Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » février 16, 2016

BetaNews.Com (18 non lus)

Mozilla wants to educate us all on encryption

Publié: février 16, 2016, 9:54pm CET par Brian Fagioli

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Terrorists use encryption. They also breathe air, drive cars, and drink water. What do I mean by saying this? Well, just because a bad person uses something, doesn't make the thing they use evil. In fact, encryption is not evil at all -- it is a tool to protect the privacy and communications of all people.

Sadly, not everybody understands encryption. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant on a subject -- not everyone can be knowledgeable about everything. With that said, some politicians and other decision-makers could enact policy about encryption due to knee-jerk reactions to things they don't understand. Luckily, Mozilla has a new initiative aimed at educating people as to what encryption actually is.

"In the coming weeks, Mozilla will release videos, blogs and activities designed to raise awareness about encryption. You can watch our first video today -- it shows why controlling our personal information is so key. More importantly, you can use this video to start a conversation with friends and family to get them thinking more about privacy and security online", says Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla.

Surman further says, "if we can educate millions of Internet users about the basics of encryption and its connection to our everyday lives, we'll be in a good position to ask people to stand up when the time comes. We believe that time is coming soon in many countries around the world. You can pitch in simply by watching, sharing and having conversations about the videos we’ll post over the coming weeks".

You can see the first video below. I rather like that it lays out the benefits of encryption without going into boring in-depth details. In other words, a person does not initially need to know how encryption works, only that it secures their information and protects their privacy. With that said, I hope future videos explain what encryption is beyond just benefits -- even if the narrative is fairly simplistic.

Do you support Mozilla's education efforts? Read more about it here, and tell me in the comments.

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Photo credit: Maksim Kabakou / Shutterstock

Amazon Web Services buys NICE to strengthen cloud offerings, boost customer base

Publié: février 16, 2016, 8:46pm CET par Alasdair Gilchrist

Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud computing arm, has bought the Italian software and service company NICE for an undisclosed sum. AWS is after NICE’s 2D and 3D desktop cloud virtualization software that allows 3D developers and game designers access to work remotely from any type of computer.

This works because the hardware required to render the 3D images is supplied by the cloud not the computer that the developer is using to access their designs.

Another reason that AWS could be interested in NICE is to gain access to European customers with high performance requirements, such as 3D games developers. After all just last year Amazon launched more C4 instances just for this type of high performance customer.

At the time Amazon explained that those instances are meant for applications where CPU performance is paramount. These include "high-traffic front-end fleets, MMO gaming, media processing, transcoding, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications".

Constellation Research founder, R Ray Wang believes AWS gets quite a bit out of this deal.
"The NICE acquisition gives Amazon a good trove of IP, access to good clients and a good presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). These IP capabilities help with performance and some newer features that can benefit the overall Amazon platform", Wang tells TechCrunch.

For now at least, NICE will continue to operate as before, retaining its brand name, customers, and current projects.

Photo Credit: rvlsoft/Shutterstock

Copy Plain Text strips the formatting from copied text (Firefox)

Publié: février 16, 2016, 8:46pm CET par Mike Williams

CopyPlainText

You’re browsing the web, find some interesting text, copy and paste it elsewhere… And then realize it’s got all the original formatting, now entirely unnecessary. And maybe an unwanted image, too.

Copy Plain Text is a Firefox add-on which supports copying plain text only, and adds some handy text processing extras as well.

It’s all very straightforward. Select some formatted text, right-click, and select the new "Copy As Plain Text" option. Formatting and graphics will be stripped out, leaving only the text.

If you need the formatting, right-click and choose "Copy", as before.

The add-on’s Options dialog allows further reformatting, including trimming surplus lines and spaces (handy if your initial selection wasn’t too precise).

There’s a useful option to reformat special characters, like replacing the copyright symbol with "c", and the trademark symbol with "TM".

You’re also able to assign a custom keyboard shortcut for your copy action.

It may be small and simple, but if you’re regularly reformatting pasted text then Copy Plain Text could save you a lot of time and hassle. Check it out.

Intel may soon launch 10TB SSDs

Publié: février 16, 2016, 8:22pm CET par Anthony Spadafora

Intel’s SSDs may soon see a significant increase in their capacity and speed as a result of Micron’s latest chips, which could also be used to create competitive SSDs that are as small as flash drives.

Micron is responsible for producing the flash which is used in Intel’s SSDs and now it has begun manufacturing and distributing its 3D NAND flash in large quantities. The company’s 3D flash chips would allow tiny SSDs to reach a capacity of 3.5TB, and 2.5 inch SSDs could possibly hold even more than 10TB of storage.

Currently, the largest SSDs Intel sells offer up to 4TB of storage. Using Micron’s 3D NAND chips, the storage in these SSDs could be tripled. Although Intel has yet to offer any timeline as to when it would be releasing new SSDs possibly using Micron’s new chips to their full potential, the company’s enterprise SSDs are long overdue for an upgrade.

Besides providing flash for Intel’s products, Micron does produce its own SSDs. It is planning to release new drives in the spring and summer of this year. Hopefully Micron’s new drives will include its new 3D flash chips and offer consumers greater storage capacity in the form of a standard 2.5 inch SSD.

Micron is not the first company to produce chips using a 3D NAND flash structure. Samsung and Toshiba made the switch many years prior to help improve the storage capacity of their drives and to help lower production costs. Micron on the other hand does use a different production method than its rivals.

The company uses floating-gate cells to improve the capacity and reliability of its drives while Toshiba and Samsung use charge-trap technology to manufacture their 3D flash which may result in longer battery life.

Currently Micron is collaborating with Intel to develop a noticeably faster storage and memory technology called Xpoint. Whether or not the company’s new 3D NAND chips will be a part of this project is still unknown. Micron and Intel believe that Xpoint will be 10 times denser than DRAM and that it will produce SSDS 1,000 times faster and stronger than flash storage.

Micron and Intel’s upcoming SSDs might just be worth waiting for if you have been putting off the upgrade to an SSD because of storage limitations. Either way it will be interesting to see if Intel puts Micron’s new 3D NAND flash chips in its upcoming SSDs or saves them for Xpoint.

Photo Credit: Rose Carson/Shutterstock

Automate almost any PC task with AlomWare Actions Lite

Publié: février 16, 2016, 6:55pm CET par Mike Williams

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AlomWare Actions Lite is a scripting tool which allows even novice users to automate many PC tasks.

There are commands to launch applications, download web pages, send emails, type text, simulate mouse clicks, work with files, and a whole lot more, and these may all be combined to make up a single action.

The program gets off to a poor start, due to its very cluttered interface. Instead of hiding details like settings or command help in separate dialogs, everything is displayed up-front in its own pane.

If you really are a scripting beginner then it might be tempting to give up immediately, but wait: look more closely and it’ll begin to make sense.

The top-left pane lists some example actions you can perform immediately -- encrypt/ decrypt text, download a random Wikipedia article, email a screenshot, open Calc and make it transparent and "always on top", enter your email address into any application, and more.

Double-clicking any of these -- or using the hotkey -- runs the action immediately.

Selecting an action also displays its commands in the right-hand pane.

AlomWare Actions scripts can be very simple. Choose the "Type my email address action" and you’ll see a single "Keyboard: Type Keystrokes" command with a value of "info@alomware.com". Using its default hotkey pastes that text into your current application.

That’s very basic, but it’s also easy to develop and expand. Add a "Type my name" action, with the same command, your own name as a value, and a Ctrl+Shift+A hotkey, and you’re starting to build up a custom library of text snippets.

Choosing the "Download random Wikipedia article" action displays an interesting 12-line script with many more powerful commands.

A "Web:Assign" command grabs the contents of a URL, for instance. "Web:Save raw" assigns it to a variable. File:Assign saves it, there’s a smart String command to grab the title text from the file, and Rename and Move commands to leave the file where you’d like it to be.

If you’re curious to see what else might be possible then the "Step Chooser" lists all available commands. These can request or display information, clear or set the clipboard, run executables, define and send emails, simulate keystrokes or mouse clicks, create and work with files and folders, open and save URLs, manipulate application windows, and more.

Stringing together even a few of these commands can achieve quite sophisticated results. You might use the "Wait" command to wait for a program window to appear or disappear, for instance, then take a screenshot, attach it to an email and send it to whoever you like. Even with the poor interface, you’ll have something working within minutes.

AlomWare Actions Lite has a couple of limitations: it’s free for personal use only, and supports a maximum of 10 actions at any one time (a $19.99 commercial version lifts the limit to 999). But if you can live with that, there’s enough power here to automate all kinds of PC tasks.

If you need real system automation power, though, there’s no substitute for AutoIt. It’s a real programming language, so there’s much more of a learning curve, but it can also do far more (and being free doesn’t hurt, either).

AlomWare Actions Lite is a free-for-personal-use application for Windows XP and later.

Women are excellent coders, according to GitHub research

Publié: février 16, 2016, 5:18pm CET par Alasdair Gilchrist

laptop woman

A survey back in 2013 found that only 11.2 percent of software developers were female. Working then on the premise that males would be prejudiced against female coders work, a group of students has now studied the acceptance rate of GitHub pull-requests by gender.

A pull-request is when volunteers submit work to a project and it receives some scrutiny by the project team, they often accept the work or reject it with some advice. What the study team has discovered is that 78 percent of work submitted by women was accepted, which compared favorably to only 74 percent for men.

"Women’s acceptance rates dominate over men’s for every programming language in the top 10, to various degrees", the researchers find.

The team then looked at submissions where the coder was clearly identifiable as a female, and to their dismay discovered that in this case females performed worse than their male colleagues did, suggesting a gender bias.

However, not all female coders related to those results. Jenny Bryan, a professor of statistics and her profile makes clear that she is a woman: "The men I interact with in the R community on GitHub know me and, if my gender has any effect at all, I feel they go out of their way to support my efforts to learn and make more contributions".

Lorna Jane Mitchell, a software developer whose work is almost entirely based on GitHub, said, "that it was impossible to tell whether a pull request was ignored out of bias, or just because a project owner was busy or knew another developer personally".

Elizabeth Eastaugh, a director of technology at Expedia comments: "The GitHub analysis is not only indicative of gender bias in web development, but a sign that the lack of all diversity is still a huge problem in the tech world. Looking at the approval rates at the quality of code for women compared to men when the developer’s gender is concealed is quite demoralizing. But it is crucial that these results don’t dissuade minorities from revealing their identities in the future. In fact, it should spur them on to do the opposite".

"It’s important that people realize that minority groups do exist in the tech industry, and it’s also crucial that these minorities do not feel isolated in their respective fields. The technology industry needs more C-level role models who dispel the notion that great success is the preserve of well-educated white men", adds Eastaugh.

"The findings should by no means justify the decision to hide your gender, because identifying yourself as female in a primarily male-dominated industry is extremely important. And the issue of inclusion and diversity shouldn’t just end with gender -- it should incorporate race, sexuality and disability as well", concludes Eastaugh.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Rawpixel

Android founder Andy Rubin wants to give you a free dashcam, there's just one catch...

Publié: février 16, 2016, 4:00pm CET par Alan Buckingham

dashboard camera dashcam

Andy Rubin, best known as the founder of Android, became the head of the division after Google purchased the mobile operating system. He left the company in 2014 after briefly heading the robotics division, and founded Playground Global.

Since then his tech incubator has provided funding and help to many startups with Google being one of the sponsors of this venture.

Now the famed inventor has hatched a new plan, one that could be considered exciting by some, but is more likely to scare many others. Rubin would like to give you a free dashcam -- you know, those little devices that record what's ahead on the road and could be valuable evidence in an accident. Sounds great, doesn't it? Doesn't it?!

There's a bit more to this than the kindness of Rubin's heart. In exchange for this there's a trade-off. Rubin gets your data. That's where the tinfoil hats start being placed on heads.

To be fair, we don't expect Rubin to be selling anyone down the river for some advertising deal targeting the places you go, for example. However, that does not rule out the possibility, especially if the company were to be sold sometime.

The plan in all of this is to create what essentially would be a real-time Google Street View. In a recent profile in Wired magazine, the author writes "When pressed, he says he is in fact working on a dashcam, which he plans to give away in exchange for its data -- potentially allowing Playground to build a real-time visual map of the world".

The Verge agreed, stating "Dashcams could enable real-time traffic status, or even a real-time Street View-like service".

The question is, will people buy into this? It would need large-scale adoption to work the way it should, and that could be a hard sell in today's privacy-conscious society. The revelations of the likes of Edward Snowden, which have done a tremendous amount of good and resulted in people beginning to use encryption, may also prove a hindrance for something such as this, making it much easier for groups like the NSA to keep tabs on people. We'll see what happens when this actually becomes available.

Image Credit: supirak jaisan / Shutterstock

Store your personal data in a HAT to keep it safe

Publié: février 16, 2016, 3:45pm CET par Ian Barker

graduation cap globe mouse education

As we use the internet we give away information to lots of sites from shopping portals to search engines. The growth of the Internet of Things is likely to see a further boost in the amount of data held and shared about us.

The Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick in the UK is working on £1.2 million HAT (Hub-of-all-things) research project to develop a platform technology where individuals can keep all their personal data in one place.

Funded by the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme and working in conjunction with industry and commercial partners, the research project has developed a personal data platform to perform all four key operations on personal data: collect, control, re-combine, contextualize and share.

"Now is the time to wake people up to just how much personal data they pour online and empower them to use that data to benefit them as much as its benefiting the businesses that are harvesting it," says Professor Irene Ng of WMG. "With the internet of things growing as a concept people need to get as much utility out of their own data as the product providers and utilities that will increasingly be taking that data".

A HAT Foundation will develop the next phase of the technology, taking over from the HAT research project team in WMG to roll-out the HAT globally in 2016. The Foundation will scale-up the HAT ecosystem and build a community of HAT users, to promote widespread take-up of HATs by individuals.

"The data on your HAT is owned by you and can be recombined by you so that you can make it meaningful and useful for decision-making. The HAT is also a fully scalable personal data platform for firms to offer you services for your data in a privacy-preserving way, as well as allowing you to track and creatively organize your data for better informed decisions in your lives," adds Professor Ng. "Most importantly, I believe that the HAT will start a movement for individuals to claim our personal data, as we believe it is now time for us to gain control of our digital lives and put ourselves, as individuals, at the center of the growing data exchange in the sharing economy".

You can find out more about the project on the HAT Foundation website.

Photo Credit: jazzerup/Shutterstock

LG unveils new stylus-toting phablet

Publié: février 16, 2016, 3:10pm CET par Mihăiță Bamburic

LG Stylus 2 Colors

LG likes to do things differently when it comes to product announcements, revealing some things ahead of the big unveiling. Case in point are the Quick Cover accessory and Active Display technology for its upcoming G5, which were presented ahead of the new flagship. But with its new Stylus 2, I think it has taken things a bit too far.

LG says that Stylus 2 will be unveiled at MWC 2016, which takes place later this week in Barcelona. But, considering that it has officially announced virtually everything we may want to know about this new phablet and even posted presentation photos, I wonder exactly what will be left for it to "unveil".

Stylus 2 is LG's successor to last year's G4 Stylus, being positioned as a productivity-oriented offering in the company's Android lineup. And, like its name suggests, it indeed comes with a stylus. The specs, however, imply that it is designed with price-conscious shoppers in mind.

Stylus 2 has a 5.7-inch display with a resolution of 1,280 by 720. It is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor with 1.5 GB of RAM and a 3,000 mAh removable battery. There is a 13 MP camera on the back, and an 8 MP shooter on the front.

Storage-wise, it has 16 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for expansion. In terms of connectivity, it supports 4G LTE and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1, but not USB 3.0. It comes in at 155 x 79.6 x 7.4 mm and 145 g.

The software, however, is much more up to date, as Stylus 2 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Of course, LG has thrown in a number of extras that are designed to accommodate the stylus. There is, for instance, Pen Pop, a menu that makes it easier for the user to access notes and scanner features when the stylus is removed, Pen Keeper, a feature that is designed to prevent users from forgetting to insert the stylus back after use, and Calligraphy Pen, a font that mimics the use of a fountain pen.

"LG Stylus 2 provides both the big screen and premium notetaking functions of a premium large phone at a price of a mid-tier phone", says LG's Juno Cho. "This device is another example of our commitment to the mass-tier segment where there is so much opportunity for growth and creativity".

There is no word on pricing or availability yet, but LG says that Stylus 2 will be offered in brown, titan and white.

New solution protects enterprise websites from attack

Publié: février 16, 2016, 3:06pm CET par Ian Barker

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Some of the latest cyber attacks seek to steal information using man-in-the-browser (MITB) attacks. These represent a dangerous trend because they circumvent even the strongest authentication techniques by hijacking the session after the user has authenticated a bank or other site.

Threat intelligence start up buguroo is looking to combat this with its new online fraud detection solution that can detect hijacked sessions in real time and stop them before any money leaves the bank.

The company's new bugFraud Defense technology is entirely host- and cloud-based and doesn't require any action, such as installing software or an agent, by an end-user client in order to be protected. The buguroo software is transparent to the user, requires minimal resources and doesn't degrade the user experience or performance.

"Any online fraud detection solution that still relies on signatures or requires users to take action is based on a failed model," says Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, CTO and founder of buguroo. "Industry research shows that 'opt-in' models that require installing client-side software at best get low single digit percentage participation. Study after study shows users expect their service providers to protect them, and they are not willing to help. Period. That's what we do".

The solution is implemented at web server level for both development and security teams. It then requires only a lightweight modification in regular server content to link online sessions to the cloud-based fraud detection engine.

Available immediately in the US, Europe and Latin America, buguroo bugFraud Defense can be bought as a standalone product or as part of bugThreats, the company's comprehensive threat intelligence platform, also announced today. The company is targeting those sectors most commonly attacked by cyber criminals, banking, social networking and e-commerce. More information is available on the buguroo website.

Photo credit: Lichtmeister / Shutterstock

Microsoft's Lego-like PC makes upgrading super-easy

Publié: février 16, 2016, 1:44pm CET par Wayne Williams

Modular

Part of the reason the PC was originally so successful is down upgradability, and that’s still a factor today. If your computer starts to run a little sluggish, you can always add more RAM, or swap your HDD for an SSD. Some PCs are easier to upgrade than others, but Microsoft is looking into a way to make upgrading so easy that absolutely anyone could do it.

The idea is a modular computer that consists of magnetic units that you can snap off without the use of tools and replace with newer, better components. Not unlike building a PC from Lego.

The software giant filed a patent for a Modular Computing Device in July year, and it was published a few days ago. The patent describes the proposed system as:

A computing device comprising: a display modular component including a housing, a display device physically and communicatively coupled to the housing via a hinge, and one or more display hardware elements disposed within the housing and configured to output a display for the display device; and a computing modular component including a housing that is physically and communicatively coupled to the display modular component, a processing system disposed within the housing, and memory disposed within the housing, the processing system configured to execute instructions stored by the processing system to generate a user interface for display by the display device of the display modular component, the processing system and the memory being swappable within the housing of the computing modular component.

Got that? The diagram below makes things easier to visualize.

modular PC

Microsoft hardware is on a roll at the moment, with both Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book doing well, and this modular PC patent lists Tim Escolin, a senior designer on Microsoft’s Surface devices team, as one of its authors.

The idea of a modular system such as this is far from new (anyone remember Project Christine?) and Google’s Project Ara is a similar idea for smartphones, but this looks really good, and I’d love to see it turned into something you can actually buy.

Photo credit: Vector3D / Shutterstock

UK government wants money-making porn sites to age-check visitors

Publié: février 16, 2016, 1:14pm CET par Mark Wilson

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The UK government is launching a public consultation over its plans to require pornographic websites to verify that visitors are aged 18 or over. The Conservative party wants to deliver on its manifesto pledge to introduce age verification to all porn sites, but the latest proposals go further.

The government wants all companies that profit from pornography online to implement systems to have a legal requirement to ensure that visitors are over 18. The consultation runs until 12 April and has the aim of using British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) issued 18 / 18R ratings for sites, but it's unclear how effective the system would be for free porn sites.

The government says that its preferred approach for protecting children from pornography would put "responsibility squarely on the shoulders of companies who create and profit from online pornography". This is something that has been talked about for some time, and ISPs have already been tasked with blocking access to porn sites by default, although customers can ask for access to be granted to them.

Inviting feedback on the latest proposals, the government says:

The UK is a world leader in the work it does to improve child safety online, but we cannot be complacent. Government has a responsibility to protect citizens from harm, especially the young and most vulnerable.

That is why we committed in our manifesto to requiring age verification for access to pornographic material online, and are now seeking views on how we deliver on our commitment.

The government wants to not only implement age check, but also to set up a framework with legal process overseen by regulators. The regulators would:

Monitor compliance with the new law by commercial pornography providers.
Enable those that support the business model of pornographic content providers (such as payment providers, advertisers and other ancillary services) to withdraw services from commercial providers in breach of the law.
Impose sanctions where breaches have been identified and providers remain non-compliant.
Give the regulator discretion to set and monitor standards for age verification controls.

The proposals are likely to prove divisive. Any form of age checking is likely to raise privacy concerns among consumers of pornographic material, and porn providers are unlikely to be keen on additional red tape. Children's charity NSPCC, however, welcomes the government's action. Chief executive Peter Wanless said:

This consultation is an important and welcome step forward in keeping children safe from online pornography. Companies that produce and profit from this material have a responsibility to give children the same protection they would get in the offline world.

Every day ChildLine receives calls and messages from young people who feel they are being badly affected by the way they and their friends can view unlimited online pornography. As a matter of urgency we must prevent children having ready access to content rated over 18 as it can give them a warped view of sexual relationships.

To give your feedback head over to the Child Safety Online: Age Verification for Pornography consultation page.

Photo credit: Nickylarson974 / Shutterstock

The Vega+ is a handheld ZX Spectrum packed with retro goodness

Publié: février 16, 2016, 12:24pm CET par Wayne Williams

Vega+

If you grew up in the UK in the 1980s, you likely either had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64. I was firmly in the Spectrum camp, and whiled away much of my youth playing classics such as Jet Set Willy and Skool Daze.

Retro Computers, led by Sir Clive Sinclair, last year resurrected the Spectrum in the form of the Vega, and this year it’s following up that low-cost games computer with a handheld model -- the Vega+.

The portable games console has a built-in LCD screen (but can still be connected to your TV if you want to play it on there) and comes with over 1,000 games built in, with another 14,000 tiles available to download.

Sir Clive Sinclair says: "The present surge of interest in retro products inspired me to plan the Vega+ as a handy games console which can be played anywhere".

It’s been designed by Rick Dickenson, who worked on the original Sinclair computers back in the 1980s. Vega+ skool Vega+2 Vega+1

The development of the Vega+ is complete and there’s a fully working prototype waiting to go into production in the UK. Retro Computers is currently crowdfunding through Indiegogo and has already raised over £23,000 of its £100,000 flexible goal with a month to go.

It will retail for around £100, when available.

IBM unveils new mainframe for secure hybrid clouds

Publié: février 16, 2016, 12:15pm CET par Ian Barker

More and more organizations are seeing the benefits of adopting the hybrid cloud, but they don’t want to risk sacrificing the security advantages of more traditional systems.

To help businesses tap into hybrid cloud without sacrificing security, IBM is announcing a new mainframe, the z13s. Building on the mainframe’s world-class performance and security profile, the z13s features new embedded security technologies, enhanced data encryption and tighter integrations with IBM Security solutions.

The z13s provides the foundation for a more secure, end-to-end hybrid cloud environment, allowing organizations to protect their most sensitive data without sacrificing performance. Features include a new cryptographic co-processor and hardware-accelerated cryptographic coprocessor cards provide encryption up to two times faster, so users can increase workload security without compromising throughput and response time.

The new z13s has up to 4TB of memory (eight times more than previous single-frame mainframes) along with faster processing speeds and sophisticated analytic capabilities. IBM Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) for z/OS has been integrated into the operating system, adding to overall security by requiring users to enter a second form of identification, such as a PIN or randomly generated token, to gain access to the system.

It also has IBM's Security Identity Governance and Intelligence software which helps prevent data loss by governing and auditing device access. Integrated into the mainframe, QRadar and Identity Governance use real-time alerts to focus on identified critical security threats, while Security Guardium uses analytics to help ensure data integrity by providing intelligent data monitoring.

"Fast and secure transaction processing is core to the IBM mainframe, helping clients grow their digital business in a hybrid cloud environment," says Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems. "With the new IBM z13s, clients no longer have to choose between security and performance. This speed of secure transactions, coupled with new analytics technology helping to detect malicious activity and integrated IBM Security offerings, will help mid-sized clients grow their organization with peace of mind".

New z13s systems will be available from next month and you can find out more about IBM's z Systems portfolio on the company's website.

Tomasz Bidermann/Shutterstock

Has Windows 10 reset your default apps back to Microsoft stock?

Publié: février 16, 2016, 11:11am CET par Wayne Williams

Angry man

Yesterday, The Inquirer reported on how Windows 10 was resetting some changed app defaults back to Microsoft’s own bundled universal apps.

In the primary example given, image viewer Irfanview was displaced by Windows 10’s own Photos app, a change that had been instigated, it seems, by cumulative update KB3135173.

It’s not a change I’ve personally experienced, mainly because Photos is the one Microsoft app I still have as the default, and none of my other defaults have altered after installing that update either. But that said, it would hardly be a first for Microsoft.

Since I updated Windows to the new OS I’ve found myself having to change the default apps back to my preferred choice on more than one occasion. Microsoft Edge in particular was a pain, once refusing point blank to relinquish the default web browser spot even though I had changed it in both Settings and Control Panel, and no one in their right minds would opt to use that half-baked browser as the default when there’s the infinitely superior Chrome and Firefox available.

Edge also desperately wanted to be the default PDF viewer, despite my having an actual PDF viewer installed, and sneakily reclaimed that spot too.

Fortunately, Edge Blocker came to the rescue here, telling Microsoft Edge in no uncertain terms it wasn’t required.

Windows 10 hasn’t changed my default apps for a while now, which makes The Inquirer’s story interesting to me. Is the 'new' problem isolated to just a few unfortunate users or is it more widespread?

Have you experienced an issue with Windows 10 resetting your app defaults?

Photo Credit: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

End of an era as pioneering BBC3 becomes an online-only station

Publié: février 16, 2016, 10:58am CET par Mark Wilson

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13 years ago, BBC3 launched in the UK. Last night, the TV station broadcast over the airwaves for the last time. In a bid to slash expenditure, the youth-oriented channel that launched countless comedy careers is now only available online.

The likes of Being Human, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin and Stacey, and the like will live on, but only on the web -- which the BBC is spinning as an opportunity to be freed from the constraints of regular scheduling. The change has been known about for some time now, and there have been a number of campaigns and petitions to try to get the BBC to change its mind.

It might seem strange that there is such a vocal outpouring about the loss of a TV channel, particularly when it is not being completely killed off. But BBC3, like its more serious sibling BBC4, has been held in high regard for many years, thanks largely to the fact that a massive proportion of its output was original. The channel was used as a testing ground for shows that later became huge, with many migrating to the more mainstream BBC channels.

With the channel's budget slashed from £85 million to £30 million, it was clear that something had to budge. BBC iPlayer will now be home to the channel's edgy output. The BBC says that "younger people do watch most TV online anyway", but this does not take into account the channel's full demographic, nor cater to viewers with no, slow, or capped internet access.

It remains to be seen just how popular BBC3 is in its online incarnation. It's hard to imagine that audience figures will do anything other than drop; while the channel has always been youth-centric, the move to online-only broadcasting is likely to alienate swathes of casual viewers who will no longer be able to accidentally stumble across a gem of a show whilst idly flicking through the program guide.

Thanks for everything, BBC3.

Ransomware is lucrative -- almost half of all victims pay

Publié: février 16, 2016, 10:06am CET par Sead Fadilpašić

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I recently covered a story in which security firm Imperva said Cryptowall 3.0 was the most successful ransomware of all time, earning its creators $325 million (£225.7m) so far. Now another story about ransomware emerges, and this one comes from another major security firm, Bitdefender.

In its report, the company says almost half (44 percent) of all ransomware victims have paid to get their data back, with 39 percent saying they expect to be attacked again, in the future.

Ransomware is a type of malware which encrypts all the data on the victim’s computer and demands money in Bitcoin to release the data. If no payment is made in a specific timeframe, the documents are lost.

Victims are willing to pay up to £400 for their data, the company says. The survey also shows that most respondents know exactly what ransomware is and how a computer gets infected with it.

Ransomware is expected to grow and become even more present in 2016.

Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender said: "The ransomware phenomenon has been hitting internet users and generating huge profit for cybercriminals for years. While victims are usually inclined to pay the ransom, we encourage them not to engage in such actions as it only serves to financially support the malware’s developers. Instead, coupling a security solution with minimum online vigilance could help prevent any unwanted ransomware infection".

Bitdefender says it has already developed anti-ransomware technology, protecting documents, video and photos from being encrypted by ransomware.

Photo credit: Ton Snoei / Shutterstock

You can now watch Hulu on your Windows 10 device

Publié: février 16, 2016, 1:03am CET par Alan Buckingham

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You could always watch Hulu on your PC or Mac, or for that matter, on multiple other mobile devices. Now the streaming service wants to integrate much deeper, using Windows 10 as its launchpad.

This doesn't mean it will cease to be accessible in all of the previous ways, it just adds one more option for customers of the service.

This comes with a big extra, as Stephen King's 11.22.63 appears and will be available to Xbox One customers, including non-Hulu Plus users, for a limited time, running February 15th to the 21st. Right now, it's only episode one available for viewing, but it will be an eight-part series.

There's some interesting integration in this also. Microsoft points out "Hulu's new app works beautifully with Windows 10 features like Cortana and Live Tiles and features an adaptive, responsive layout. The Hulu app on Windows 10 is the only version of Hulu available today that uses universal voice search through Cortana".

An example of the integration would be something like say "Hey, Cortana. Play Hulu Sleepy Hollow". This also supports Live Tiles and can be pinned to your Start menu.

This was created as an all new Universal App, and users can easily choose from the multitude of shows available from Hulu. No matter what your tastes are, you can likely find something to watch.