Новости за 17.08.2015

Google has confirmed the name of Android M -- Marshmallow. The new version will first make it to the expected new Nexus devices due for release later this year.

Google has released the final developer tools for Android's next version and announced that it will be named Marshmallow.

Microsoft's Windows 10 has easily surpassed the global usage share ascension of Windows 7 six years ago, putting it on track to become the company's most successful OS introduction ever.

The cyberattack on U.S. taxpayer data reported by the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year now appears to be much worse than originally thought, the agency announced Monday, with as many as 300,000 citizens now believed to be potential victims.

The Mozilla Foundation wants to make sure that the Web remains a platform where anyone can create content, rather than just a place to consume information and services created by others.

Microsoft's new Edge browser is being used by a minority of those running Windows 10 -- between one-sixth and one-third -- according to data from a pair of analytics vendors.

Samsung has developed a 15.36TB solid-state drive (SSD) based on a 2.5-in. form factor, the same size drives used in today's laptops.

Supposedly you could become a “keyless” car thief capable of stealing Ferraris or other high-end cars with keyless engine start functions such as those in Audi, Fiat, Honda, Volkswagen and Volvo vehicles if only one sentence had not been omitted from a research paper. That deleted sentence was the end game for three security researchers who have been gagged for two years about a flaw in keyless cars.

Trouble Ticket

At Issue: The IT department agrees to buy a next-gen firewall, but it doesn’t want to put it in-line, where it could really make a difference.

Action Plan: Keep reminding the IT admins that they are spending a lot of time following up on potential malicious activity that the firewall could nip in the bud.

We bought a next-generation firewall, as I had hoped we would. The real trick, though, was getting the IT department to take full advantage of all of its advanced functionality. Читать дальше...

Critical data breaches and hacking incidents have entered the mainstream consciousness. In one way this is good, as people are becoming more aware of the types of things that can happen and taking a closer look at how they use technology. But when security breaches or hacking exploits are publicized, what comes along with the reports is new terminology. There is enough new terminology about cybersecurity to be confusing even for the technically proficient. And to be honest, some of the terms sound... Читать дальше...

Always on the lookout for open source alternatives to pricey commercial offerings, we wondered if open-source reporting tools could hold a candle to the established commercial products. For this review we selected the community/open source versions of three commonly used reporting tools: Eclipse BIRT, JasperReports and Pentaho. Our focus was on usability, data access, platform support, report creation and Web publishing.

BitTorrent applications used by hundreds of millions of users around the world could be tricked into participating in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, amplifying the malicious traffic generated by attackers by up to 50 times.

IBM is looking to boost its mainframe business with a Linux push that includes new hardware, software and the founding of the Open Mainframe Project. The company is also contributing mainframe code to the open source community.

Data rules the world, right? Not when it comes to your employees.

I’m the product of a callous corporate culture, one that almost squeezed the life out of me in the '90s. I didn’t like how upper management used meritocracy as a way to crush employees into submission, or how data became the only measure of employee performance. I came to despise this approach.

Now, the same criticism has been levelled at Amazon, and the fallout is still TBD. Jeff Bezos has defended Amazon as a fun place to work. Читать дальше...

Microsoft's problematic patch process for Windows 10 sees renewed criticism. Thanks to a sequence of issues with post-RTM updates, the calls for Redmond to rethink its update strategy are getting louder and more urgent.

Momentum

Expectations that Apple is building a car are developing a similar sense of momentum to those expectations we saw before Apple announced the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with a UK report claiming the company now seeks a testing facility for its autonomous vehicle.

The Guardian claims Apple’s special projects team met with officials from the high security GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco in May. Apple is searching for places in which it can test its Project Titan vehicle. Читать дальше...

As a group, Millennial workers switch jobs more often than any other generation, giving them a reputation as job-hoppers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average tenure for employees ages 20 to 24 is just 16 months. For those aged 25 to 34, it’s three years -- still two to eight years shorter than the remainder of the workforce.

On a second-floor rooftop at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Abraham Ishihara opens an electrical cabinet bursting with hundreds of wires. Each wire feeds data from an adjacent array of solar panels, helping him collect detailed information about their performance and, perhaps, figure out how solar panels age.

Yes, you have to go back

Image by Derek Walter

Denial won’t get you anywhere. It’s time to head back to school, which means less time playing Fallout Shelter and more time with riveting lectures and laborious assignments. 

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Microsoft is quietly testing an app that seems designed for people who want an assist keeping up with today's barrage of news.

Beats headphones have achieved a level of notoriety based on their style, but the sound they offer isn’t for everyone. Often touted as headphones for urban music—rap and hip-hop—the Beats sound doesn’t transfer well to all genres.

An Italian teenager has found two zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple's OS X operating system that could be used to gain remote access to a computer.

To some, the job of a higher-education CIO might seem downright cushy. After all, unlike their corporate counterparts, these IT leaders don't have to answer to shareholders, cater to business-line leaders or survive acrimonious mergers.

When Microsoft announced that it would be offering consumers a free upgrade to Windows 10, it got a lot of people talking. After all, the company charged $199 per license for consumers to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional just six years ago. So clearly, a free upgrade to a new OS would have to have a big impact on Microsoft's business, right?

Microsoft will not begin using Windows 10's multiple update tracks, called "branches" by the Redmond, Wash. firm, until later this year, analysts said, and in the interim will continue to push all updates to everyone at the same time.