as the patch rolled out by BMW appears to have enabled HTTPS.  Since HTTPS is the minimal sort of security you would expect from an online transition, you would have thought that BMW’s have thought to install it.

The fact BMW still took half a year to work out a fix and roll it out, indicates that they have not really thought this whole security thing through yet.

Still it is likely that we will see a lot more of these sorts of patches being rolled out for cars. In the old days you could open a mini with a fork.

 

 

Apple transforms sapphire plant into a cloud

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

1338_16131017563Fruity cargo cult Apple wants to invest $2 billion to convert a failed sapphire glass plant in Arizona into a data centre.

Apple set up the plant with GT Advanced Technologies in Mesa in 2013 to manufacture scratch-resistant sapphire screens for Apple’s shiny toys.

However, GT Advanced filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October and closed the plant, after what appears to be a case of Apple shafting its partner by leaving sapphire glass was left out of Apple’s newest iPhones.

Since Apple owned the plant, it wants to turn it into something more useful. The $2 billion investment will stretch over 10 years with a 30 year commitment from Apple to keep the facility running.

But Apple does not really need another data centre. We have written before that it is hugely over capacity now. Jobs’ Mob said that the facility will be a data centre as well as a command centre for managing Apple’s other data centres and networks, which handle traffic from services like iTunes, iCloud and Siri.

It claims it will create 600 engineering and construction jobs at the data centre and the whole lot will be powered by solar energy.

As it wound down its Sapphire production in October, GT Advanced said it was laying off about 650 employees at the plant.

Microsoft reveals cloud roadmap

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeSoftware company Microsoft said it has introduced a web site that reveals details of its roadmap for its Cloud Platform.
Microsoft has been aiming to move to the cloud as fast as it can and now offers cloud services including Azure, Intone, Visual Studio and server platforms including Windows Server, SQL Server.  It also has covered system appliance offerings including Analytics and Stor System.
Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the cloud and enterprise marketing group at Microsoft said the company wanted to be transparent about its cloud strategy.
He said that the web site, which you can find here, is intended to show what technology it’s developing and what’s coming in the next few months.
It also will include products in public preview.
Microsoft isn’t the only company struggling to re-invent itself as a cloud player.  Others in the game include SAP, Oracle and IBM.
Analysts predict that over the next few years the majority of enterprise IT users will use cloud computing and services more and more.

 

Raspberry Pi 2 goes on sale

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-02 at 14.26.35The people who make popular do-it-yourself circuit board said that they’ve released a new version of the device.
The Raspberry Pi 2 sells for $35 – the same price as before, but now comes with a 900MHz quad core ARM Cortex A7 CPU, 1GB of SDRAM, and retains compatibility with the Raspberry Pi 1.
The board, popular with schools and enthusiasts can run all ARM GNU/Linux distributions as well as Microsoft Windows 10  – when it comes out.
The company said that Broadcom has created a new system on a chip BCM2836 for the device, which includes the 900MHz ARM chip – meaning there’s no upgrade difficulties.
The company said that it has worked with Microsoft over the last 10 months to prepare for the arrival of Windows 10.  The Raspberry Pi 2 compatible version of Windows 10 won’t cost anything to manufacturers.

 

Android market share falls

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

330ogleData from market research company ABI Research indicates that Google’s Android operating system is losing share in the smartphone market.
The data shows that certified Android smartphone shipments fell in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the third quarter.
Cerified Android shipments fell to 205 million in the fourth quarter, down from 217.49 million – a drop of around five percent.
The clear winner in the quarter was Apple’s iOS – while it only shipped 74.50 millions during Q4, that was up by 90 percent compared to Q3 2014.
Microsoft also managed to increase its market share in the fourth quarter, rising to 10.70 millions – up 19 percent compared to the third quarter.
Others – by which we can infer operating systems by Blackberry and the like, saw growth decline by 26 percent.

 

Intel buys German chip company

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_ResultsGiant US microprocessor combine Intel has paid an unknown amount of money to snap up a Germany chip company.
Lantiq, owned since 2009 by a private equity company makes semiconductors used in different applications including broadband, wi-fi, and fibre connections.
Lantiq was sold to private equity company Golden Gate for a quarter of million euro. Lantiq was originally a wing of Infineon.
It’s believed that the Intel acquisition is part of its attempt to be a major player in the much hyped “internet of things”.
But while there is no doubt that the internet of things will generate a lot of revenue, there is no one standard and other companies, including Qualcomm and Google want to grab a share of that market too.

 

BT goes on hybrid fibre diet

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Fruit-and-fibreBT has surprised everyone by announcing that it is deploying next generation hybrid-fibre across the United Kingdom from 2016/17.

Dubbed G.fast broadband technology, it will provide “most homes” with speeds of ‘up to’ 500Mbps  and there’s also a “premium” option for up to 1000Mbps.

At present most of BT’s national deployment is dominated by its  hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) broadband technology, which delivers download speeds of up to 80Mbps by running a fibre optic cable to your local street cabinet and then using VDSL2 over the remaining / existing copper line from the cabinet to your home.

This works for properties that exist up to 400 metres away from their street cabinet, although the service has been known to reach 2,000 metres at a slower speed.

G.fast is similar technology but it requires more radio spectrum and needs to run over much less than 250 metres of copper. As a result the high capacity fibre optic line has to be taken even closer to homes, usually as far as a smaller remote node that can be built on top of a telegraph pole, inside a street cabinet or underground.

This is expensive, although BT should not need to dig up your garden or run a new physical line into homes.

BT conducted a field trial of mock-up G.fast technology earlier this year and on the shortest 19 metre copper line it managed to achieve aggregated speeds of around 1000Mbps or 231Mbps upload and 786Mbps download. By comparison the “long” 66 metre line produced 200Mbps upload and 696Mbps download.

There will be two pilots which will start this summer in Huntingdon and Gosforth with 4,000 homes and businesses participating to see if the technology scales up.

BT will set up G.fast from different points of its network, with the pilots allowing it to assess various rollout options. It is also planning to develop a premium fibre broadband service for those residential and business customers who want even faster broadband, of up to 1Gbps.

 

British army gets its own social networking unit

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

article-2630396-1DE5D1E700000578-447_470x721The British Army is setting up a psy-ops unit that will fight its battles on social media “in the information age”.

Head of the Army General Sir Nick Carter said the move was about trying to operate “smarter”.

Dubbed the 77th Brigade, the unit will be made up of reservists and regular troops and based in Hermitage, Berkshire.

Apparently, it has been inspired by the Chindits who fought in Burma in World War Two and seeks “new ways of allowing civilians with bespoke skills to serve alongside their military counterparts”.

Chindits was the name given to the Long Range Penetration (LRP) groups that operated in the Burmese jungle behind enemy lines, targeting Japanese communications.

The new unit will also use the old Chindit insignia of a Chinthe, a mythical Burmese creature which is half-lion and half-dragon.

The unit recognises that the actions of others in a modern battlefield can be affected in ways that are not necessarily violent and it draws heavily on important lessons from our commitments to operations in Afghanistan amongst others.

Recruitment for the brigade, 42 percent of whose personnel will be reservists, will begin this spring.

Its members will come from the Royal Navy and RAF as well as from the Army.

 

 

Dell releases new Linux XPS 13

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Dell-XPS-13-2015-14Tin box shifter Dell  is bringing the latest version of Ubuntu to its top-of-the-line Precision M3800 workstation laptop and the latest model of the Dell XPS 13 .

Dell’s top-of-the-line Precision M3800 workstation laptop is available with Ubuntu Linux 14.04.

Dell’s Director of Developer Programmes Barton George wrote in his blog that programmers had been asking for a bigger, better officially supported Ubuntu Linux developer laptop.

The Precision M3800 came about from a combination of the efforts of Dell software engineer Jared Dominguez and enthusiastic user support.

George stated that the Ubuntu-powered Precision M3800 developer edition’s comes with preloaded Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the next generation of the world’s thinnest and lightest true 15-inch mobile workstation a starting weight of 1.88kg and a form factor that is less than 0.71 inches thick

The lap top comes with a fourth generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, professional grade NVIDIA Quadro K1100M graphics, and up to 16GB of memory.  It will have a 4K Ultra HD (3840×2160) screen option

The only thing that Dell could not shove under the machine’s bonnet was Thunderbolt 2 which could not be supported out of the box.

This was because Dell’s Ubuntu factory only ships Ubuntu LTS releases it could not ship with official Thunderbolt support.

“However, thanks to the hardware-enablement stack in Ubuntu, starting with upcoming Ubuntu 14.04.2, you will be able to upgrade your kernel to add some Thunderbolt support. We plan to be working with Canonical to re-certify the Precision M3800 with official Thunderbolt support,” he wrote.

It will be $50 less than the corresponding Windows configuration.

 

IBM gives cash to top suits

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

44ce1d7353cc797d6d0ad093f04f32c7Big Blue might be seeing its profits drop down the loo, but that has not stopped it paying bonuses to its top suits.

IBM has brought back annual performance bonuses for its chief executive and her top lieutenants for 2014 despite falling profits and a tumbling stock price.

According to a regulatory filing, the outfit withheld annual bonuses in 2013 at the executives’ own request.  The company has had more than 11 quarters of falling profits and is still trying to lose staff.

The bonuses returned as a feature of IBM’s executive compensation for 2014, according to a document filed with securities regulators on Friday, despite the fact that IBM’s net profit from continuing operations fell 7 percent last year and its stock shed about 14 percent.

IBM CEO Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6 million annual incentive payout for 2014, according to the filing. Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter and three other executives or advisers were also listed as getting smaller annual incentive payouts.

Rometty will receive a base salary of $1.6 million for 2015. This is her first rise in pay from the $1.5 million she got each of the last three years after taking up the post of CEO at the beginning of 2012.

She will also get a target annual incentive award of $5 million for 2015 and a long-term stock grant worth $13.3 million, which would be payable in 2018, according to the filing.

IBM last year withdrew its long-term plan to hit $20 per share in operating earnings for 2015 as it failed to get the sort of focus on higher-margin businesses such as security software and cloud services.

IBM has been divesting underperforming businesses in an attempt to move into the new era of cloud computing, a struggle shared by other established technology leaders.

No bonuses for the lesser suits, but at least they are not being fired.

Big Data analytics are not up to snuff

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

3921968993_9bccb97118_zCompanies relying on Big Data analytics might be disappointed to discover that they are not so good at finding a needle in a haystack after all.

Currently the best way to sort large databases of unstructured text is to use a technique called Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) which is a modelling technique that identifies text within documents as belonging to a limited number of still-unknown topics.

According to analysis published in the American Physical Society’s journal Physical Review X, LDA had become one of the most common ways to accomplish the computationally difficult problem of classifying specific parts of human language automatically into a context-appropriate category.

According to Luis Amaral, a physicist whose specialty is the mathematical analysis of complex systems and who wrote the paper, LDA is inaccurate.

The team tested LDA-based analysis with repeated analyses of the same set of unstructured data – 23,000 scientific papers and 1.2 million Wikipedia articles written in several different languages.

Not only was LDA inaccurate, its analyses were inconsistent, returning the same results only 80 percent of the time even when using the same data and the same analytic configuration.

Amaral said that accuracy of 90 percent with 80 percent consistency sounds good, but the scores are “actually poor, since they are for an easy case.”

The base of data for which big data is often praised for its ability to manage – the results would be far less accurate and far less reproducible, according to the paper.

The team created an alternative method called TopicMapping, which first breaks words down into bases (treating “stars” and “star” as the same word), then eliminates conjunctions, pronouns and other “stop words” that modify the meaning but not the topic, using a standardized list.

This approach delivered results that were 92 percent accurate and 98 percent reproducible, though, according to the paper, it only moderately improved the likelihood that any given result would be accurate.

The paper’s point was that it was not important to replace LDA with TopicMapping, but to demonstrate that the topic-analysis method that has become one of the most commonly used in big data analysis is far less accurate and far less consistent than previously believed.

 

UK makes Google change privacy policy

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

OgleThe Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has made Google sign an undertaking to improve information about how it collects personal data in the UK.
The ICO said that following an investigation it found that Google’s search engine was “too vague” in describing how it used personal data it had collected.
The ICO said Google has signed a formal undertaking to make changes to its privacy policy so that it meets the needs of the UK Data Protection Act.
The ICO worked with other European data protection authorities, it said.
The enforcement officer at the ICO, Steve Eckersley, said: “This investigation has identified some important learning points not only for Google, but also for all organisations operating online, particularly when they seek to combine and use data across services.”
Google will have to make agreed changes by the 30th of June this year, and take even more steps over the next two years.
Google’s undertaking can be found here.

 

Big data has serious risks

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

server-racksScientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said just four pieces of vague information can open the door to crackers and hackers.
The researchers said the dates and locations of just four transactions can identify 90 percent of people in a data set recording three months of credit card transactions by 1.1 million users.
For example, say the MIT scientists, that someone with copies of just three recent receipts, or one receipt, an Instagram photo of you, and a tweet about the phone you just bought will have a 94 percent chance of extracting your credit card records from a million other people.
The implications are serious, because both public and private entities see aggregated digital data as a source of insight.
Big Data, however, holds socially beneficial implications, the researchers said.
They are looking at other ways to protect peoples’ data from being filched.

 

IBM opens UK services centre

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

IBM logoBig Blue said it will open a services centre for its clients that will generate 300 IT jobs.
The centre will be based in Leicester and will supply application development and maintenance, and test and system management services.
IBM is pushing services for the cloud, for big data analytics, and for mobile, social and security technologies.
As well as the full time jobs, IBM said it will also offer internships and apprenticeships at the centre.
IBM is inviting interested candidates to submit their CVs to recruitment-isc@uk.ibm.com
David Stokes, CEO of IBM UK and Ireland commented: “The investment in job creation aims to inspire the next generation workforce from local technical colleges and universities.”