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BetaNews.Com (17 non lus)

Microsoft's Xbox Onesie is real, and you can win one here

Publié: août 25, 2016, 11:20pm CEST par Brian Fagioli

When images of the Xbox onesie from Australia hit the web, people went wild. Yeah, it is a silly product, but many fans of Microsoft's gaming consoles expressed desire on social media and web forums. Heck, you can have your gamertag embroidered on it -- how cool is that? Believe it or not, the article of clothing isn't a hoax, but a real product. While Microsoft isn't selling them to the public, the company will be giving some away. Want to win one? You've come to the right place. Keep on reading for details. "Ever since the team at Xbox Australia revealed the… [Continue Reading]
Cyber criminals using insiders to carry out telecommunications attacks

Publié: août 25, 2016, 10:34pm CEST par Sam Pudwell

Cyber criminals are frequently turning to insiders to gain access to telecommunications networks and subscriber data, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab. According to the report, 28 percent of all cyber-attacks and 38 percent of targeted attacks now involve malicious activity by insiders. Telco providers are some of the top targets for cyber-attacks due to the vast amount of confidential data they collect, so criminals are recruiting employees through underground channels or blackmailing staff with compromising information to carry out their attacks. The blackmailing approach in particular has grown in popularity as a result of breaches that have… [Continue Reading]
Windows, Mac or Linux... Which operating system best suits your business?

Publié: août 25, 2016, 9:30pm CEST par Anica Oaks

With all the options out there, organizations may be having a hard time deciding which operating system to go with. The three most common are Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. But which is the best for your business? An OS should have a robust set of characteristics to serve the diverse needs of a busy office. It should be reliable and secure, yet flexible enough to scale with business demands. The user interfaces should be feature-rich and easy to navigate for both end-users and IT administrators. Windows remains by far the most popular, used in around 85 percent of businesses,… [Continue Reading]
Grab your popcorn, AMC lands on Roku

Publié: août 25, 2016, 9:09pm CEST par Alan Buckingham

AMC doesn't always show the latest films, but it does land some big names from Hollywood, and of course it's responsible for producing some excellent original content. It's become a go-to channel for surfers looking for something to watch. Now the entertainment network is coming to that tiny set-top box in your living room. The channel debuts just in time for the mid-season launch of Fear the Walking Dead. If you're into zombie apocalypses then that's certainly for you. Roku claims "Customers who subscribe to AMC through a participating cable, satellite or telco provider can stay current with full episodes and… [Continue Reading]
JixiPix's Sprektrel Art is free until 29 August

Publié: août 25, 2016, 8:25pm CEST par Mike Williams

Spektrel Art is a smart Windows and Mac app/ Photoshop plugin which transforms images into digital works of art -- and it’s available for free until August 29th. What does it do? The developer attempts to explain, saying it’s "an extravagant otherworldly display of undulating movement that glimmers and gleams with intersecting lines of tapered light". Umm, great. What this means in real life is it emphasizes edges, smooths the background and enhances colors, often to spectacular effect. The exact results will depend on your source image, but they often have a dreamlike quality, maybe a painted or drawn look,… [Continue Reading]
Latest Windows 10 update breaks PowerShell DSC and implicit remoting, but a fix is coming

Publié: août 25, 2016, 8:01pm CEST par Wayne Williams

While mandatory updates mean Windows systems are kept safe from threats, the downside is if a bad update makes it through testing it gets pushed out to everyone. This is a problem we’ve seen several times already with Windows 10, and the latest update, KB3176934, is another perfect example of this. SEE ALSO: Windows 10 Anniversary Update crashing when Amazon Kindles are connected As part of a cumulative update rolled out to users two days ago, KB3176934 is missing a .MOF file in the build and as a result has broken PowerShell DSC (Desired State Configuration). Try running a DSC… [Continue Reading]
Linux celebrates its 25th birthday today! But can it survive another 25 years?

Publié: août 25, 2016, 6:51pm CEST par Brian Fagioli

Today, Linux celebrates its 25th birthday. This is certainly cause for celebration in the open source community. Surprisingly, however, after all this time, many people don't understand that Linux is simply a kernel, and not an operating system. Yes, it is used as a component of operating systems, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Android, Tizen, and more, but a kernel alone does not an OS make. Linux's longevity is a testament to the open source community as a whole, and not just one man, such as Linus Torvalds. True, he invented the kernel back in 1991 and maintains it to this day,… [Continue Reading]
You can now play games directly in Google Search

Publié: août 25, 2016, 6:20pm CEST par Wayne Williams

When you go to Google it's usually to search for something, but from today you'll also be able to play games like solitaire and tic-tac-toe there -- both on the desktop and in the Google app. And that's not all. You'll also be able to settle arguments with a toss of a coin, and hear the sounds of your favorite animals. Google has long included fun extras and hidden Easter eggs in its search service, so these latest inclusions simply carry on that fine tradition. If you want to play Solitaire, all you need to do is search for "solitaire"… [Continue Reading]
The self-driving car is old enough to drink and drive

Publié: août 25, 2016, 4:35pm CEST par Robert X. Cringely

Twenty-one years ago, when we were shooting Triumph of the Nerds, the director, Paul Sen, introduced me to his cousin who was working at the time on a big Department of Transportation research program to build self-driving cars. Twenty-one years ago! Yet what goes around comes around and today there is nothing fresher than autonomous cars, artificial intelligence. You know, old stuff. As you can see from this picture, driverless cars were tested by RCA and General Motors decades earlier, back in the 1950s. What changed from 1995 until today in my view comes down to three major things: 1)… [Continue Reading]
One in four breaches in the financial sector are from lost or stolen devices

Publié: août 25, 2016, 4:20pm CEST par Ian Barker

New research from data protection company Bitglass into breaches in the financial services industry reveals that leaks nearly doubled between 2014 and 2015, and that lost and stolen devices are the most common cause. While hacking remains a major fear, only one in five leaks were caused by it. Other breaches were the result of unintended disclosures (14 percent), malicious insiders (13 percent), and lost paper records (8.1 percent). In 2015, 87 breaches were reported in the financial services sector, up from 45 in 2014. In the first half of 2016, 37 US banks have already disclosed breaches. In addition… [Continue Reading]
Ransomware: 3 seconds to encryption

Publié: août 25, 2016, 4:08pm CEST par Young-Sae Song

Imagine how you would feel if everything on your entire PC hard drive was encrypted, and somebody was demanding a large sum of money from you to make it accessible? This scenario is exactly what happens to thousands of people every day when they are infected with ransomware, and it is essentially a digital hold up. Though your life is not in danger, you face the imminent threat of catastrophic consequences from the loss of irreplaceable data. Much of the attention in the industry is focused on the damage caused by ransomware. The common belief is that most ransomware infections… [Continue Reading]
Cloud platform lets marketers deliver personalized Google Ads

Publié: août 25, 2016, 3:17pm CEST par Ian Barker

Google Ads has proved itself an effective tool for gaining new business, but it's a rather less useful way of targeting existing customers. Now though, marketing cloud specialist Optimove is launching a new integration with Google Ads. This allows businesses to target existing customers with personalized ads on google.com and across the Google Display Network, based on recent and predicted behavior patterns. "Google Ads is known as a great user acquisition channel, but there has not been a scalable and effective way to use it to target existing customers based on their personal preferences and activity patterns -- until now," says… [Continue Reading]
Windows 10 Anniversary Update crashing when Amazon Kindles are connected

Publié: août 25, 2016, 2:32pm CEST par Wayne Williams

Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been causing problems for users in all sorts of ways. There have been reports of it freezing systems, and killing webcams. Now owners of Amazon Kindles are reporting their PCs crashing when plugging in their devices via USB to charge them or transfer books. Users of Amazon’s Paperwhite and Voyage Kindles have been complaining that connecting their devices to PCs running the new Anniversary Update generates a blue screen of death, necessitating a reboot. When the PC restarts, things are fine -- but disconnecting and reconnecting the Kindle causes the system to crash once more.… [Continue Reading]
iOS device failures overtake Android for the first time

Publié: août 25, 2016, 1:43pm CEST par Ian Barker

In the ongoing smartphone performance and reliability battle, Apple has lost its leading position to Android for the first time in the second quarter of 2016. Plagued by crashing apps, WiFi connectivity and other performance issues, the iOS failure rate more than doubled to 58 percent, compared to a 25 percent failure rate in the previous quarter, according to the research by mobile device diagnostics company Blancco Technology Group. Of the iOS devices that failed, the iPhone 6 had the highest failure rate (29 percent), followed by iPhone 6S (23 percent) and iPhone 6S Plus (14 percent). The main issues encountered included… [Continue Reading]
How the Industrial Internet of Things is set to change the world

Publié: août 25, 2016, 12:33pm CEST par Ian Barker

We're all aware of the Internet of Things and its likely effect on our homes, but there's another side to it which is its impact on industry. Electronics supplier RS Components has put together an interactive graphic looking at how the Industrial IoT is going to change everyday functions from streetlighting to agriculture. Smart street lighting for example could cut energy costs by around 35 percent by automatically dimming when no activity is detected. Smart logistics could ensure that perishable items and medicines are delivered in peak condition. It's estimated that this could save European businesses up to 300 billion… [Continue Reading]
Will we ever be able to go entirely laptop free?

Publié: août 25, 2016, 12:26pm CEST par Jan Kaempfer

In a world that is fast producing new technologies every year, it’s interesting to read what technologies are reported to being on the decline. For example last month, a study from comScore has shown that desktop browsing is fast becoming a thing of the past. In the article, from April 2016, it was stated that over the past four months, desktop use for Internet browsing has been consistently below the recorded amounts for the same time period last year. Alongside these figures, it is also stated that desktops are losing share to mobile, which now accounts for 65 percent of… [Continue Reading]
The essential 2016 back-to-school technology shopping guide

Publié: août 25, 2016, 4:47am CEST par Brian Fagioli

Holy cow. The end of August is approaching, signaling the end of summer vacation for many students around the USA. This is the time when those learners, and -- depending on student age -- their parents, begin shopping for back-to-school items. If you aren't sure what to buy, I am going to help you out. Keep in mind though, BetaNews is a technology site -- I won't be advising on pens, pencils and binders. What I will help with, however, is smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more. Laptop If you are searching for a good all-purpose laptop for education and more, my top… [Continue Reading]