Новости за 13.12.2016

Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant is getting a lot smarter. On Tuesday, the company announced a set of developer tools aimed at bringing it into the internet of things, and adding support for developers to build new functionality for it.

Android is headed to the internet of things in the form of Android Things, an operating system that grew out of Project Brillo and will be able to get updates directly from Google.

If you work with Windows systems, especially on the client side, you’ll occasionally need to bring an inoperable system back to life. The causes of this lamentable system state are as varied as the symptoms, which can range from an inability to boot Windows to a non-functional keyboard or display (hard to do anything in Windows without input or output). Despite all the many potential causes and symptoms, the situation remains the same: For whatever reason, a Windows system won’t start up and run as it should. Читать дальше...

Just over a year ago I reviewed the Ring ($199), a security camera that replaces your conventional doorbell and lets you not only see who’s ringing your doorbell but also talk with them. The Ring doorbell provides movement detection with optional cloud video recording for a monthly fee ($3 per month).

About three years ago the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) began plotting a migration to Amazon’s cloud. Most companies when they do so target low-hanging fruit: Applications that can be relatively easily lifted and shifted to the cloud.

Make every beat count with Fitbit Charge 2, the all-new heart rate and fitness wristband built for all-day, workouts and beyond. PurePulse continuous heart rate makes it easy to maximize workouts, better track calorie burn and get a snapshot of your cardio fitness level, while all-day activity and auto sleep tracking, lets you see how your whole routine adds up. Record your workouts with multi-sport modes to see real-time workout stats on screen, or rely on SmartTrack to automatically record select exercises for you. Читать дальше...

Finding customer service help online can be a pain. Filtering through a knowledge base to find the right answer to your question can be an exercise in fighting with nested frequently asked questions documents.

For the last Patch Tuesday of 2016, Microsoft issued 12 security bulletins, half of which are rated critical due to remote code execution vulnerabilities. Get ready for restarts. Please do not delay deploying patches since three do address vulnerabilities which had been publicly disclosed.

MIT, which not surprisingly has a good track record of securing techie leaders for its commencement speakers, has signed on Apple CEO Tim Cook to do the honors on June 9, 2017.

Almost all of the 300 federal government workers who responded to a recent survey by application performance management vendor Riverbed said slow IT issues impact their jobs.

Facebook has launched a tool that allows domain name owners to discover TLS/SSL certificates that were issued without their knowledge.

Looking to put a high-tech solution to a deadly problem the U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a proposed rule to standardize the development and implementation of vehicle communications technologies in cars and trucks. The idea is to enable a multitude of new crash-avoidance applications that could save lives by preventing “hundreds of thousands of crashes every year by helping vehicles “talk” to each other,” the DOT stated.

If fake news reports by the mainstream news media are true, all it takes to create fake news are some clever Romanian or Macedonian teenagers with malicious intent and a website—and shazam the fake news propagates throughout Facebook. The reality is SEO, backlinks, paid promotion and other content strategies play a key role.

ChangeIP, which refers to itself as a "rockstar, low-cost and high-touch web host," has hit a sour note with customers over the past few days. 

With the U.S. Presidential election over, there is now talk about infrastructure investment, and by that, most people mean roads and bridges.

I’m a Zen heretic, and so also is my sense of systems security.

A very cogent citation describes the folly of it all. The people who install toolbars, click on random stuff and feel like they won something when they downloaded the free app are too plentiful, and security is too tough to understand—even PGP. 

Bringing up the bottom is as important as extending the top. We don’t ritualize security because that would be too tough, to impolite to do. Your mother did not teach you to use... Читать дальше...

Harvesting electromagnetic energy from thin air to develop self-sustaining Internet of Things (IoT) communications may become reality thanks to a new technology called HitchHike. The goal is to reduce the need for continual maintenance of the expected billions of IoT installations. 

Networking device manufacturer Netgear released firmware updates for several router models in order to patch a critical vulnerability that's publicly known and could be exploited by hackers.

There are some things you just don't need -- until the price plummets to under $20 and then you can't grab your wallet fast enough. The Etekcity Lasergrip 1080 Digital Infrared Thermometer Temperature Gun aims with a laser while instantly measuring the temperature of almost anything you can shoot it at. List price is $49, but with the current 64% off deal you can snag it for just $17.88. The gun gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 2,300 reviewers (read reviews). Check electrical components, oven & fridge temps... Читать дальше...

Drones will start getting digital identification certificates under a new service being launched on Tuesday that hopes to bring trust and verification to the skies.

Cybersecurity is a growing concern across the globe and businesses are eager to build secure products and keep corporate data safe. The only problem is that cybersecurity is a relatively new skill, and there just aren't enough qualified candidates to go around.

The incidents of ransomware -- especially crypto-ransomware, in which cybercriminals hack vulnerable systems, encrypt the data and hold it for ransom -- saw a huge spike in 2016, and the practice shows no signs of slowing down.

While it's become the standard productivity suite for many businesses, Microsoft Office has lacked a tool specifically built for group communication and collaboration.

Swift 3.1, a limited-focus upgrade to Apple's general purpose systems language, is due next spring, with a few enhancements to the language itself as well as to the Swift Package Manager and Swift on Linux. Source compatibility with Swift 3.0 also is a key goal.

Shadow IT

Image by Thinkstock

Every employee is on a mission to find the next SaaS application that will make their job easier. With nothing more than a credit card and an expense report, anyone within the organization can sign-up for a new application in minutes.

The problem is that employees are signing-up for SaaS apps without the knowledge or permission of their IT administrator. According to Gartner and Cisco, IT pros only know about 7% of the apps in use. Meaning, within any given organization... Читать дальше...