AnnouncementTotal 49 articles, created at 2016-04-18 18:01

(4.00/5)

1 Deep-dive review: For the iPad Pro, smaller is bigApple's latest iPad Pro, the new 9.7-in. model, not only gets many of the architectureadvances from the larger version, but also a better camera and what may be Apple'smost advanced display yet. 2016-04-18 03:00 10KB www.itnews.com

(2.00/5)

2 Samsung Galaxy Note 6 UK release date, price, newfeatures and specification rumours: Samsung Galaxy Note lineto return to the UK in 2016The Samsung Galaxy Note series is returning to the UK this August with the new Note 6(SM-N930F), expected to cost around £630 with a new waterproof design, iris scanner,huge 6GB of RAM and (allegedly) brand-new Android N. We... 2016-04-18 10:25 8KBwww.pcadvisor.co.uk

3 Hadoop exemplifies the promises and the pitfalls of opensource - here's whyFast moving and flexible, Hadoop has emerged to meet the data processing challengesof today, but it's not without challenges of its own,Big Data and Analytics,Hadoop,Hortonworks,Internet of Things,Big Data,MapR,Cloudera,Doug Cutting,ApacheSpark,Analytics 2016-04-18 14:32 1KB www.computing.co.uk

4 Brexit won't provide escape route from new EU dataprotection rulesLawyers warn that GDPR is coming regardless of what happens in June referendumvote,Security,Privacy ,GDPR,data protection,General Data ProtectionRegulation,European Union,EU Data Protection Regulation,EU referendum2016-04-18 14:32 3KB www.computing.co.uk

5 CW@50: The changing face of the datacentre over the past50 yearsAs Computer Weekly prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary later this year, we take alook back at how the design and role of the datacentre has changed over the past fivedecades 2016-04-18 15:26 2KB www.computerweekly.com

6 Security Think Tank: Five tips for creating a patchmanagement strategyWhat strategies can companies adopt to help keep up with and deal with the hugevolume of software updates they are facing? 2016-04-18 15:18 1KBwww.computerweekly.com

7 Hadoop for the Enterprise: Making Data ManagementMassively Scalable, Agile, Feature-Rich, and Cost EffectiveMany business drivers—from the need to scale big data and traditional enterprise data,the need for more economical data platforms, a demand 2016-04-18 12:48 1KBwww.itworldcanada.com

8 The Internet of Things – Finding the Path to ValueThe number of network-connected devices today is staggering, and estimates are itcould triple to 21 billion by 2020. This big data, 2016-04-18 12:40 1KBwww.itworldcanada.com

9 Why Big Data Analytics in the Cloud's Time Has ComeOrganizations need to become data-driven faster, and turning to the cloud will help getthem there. Here's why the timing is right for this to occur. 2016-04-18 11:59 1KBwww.eweek.com

10 Improving the State of Affairs With AnalyticsPublic sector organizations of all types and sizes generate and encounter anunprecedented amount of data coming at them from all directions—citizens,2016-04-18 14:07 1KB www.itworldcanada.com

11 NBC Olympics plans to archive a whopping 6PB of data,including an estimated total of 1PB of footage of OlympicGames content.NBC Olympics plans to archive a whopping 6PB of data, including an estimated total of1PB of footage of Olympic Games content. 2016-04-18 14:06 2KB www.eweek.com

12 Drone crashes into plane at Heathrow AirportAs if millions of drone owners suddenly cried out in terror 2016-04-18 11:20 2KBwww.theinquirer.net

13 Apple: Thar's gold in them thar iPhones2,204lbs to be exact - about $40m worth 2016-04-18 10:54 2KB www.theinquirer.net

14 19 best new phones for 2016: Phones worth waiting for &UK release datesThese are the best new phones coming in 2016, including the best new Android phones,best new iPhones, best new Windows phones, best new Samsung phones, best newSony phones, best new HTC phones, best new LG phones, best new Huawei phones...2016-04-18 10:48 29KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

15 Android N to mimic Apple's 3D Touch with pressure-sensitive display supportApple must feel touched 2016-04-18 10:32 2KB www.theinquirer.net

16 Leveraging the Cloud for Your DevOps WorkloadsEnterprises are finding that Platform as a Service (PaaS) is more than a toolset fordevelopers and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 2016-04-18 12:21 732Byteswww.itworldcanada.com

17 Southern Monsters is a game of monster hunting and PTSDin ArkansasIf you go down to the swamps today... 2016-04-18 10:20 1KB www.pcgamer.com

18 Supporting Your Data Management Strategy with a PhasedApproach to Master Data ManagementAs organizations begin to adopt master data management (MDM) techniques and tools,they often make presumptions based on faulty premises that lead 2016-04-18 12:21 1KBwww.itworldcanada.com

19 By changing the way it allows parents to give their kidsmoney to buy music, iTunes is taking some of the fun out ofgetting music as a kid.By changing the way it allows parents to give their kids money to buy music, iTunes istaking some of the fun out of getting music as a kid. 2016-04-18 09:18 3KB www.eweek.com

20 What you missed in tech last week: Kickass Torrentsblocked, Yahoo Mail downedThe top 10 stories from the past seven days 2016-04-18 09:47 2KB www.theinquirer.net

21 Microsoft refreshes Cortana and Edge in latest Windows 10Mobile updateThe countdown to the release of Redstone continues 2016-04-18 08:55 2KBwww.theinquirer.net

22 How to repair a broken gimbal mounting plate on a DJIPhantom 3If you've crashed your Phantom and broken the gimbal mount, here's how to replace it.2016-04-18 08:30 3KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

23 The half-price flagship from Xiaomi looks every bit apremium smartphone - Xiaomi Mi 5 in picturesOur photographer Dominik Tomaszewski put the spotlight on the Xiaomi Mi 5, theaffordable flagship Android phone from China's Apple. Here's what he came back with -Xiaomi Mi 5 in pictures. 2016-04-18 08:00 968Bytes www.pcadvisor.co.uk

24 Is the patient the cure to AI healthcare ills?The expectations of big data and artificial intelligence disrupting the medical industry hasbeen less then impressive to date. Why is that? 2016-04-18 04:02 4KB www.itnews.com

25 4 IT leaders share the mobile apps they use every dayIf you’re anything like the typical smartphone user, you have a ton of apps that youbarely even notice, let alone use. IT execs are no different, of course. But these apps aredifferent, rising above the typical app clutter to become the ones these IT leaders can’tlive without. 2016-04-18 03:48 4KB www.itworld.com

26 EU investigating Google’s contracts with phone makers,operatorsThe European Commission is still investigating whether Google’s Android operatingsystem and Amazon’s contracts with e-book publishers have broken antitrust rules, itsCompetition Commissioner said Monday in Amsterdam. 2016-04-18 03:45 3KBwww.itnews.com

27 Send in the Microsoft Surface clones10 tablets that copy the design of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 and 4. 2016-04-18 03:41 6KBwww.networkworld.com

28 How a giant like GE found home in the cloudDuring the past few years, leaders at General Electric have been aggressively migratingthe 123-year-old company to the cloud. But it hasn’t been easy. GE’s CTO for IT explainswhat roadblocks the industrial giant encountered, and what he’s doing now to ensureother companies... 2016-04-18 03:00 8KB www.itnews.com

29 Why even Google can't connect CubaReports say Google intends to help wire Cuba and bring the island into the 21st century.But that's not going to happen. 2016-04-18 03:00 9KB www.computerworld.com

30 The pain of training your replacementAt New York Life, IT employees are training overseas workers to do their jobs. It takes anemotional toll, and there are odd rules and processes to follow. 2016-04-18 03:00 8KBwww.computerworld.com

31 Encryption laws should think global, not localInternet standards aren't bound by geography, and they won’t bend to local absurditieslike the Burr-Feinstein bill 2016-04-18 03:00 5KB www.infoworld.com

32 5 more timeless lessons of programming 'graybeards'Youth may be what HR wants, but nobody bangs out code like a longtime programmingpro 2016-04-18 03:00 9KB www.infoworld.com

33 Q&A: Gene Kim explains the joy of devopsA renowned devops expert reveals a fundamental secret to productivity -- and thesatisfaction a well-run devops shop can deliver 2016-04-18 03:00 3KB www.infoworld.com

34 PlayStation Vue review: This is the skinny-bundle sweetspot (for now)PlayStation Vue gives you more than 50 cable channels for $30 per month, but are thoseprices built to last? 2016-04-18 03:00 10KB www.itnews.com

35 Best cable-TV alternative: Which service should yousubscribe to?Playstation Vue and Sling TV “skinny” streaming-TV bundles try to woo cord cutters.2016-04-18 03:00 10KB www.itnews.com

36 WAAAAAY cheaper than getting the axIT guy replaces his boss's name in his car's hands-free device with 'The Biggest @#$%!In The Entire World.' And that's pretty funny -- until the day he's driving the boss tolunch. 2016-04-18 03:00 1KB www.computerworld.com

37 New products of the week 4.18.16Our roundup of intriguing new products from companies such as Stratus Technologiesand A10. 2016-04-18 02:54 9KB www.itnews.com

38 Master iOS 9.3 With These 9 Tips And TricksApple debuted the feature-packed iOS 9.3 at its launch event that also unveiled theiPhone SE and smaller iPad Pro. Here are some tips to help you maximize your day-to-day use of the updated mobile operating system. 2016-04-18 00:06 2KBwww.informationweek.com

39 Los Alamos puts 30PB of Scality object storage intoproductionLos Alamos National Laboratory uses Scality object storage for disk access to Trinitysupercomputer and marries it with GPFS in MarFS homegrown posix/object hybrid filesystem 2016-04-18 00:00 1KB www.computerweekly.com

40 Teradata Universe 2016: MPP architecture recast as‘Intelliflex’Teradata announces a re-architecting of its “massively parallel processing” datawarehouse, the expansion of managed cloud service to Europe, and availability of itsdatabase on AWS. 2016-04-18 00:00 3KB www.computerweekly.com

41 Global trust in the Internet is in decline, survey saysThe majority of Web users don't feel at ease online when it comes to privacy andsecurity, according to a new survey of more than 24,000 people. 2016-04-18 00:00 1KBwww.cnet.com

42 Police investigate British Airways drone collision atHeathrowNo arrests after drone hits airplane before landing 2016-04-18 00:00 2KB www.itpro.co.uk

43 Hands-on: Stealth Machines NightHawk 2 offers fighter-jetflair on a Pentagon budgetStealth Machine's custom gaming PC might look like an F-117 fighter, but it hardly fliesunder the radar. The case alone costs $400, and wait'll you see what's inside.2016-04-18 00:00 3KB www.pcworld.com

44 Remember Batman's Bat-credit card? Now you can get one(in Malaysia)A bank in Malaysia is offering three different Batman card designs: one inspired byChristopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, a classic yellow symbol and one from the 1997,er, "classic". 2016-04-18 00:00 1KB www.cnet.com

45 Hollywood or hostage crisis? Johnny Depp and AmberHeard make Facebook apology to AustraliaThe celebrity couple have appeared in a grim video, filmed by the AustralianGovernment, apologising for 'disrespecting' Australian law, and Facebook users areworried they're being held hostage. 2016-04-18 00:00 1KB www.cnet.com

46 Apple vs FBI: Apple responds to latest request to unlockiPhoneApple claims FBI has not exhausted all other avenues in quest to unlock NY iPhone2016-04-18 00:00 58KB www.itpro.co.uk

47 Wozniak: Uber doesn't pay its drivers enough moneyApple-co-founder prefers to use rival service Lyft 2016-04-18 00:00 2KB www.itpro.co.uk

48 Doom multiplayer open beta has been extendedKeep hurling rockets while you can. 2016-04-17 23:50 1KB www.pcgamer.com

49 Mod lets your XCOM 2 soldiers have time-traveling childrenPlus quickloot comes to Fallout: New Vegas, and Skyrim's cities get big improvements.2016-04-17 18:15 2KB www.pcgamer.com

ArticlesTotal 49 articles, created at 2016-04-18 18:01

1 Deep-dive review: For the iPad Pro, smaller is big (4.00/5)

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By Michael deAgonia

Computerworld | Apr 18, 2016 3:00 AM

PT

Over the last few years, Apple's mobile productcycle has revolved around "bigger and thinner. "Now that mantra has been flipped on its head by Apple's latest releases -- the 9.7-in. iPad Proand the 4-in. iPhone SE -- that emphasize the notion that smaller might just be better.

First up is the new iPad Pro , which Apple unveiled on March 21st. This iPad Pro starts at $599( vendor price ), $200 less than its larger 12.9-in. sibling.

I've been an iPad user from 2010, when it first shipped ; the 9.7-in. screen has been a hallmarkof the iPad since it was introduced by then-CEO Steve Jobs. Since then, the screen hasundergone numerous revisions and improvements, most notably, adopting the Retina displaytechnology that first appeared on the iPhone.

This latest model not only gets many of the architecture advances from the larger iPad Pro --such as an updated processor and a new, much-improved speaker design -- but also a bettercamera and what may be the most advanced display Apple has shipped. That's no small featconsidering how advanced the larger iPad Pro was when it was announced last fall.

This particular model is officially known as the 9.7-in. iPad Pro. Built around a 2048 x 1536-pixelRetina display, it weighs just 0.96 lbs. and is 6.1mm thick. It borrows some features (such as thecamera system) from the iPhone 6S, and comes with all of the advances that made the 12.9-inmodel so compelling : a custom 64-bit A9X processor with an M9 coprocessor, as well as agraphics system that's twice as fast as the iPad Air 2 it replaced; a four-speaker setup thatautomatically shifts higher frequencies to the top speakers and lower frequencies to those at thebottom, no matter which way you orient the tablet; a Smart Connector for attaching accessoriesand for providing power and data without physically plugging anything in; and Apple Pencilsupport. (This last involves dynamically switching to 240 scans per second for low-latencyonscreen drawing with the Pencil, along with palm- and finger-rejection technology to avoidinadvertent input while sketching or taking notes.)

The particular model I've been testing is a 256GB version in silver and white with Wi-Fi andcellular/GPS capabilities, priced at $1,029 (without the cellular/GPS, it costs $899). I'm glad256GB of storage is now an option -- I like to have with me my entire library of music as well asall of the video projects I have worked on; it's like a digital life resume. (A similarly configured12.9-in. iPad Pro is now also available for $1,229.)

While, on the whole, the iPad looks pretty much like the iPad Air 2 , the cellular model sports anew look. The back side now has antenna lines like the iPhone instead of the black plastic patchApple used on previous models of its tablet. This gives the rear of the iPad a much cleaner look.

The latest iPad Pro (9.7-in.model) on top of the larger 12.9-in. iPad Pro. Note the design change

at the top where the cellular antenna is located.

Out of the box, I couldn't believe my eyes. After spending the past few months with the 12.9-in.model, the 9.7-in. iPad felt and looked like an iPad mini. I even felt comfortable two-thumb typingwith the split keyboard in the Messages app, as if the iPad was a slightly bigger iPhone Plus.(Like an iPhone Plus Pro SE?)

Moving from one Apple device to another is pretty seamless on the Apple mobile platform. I wasable to restore my apps and data from a backup, allowing me to just pick up from where I left offon the other iPad. Everything successfully synced over: bookmarks, notes, contacts, documentsand apps were correctly restored from the iCloud backup. (To bring over my movies, music andTV shows, I had to connect the iPad to my Mac via iTunes.)

I brushed this off as just another great iPad display during my Mingis on Tech chat (see videoabove), but boy, do I wish I had a do-over. This display is better than I originally gave it credit for,featuring a screen that's up to 25% brighter than the Air 2 and 40% less reflective, according toApple.

I thought the iPad Pro's Retina display was bright and crisp, offering vibrant colors and greatpixel density. I was more right than I realized. According to DisplayMate , a company whichevaluates displays, "It is the most color accurate display that we have ever measured. It isvisually indistinguishable from perfect, and is very likely considerably better than any mobiledisplay, monitor, TV or UHD TV that you have. "

One new display feature that I really like is called True Tone. It dynamically adjusts the display'swhite point and intensity based on readings from four ambient light sensors. The idea is toreplicate the behavior of surrounding light on a piece of paper; in reality, I found that this featureworks really well and is largely invisible. I didn't really recognize it was working until I turned thefeature off in a warmly lit room and the display shifted back to a cooler color spectrum.

Having now grown accustomed to this feature on this iPad, I really wish my Mac, iPhone and12.9-in. iPad Pro had it too.

The 9.7-in. iPad Pro borrows the iPhone's 6S's color scheme and camera. The new modelscome in four color options: silver, gold and rose gold with a white bezel around the screen; andspace gray, which continues to be the only model with a black bezel.

Although the larger iPad Pro ships with an 8MP iSight (rear-facing) camera and a 1.2MPFaceTime HD (front-facing) camera, the 9.7-in. model comes with 12MP iSight and 5MPFaceTime HD cameras. Both cameras support Live Photos, and the iSight camera supports tapto focus with Focus Pixels (for faster focusing), 63-megapixel panoramas (up from the 12.9-in.model's 43 megapixels) and True Tone flash (for more natural colors when using the flash).

It also has better video support for the iSight camera: 4K HD recording with 240fps at 720p (and120pfs at 1080p), cinematic stabilization and continuous autofocus. The front-facing cameraalso supports Retina Flash: A hardware design that allows the display to instantly operate atthree times the typical brightness to act as a flash in low-light situations.

Rounding out this iPad's features: There's TouchID (for securely authenticating apps andunlocking your phone using fingerprints); up to 10 hours of battery life; ApplePay support (withinapps, though, so don't expect it to work in stores like the Apple Watch and iPhone do); always-on Siri; and, for $130 over the base cost, Wi-Fi/cellular with built-in GPS.

As for those cellular models, the new iPad supports 23 LTE bands (three more than before) andoffers a maximum of 300Mbps LTE Advanced download speeds. That's double the 150MbpsLTE speeds offered in the 12.9-in. iPad Pro.

Apple boasts that the new iPad is almost twice as fast as the iPad Air 2 in processing speedand says graphics performance is fully double that of the Air 2. That's certainly how it's felt usingit day to day, though the Air 2 continues to be a smooth running tablet, even with hardware that

arrived in 2014.

Even though the larger tablet has 4GB of RAM and the 9.1-in. version has 2GB, I saw nodiscernible difference in performance. The 9.7-in. iPad felt as responsive as its larger sibling.Games, tasks and even editing 4K drone-produced video on the fly worked without issue. Andthe four-speaker design sounds really rich, with better highs and lows than the Air 2.

I also used the Apple Pencil ( $99 ), the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter ( $39 ), theLightning to SD Card Camera Reader ( $29 ) and the Smart Keyboard ( $149 ). These are theaccessories that truly make an iPad Pro, big or little, a competitor. That said, the Apple SmartKeyboard for this model requires some getting used to due to the keyboard's smaller size. Onthe other hand, it doesn't add much bulk.

For videographers on the go who don't want the bigger iPad Pro, this one serves nicely in thefield for quick editing. I used the SD card reader to transfer 4K video taken with my Phantomdrone directly to the iPad and then edited it in iMovie. The process was all very seamless, verywell executed.

With this latest update, Apple again shows that each generation of iPad is edging closer to thecapabilities that not long ago were limited to traditional desktops and laptops. The iPad actuallysurpasses a PC in some ways with features like the True Tone display; support for the ApplePencil as a note-taking and sketching accessory; automatic backups to iCloud; the one-twosecurity punch built into iOS 9 and TouchID; the still-growing App Store; and a burgeoninghardware accessory ecosystem.

If you’re looking for a tablet, and the 12.9-in. iPad Pro is too big for you, this one is highlyrecommended.

Apple

Price: $599 ( vendor price )

Pros: Updated processor; improved speaker design; incredible display; great cameras; varietyof useful accessories

Cons: Optional keyboard can feel a bit cramped

This story, "Deep-dive review: For the iPad Pro, smaller is big" was originally published by

Computerworld .

Michael deAgonia — Contributing writer

Michael deAgonia , a contributing writer for Computerworld , is a computer consultant andtechnology geek who has been working on computers since 1993, with an emphasis on Macs,OS X, and iOS. For more Apple insights, follow him on Twitter.

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2016-04-18 03:00 Michael deAgonia www.itnews.com

2 Samsung Galaxy Note 6 UK release date, price, new features

and specification rumours: Samsung Galaxy Note line toreturn to the UK in 2016 (2.00/5)

The Samsung Galaxy Note series is returning tothe UK this August with the new Note 6 (SM-N930F), expected to cost around £630 with anew waterproof design, iris scanner, huge 6GB ofRAM and (allegedly) brand-new Android N. Weround-up the best Samsung Galaxy Note 6rumours, focusing on the new Note 6 UK releasedate, price, new features and specifications.

You might also like: Samsung Galaxy Note 5review , Samsung Galaxy S7 review

Note 6 release date: August 2016.

Samsung tends to hold an Unpacked event in which it unveils the new Note around the middle ofAugust. The latest we’ve seen a new Note launch is immediately preceding IFA, which this yearruns 2-7 September, making a 1 September launch possible. Also see: Samsung Galaxy Note 5launch

The new Note 6 is coming to the UK.

That’s according to Tech Radar , which quotes a source high up at one of the UK’s majornetworks as saying the company will ditch the edge+ handset in favour of the Note in Europe.

"Samsung isn't going to launch the S7 Edge+ in the UK. I got the impression that it had been abit of a disappointment sales-wise and that the decision to keep the Note 5 out of Europe is nowconsidered a mistake. So our information is that the Note 6 will launch in the UK in August andthat there will be no S7 Edge+,“ said the source. Also see: Best smartphones 2016

Note 6 UK price: Around £630 (TBC).

Again based on Samsung’s previous strategy, we’d expect to see a new Note 6 come inbetween £600 and £650, with an RRP of around £630 most likely. It will almost certainly beavailable SIM-free direct from Samsung , Amazon UK , eBay and the like.

If you’ll be looking to buy the Note 6 SIM-free, note that Samsung Galaxy smartphones tend todrop in price by around 20 percent within the first few months.

If you wish to get the Note 6 on contract, the best deals will likely cost around £45-50 per month.You'll almost certainly be able to pick it up from the UK's major mobile operators Vodafone , EE, Three and O2 , as well as the likes of Carphone Warehouse.

Sammobile has confirmed that the new Note 6 will, in common with the new Galaxy S7, featureIP68 certification. This means it will be waterproof up to 1.5m for up to 30 minutes, anddustproof.

We’ve heard rumours that it will feature a very similar design to the previous Note and Galaxy Sflagships, with a mix of glass front and rear and strong metal frame. We wouldn’t be surprisedSamsung to make the Note 6 more curvier at the rear as it has done with the new Galaxy S7.Also see: Best Android phones 2016

The screen is always the one area in which the rumour mill goes a bit wild. But this is Samsung,so what we do know is the Note 6 will have a SuperAMOLED panel, larger than 5.5in and almostcertainly with a Quad-HD resolution. And there will be an always-on display, since the companyalready has the tech, as implemented in the Galaxy S7. Also see: Best phablets 2016

The most outrageous claim we’ve seen is that the Note 6 will have a 6in 4K screen (via Weibo ).We’ve seen 4K before in the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium , but it hardly set the world alight andplaces extra strain on the core hardware.

More likely is the rumours of a 5.8in (or 5.77in) Quad-HD SuperAMOLED panel.

Two processors are rumoured for the Galaxy Note 6: the Exynos 8890 and the QualcommSnapdragon 823. It is possible there will be a variation of the Note 6 with the Exynos chip andanother with the Qualcomm processor, since Samsung has just done exactly this with the GalaxyS7. We’d expect to see the Exynos 8890 variant in the UK.

More exciting is the new Note 6 could be one of the first mainstream phones to feature a huge6GB of RAM, which should lead to unparalleled performance in benchmarks.

Unfortunately, the validity of both these claims is questionnable. They appear to stem from aCPU-Z screenshot sent into Phone Arena (pictured below), which has since itself admitted thatthe screenshot is most likely a fake.

We really do hope so. Samsung has appeared to have learned from some of its past mistakes,returning the Note series to the UK and reintroducing the waterproofing and microSD support tothe Galaxy S7. We know that the waterproofing is also coming to the new Note 6, so why notalso the microSD support?

If we’re wrong and the Note 6 doesn’t support microSD, you can expect to see storage optionsof 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. According to Trusted Reviews , Samsung might also include itsUFS 2.0 memory chips in the Galaxy Note 6. That would put 256GB of hyper-fast storage at thedisposal of Note users.

The Note 5 has a 3000mAh battery, but if Samsung is about to pile on the performance it alsoneeds to keep fans happy and improve the battery capacity. (We don’t think it will go down theremovable battery route, because it just doesn’t work with that glass and metal design.)

The aforementioned Phone Arena source, which even it’s not convinced is telling the truth,suggests there will be a 3700mAh battery inside the new Note 6. Another source at Weibo (thesame source who suggested there would be a 6in 4K screen), says it’ll be a 4,000mAh battery.

We’re not inclined to believe either, but we do think Samsung will increase the capacity from theNote 5.

We’re not massively convinced by that Weibo source’s claims so far, but something they do saythat sounds a lot more likely is that there will be a 12Mp camera with Super OIS Plus. Samsungimplemented a 12Mp camera in the Galaxy S7 earlier this year, and it would make sense that itwould use a slightly tweaked version of the same camera.

We’ve seen a 20Mp camera rumoured too, but someone also pipes up and says 20Mp when itcomes to Samsung phone launches. It sounds like a great number, but phone makers arerapidly learning customers are no longer going to be fooled into thinking the number ofmegapixels is the most important attribute of a camera phone.

We’d be amazed if the Note 6 didn’t come with an S-Pen stylus, fingerprint scanner and heart-rate scanner. Sammobile also claims there could be a new iris scanner - it’s spotted an iris cambeing imported into India, labelled up as ‘parts for Samsung Mobile’. And what would thecompany implement an iris scanner on other than its next flagship?

Some people are saying the Note 6 will come with Android N out of the box, but we’ve beenunable to trace the source and it sounds like rubbish to us. Although the Android N DeveloperPreview was announced earlier this year, well ahead of its usual Google I/O debut, that doesn’tmean the operating system itself will come earlier. And even if it does Android N will bereserved for the Nexus line, and won’t appear on other phones until late 2016/early 2017.

We’d also expect to see the TouchWiz UI installed and working in much the same way as on theGalaxy S7 but with extra features for the S-Pen stylus.

Based on all the rumours we’ve read, and our own knowledge of the Note 6, this is what webelieve to be the most likely specification for the new Note 6 in the UK.

• 5.8in Quad-HD SuperAMOLED display

• Always-on display

• Exynos 8890 processor

• 6GB of RAM

• 32/64/128GB storage

• IP68 certification

• 12Mp rear camera with OIS

• S-Pen stylus

Read next: Best new phones coming in 2016 .

Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter.

Galaxy Note 6 release date, price, rumours and specstheinquirer.net

2016-04-18 10:25 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

3 Hadoop exemplifies the promises and the pitfalls of open

source - here's whyVisitors to the Hadoop Summit in Dublin lastweek were confronted with a bewildering array ofunfamiliar "animals" - some new, some re-homed, others acquired, with still more lurking inthe hothouse incubators....

2016-04-18 14:32 John Leonard www.computing.co.uk

4 Brexit won't provide escape

route from new EU dataprotection rules

Regardless of the result of the UK's referendumon continuing membership of the EuropeanUnion, organisations must still be prepared toimplement the recently passed General DataProtection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR has been more than four years in themaking, with the European Parliament only finallyvoting in favour last Thursday. The vote meansthat the GDPR should come into force during2018, giving organisations just two years toadjust to the new rules governing data collection

and processing. These include:

Such measures could well be seen as onerous , particularly for firms that already see the EU ascreating unnecessary burdens and red tape for their operations. So a vote to leave Europecould be seen as a chance to escape from under the yoke of the GDPR.

However, Mark Thompson, privacy practice leader at KPMG UK, warned that any organisationwith this view is mistaken.

"The hope is that the heavy fines and onerous new requirements introduced by the GDPR won’tbe applicable to them if Britain leaves the EU. Some might argue that this would be anadditional benefit for businesses in the event of a Brexit," he said.

"[However] should Brexit happen, the GDPR, or something very close to it, is likely to be passedin the UK. The reality is that Britain needs to trade with the EU, and trade these days isincreasingly reliant on personal information. "

Rob Sheldon, a partner in Fieldfisher's Manchester office, agreed with this, noting that UKbusinesses will still have to comply with GDPR whatever the outcome of the referendum.

"Post-Brexit, UK companies doing business in the EU, or with companies in the EU, willeffectively have to comply with the GDPR in the same way that other non-EU companies mustcomply, such as when they aim goods or services at citizens in the EU, or provide hostingservices for companies in the EU," he said.

"As with the EU/US position currently, doing business with companies in the UK may become

more difficult from a data protection compliance perspective post-Brexit (unless there is anadequacy decision, which would be dictated by the UK's data protection laws post-Brexit andwhether or not they're equivalent to the GDPR). "

The silver lining for firms wary of the GDPR is that the law is unlikely to start being enforced until2018, providing some breathing space to get the necessary processes in place.

2016-04-18 14:32 Dan Worth www.computing.co.uk

5 CW@50: The changing face of the datacentre over the past

50 yearsIf the digital economy was a living, breathing thing, the datacentre wouldundoubtedly fulfil the role of its nervous system. Every time a user stimulates adevice or app, news of this action invariably passes to a datacentre to bringabout a timely and appropriate response.

For example, whenever someone logs into online banking, scans their Oystercard or simply reacts to something a friend has written on Facebook, a datacentre will beactively involved.

Each one of these interactions is transmitted, along a neuron-like high-speed networking cable,to a server in a datacentre somewhere, where it is swiftly processed so the initiator can quicklycheck their bank balance, use the public transport network, cultivate their online social life or – inshort – get on with the rest of their day.

News of the server’s response, meanwhile, will pass to the storage part – or the brain – of thedatacentre equation, ensuring details of this brief, yet essential, process have been logged,bringing an end to a chain of events that has taken milliseconds to perform.

Billions, if not trillions, of these types of transactions occur across the globe each day, as ourreliance on internet-connected devices and cloud services rises.

In line with this, the world’s datacentre footprint continues to grow, with technology firmsembarking on new builds or expansions to their existing facilities to ensure user demands –from a performance and expectations perspective – are met.

Running an efficient and resilient facility is of utmost importance to every 21 st centurydatacentre operator.

But, were it not for the experimentation and research efforts of a slew of techies over the pastfive decades, many of the design concepts and technologies now considered part and parcel ofrunning a modern datacentre might not exist today.

2016-04-18 15:26 Caroline Donnelly www.computerweekly.com

6 Security Think Tank: Five tips for creating a patch

management strategyAlthough patch management plays a critical role in minimising business riskcaused by outdated software in any IT infrastructure, its mere mention canfrighten many companies and their IT departments.

This can result in a lack of action, meaning many organisations findthemselves with outdated systems, with the number of patches available to fix

potential vulnerabilities and exploits becoming increasingly overwhelming.

Whether you are looking to introduce patch management or have an existing policy in place,here are some tips that will help develop a concrete strategy:

2016-04-18 15:18 Vishal Kara www.computerweekly.com

7 Hadoop for the Enterprise: Making Data Management

Massively Scalable, Agile, Feature-Rich, and Cost EffectiveMany business drivers—from the need to scale big data and traditionalenterprise data, the need for more economical data platforms, a demand forlonger data life span, greater competitive pressure and more—point toHadoop as a solution for the enterprise. That’s why the Hadoop adoption hasaccelerated over the past two years and continues to rise.

On a technical level, the need for a data platform that scales up to handle exploding volumes, ascalable extension for existing IT systems in warehousing, archiving and content management,and the need to get BI value out of non-structured data are pointing to Hadoop. Meanwhile, theneed for business to derive value out of big data is also causing enterprises to look at Hadoopas a computational platform for business analytics.

2016-04-18 12:48 www.itworldcanada.com

8 The Internet of Things – Finding the Path to Value

The number of network-connected devices today is staggering, and estimatesare it could triple to 21 billion by 2020. This big data, already old news formany manufacturers, is changing the way they make business decisions andproviding new and exciting ways to leverage the Internet of Things to findsuccess.

Manufacturers have always had a wealth of data at their fingertips, long before the terms “bigdata” and the “IoT” became coined, and yet many remain reactive and are missing hugecompetitive opportunities, according to the 2015 IndustryWeek Industrial Internet of ThingsAnalytics Research Study.

2016-04-18 12:40 www.itworldcanada.com

9 Why Big Data Analytics in the Cloud's Time Has Come

While CRM software and applications like payrolland expense reporting have moved steadilytoward the cloud, business intelligence (BI) and bigdata analytics have been slower to follow the lead.But as the cloud becomes more mainstream, allsigns point to "go" for analytics to get out of theshadows and step into the cloud. Research firmForrester predicts that by mid-2016 nearly three-quarters of companies will use cloud-based BI.While on-premise analytics deployments willcontinue for the foreseeable future, the tides arechanging when it comes to organizational comfortwith moving business-critical functions like BI andanalytics to the cloud. Whether the decision to move to the cloud is instigated by economics orthe ever-increasing speed of business, organizations need to become data-driven faster, andturning to the cloud sooner rather than later will help get them there. eWEEK recently spoke withStefan Groschupf, founder and CEO of big data analytics provider Datameer, to glean sixreasons why now is the prime time for BI and analytics to step into the cloud spotlight.

2016-04-18 11:59 Darryl K www.eweek.com

10 Improving the State of Affairs With Analytics

Public sector organizations of all types and sizes generate and encounter anunprecedented amount of data coming at them from all directions—citizens,businesses, government agencies and departments—and encompassingcountless areas. But without a fast and reliable way to capture and understandthis big data, these organizations cannot hope to operate efficiently.

Many states have been able to use data and analytics to make governing more effective,strengthening fraud detection, enhancing child welfare services and improving health outcomes.They have shown that it can deliver citizen services faster and more cost effectively, and that itcan boost public safety.

2016-04-18 14:07 www.itworldcanada.com

11 NBC Olympics plans to archive a whopping 6PB of data,

including an estimated total of 1PB of footage of OlympicGames content.

Boulder, Colo.-based Spectra Logic, long one of the leadingsuppliers of high-end video archiving and disaster recoveryfor the television industry, received some good news thisweek when NBC's Olympics division selected it to do itsmagic for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this summer.

Spectra Logic will provide video archive and disaster recovery services for the Games of theXXXI Olympiad from Aug. 5 to Aug. 21 .

The announcement was made April 12 by Darryl Jefferson, NBC Sports group vice president ofpost operations and digital workflow, and Brian Grainger, chief sales officer of Spectra Logic.

NBC Olympics will deploy two Spectra Logic T50e tape libraries onsite at the Olympicscompound within the International Broadcast Center in Rio de Janeiro to conduct data restoresand to capture and access data from live broadcasts of the Games.

NBC also houses an eight-frame Spectra TFinity and T950 tape library with LTO-6 drives andmedia at its data center in Stamford, Conn. The TFinity is largely used for video archive, able toingest about 25TB of footage daily from several NBC Sports Group programs, while the T950'sprimary purpose is disaster recovery.

In total, NBC Olympics archives include 6PB of data, including an estimated total of 1PB offootage of Olympic Games content. Jefferson said that Spectra Logic was chosen due to itsproven reputation for providing scalable, high density, power-efficient data archiving solutions,globally and across the media and entertainment industry.

Spectra said its products are backed by more than three decades of experience andemphasize ease of use, ready access to content and industry-leading density that can easilyscale to millions of broadcast hours.

For more information on NBC Olympics' coverage of the Rio Olympics, go here .

2016-04-18 14:06 Chris Preimesberger www.eweek.com

12 Drone crashes into plane at Heathrow Airport

A PERSON HAS crashed a drone into an airplane at Heathrow Airport as it came in to land,

presumably pushing personal air vehicles back someway from wider acceptance.

A report in The Guardian said that the plane wasapproaching the airport when the drone struck thewindscreen.

People can get into trouble, rightly, for shining laserpens at cockpits, so you would assume that sending aflying robot spider at one would lead to big troubleindeed.

Those who have already considered the risk of drones that can be bought on the high street andoperated while riding one of those two-wheeled moron planks are not surprised by this meetingof drone and plane.

"Frankly it was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers beingflown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules," Steve Landells, flightsafety specialist at the British Airline Pilots Association, told The Guardian .

"It appears that no serious damage was done on this occasion, but what is clear is that, whilemost drones are flown safely, sensibly and within the limits of the law, much more education ofdrone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from thisthreat. "

Drone pilots in the US must follow the Dronecode or face five years in jail.

The Guardian said that the pilot informed the Metropolitan Police, and we have asked the forceto comment on the incident. We also asked Heathrow Airport if it has anything to add.

Planes are protected from flocks of birds at airports by the use of larger birds to scare themaway, but these birds do not generally work against a drone.

James Stamp, global head of aviation at KPMG, explained that regulation is the most aptsolution.

"People who fly drones in controlled airspace are potentially putting lives in danger, and shouldbe subject to the strongest possible sanctions available under the law," he said.

"A number of practical steps should be taken, including requiring drones to be registered,tougher penalties for irresponsible behaviour, and technology-based solutions that will preventthe drones entering restricted airspace in the first place.

"More research is also required into the potential impact of collisions because, while the impactof bird strikes has been well researched, drone impacts are less well understood. "

The Metropolitan Police has not yet replied, but The Guardian reported that no-one has beencharged over the incident. µ

2016-04-18 11:20 Dave Neal www.theinquirer.net

13 Apple: Thar's gold in them thar iPhones

APPLE EXTRACTED 2,204lbs of gold (yes, actual gold) from discarded iPhones and otherdevices over its past financial year. That’s worth about $40m.

The information was released in the company's annual Environmental Responsibility Report .

The cash-obsessed firm claimed that the hunt for the gold was for altruistic reasons as it seeksto reduce the environmental impact of unwanted devices by recycling as much of the materialsas possible.

To this end Apple also revealed that not only isthere lots of gold inside its iPhones but that itextracted a huge amount of other key materialssuch as steel, glass, aluminium and copper.

The full amount of all materials is listed below,which we've taken from the report. We’re not surewhy Apple used such a tiny font for thisinformation so if you have to squint, blame them,not us.

Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president ofenvironment, policy and social initiatives,explained that the effort to pull materials from iPhones is central to the firm’s green agenda,touting the recently unveiled Liam machine as the latest in cutting-edge technology.

“We introduced Liam, a line of robots that can disassemble an iPhone every 11 seconds andsort its high quality components so they can be recycled, reducing the need to mine thoseresources from the earth,” she said.

“It’s an experiment in recycling technology, and we hope this kind of thinking will inspire others.”

Apple may pitch all this in positive, professional terms, but we prefer to picture Tim Cook in hisoffice, dressed in the bedraggled garb of a gold prospector, pick-axe in hand, eating beansfrom a tin by a fire made of key corporate documents, staring lovingly at his pile of shiny, shinygold as Jony Ive and Co back away slowly, hand reaching for the door handle. µ

2016-04-18 10:54 Dan Worth www.theinquirer.net

14 19 best new phones for 2016: Phones worth waiting for & UK

release datesSome smartphones are worth waiting for, andthere are some stunners coming in 2016. Theseare the best phones coming in 2016, includingthe best new Android phones, best new iPhones,best new Windows phones, best new Samsungphones, best new Sony phones, best new HTCphones, best new LG phones and more.

In this feature we'll show you some of the excitingnew iPhones and new Android phones (listedalphabetically) that will launch over the coming

year. We'll also look back on some of the best new phones of 2015.

Apple confirmed its iPhone SE during a special event on 21 March. The phone went on sale on31 March at £359 (16GB).

The rumours turned out to be true, and while the iPhone SE looks vey much like an iPhone 5s,but with matt chamfered edges and a shiny stainless steel Apple logo, on the inside it's verymuch iPhone 6s.

Headline features include the Apple A9 processor and M9 motion co-processor, plus a 12MpiSight camera that can also capture 4K video. For a full run-down of what to expect, see iPhoneSE UK release date, price, features, full specification and performance benchmarks.

The iPhone 7 will be Apple's brand-new flagship phone for 2016, and following tradition shouldbe announced in September. Although the final release date is still many months away, thathasn't stopped the rumour mill going crazy over the upcoming iPhone.

We've already seen rumours that the new iPhone will feature big design changes, with an all-newD-jack headphone jack, waterproofing protection and an eSIM. Loads of rumours are circulatingabout the screen too - will it get bigger? Will it feature a curved edge? Will it have a Touch IDdisplay, or edge-to-edge glass?

One things for sure, the new iPhone will be faster than ever, with an A10 processor andembedded M10 motion co-processor, plus 2GB of RAM.

We round up all the iPhone 7 rumours here .

Apple's upcoming iPhone 7 Plus will be the best iPhone to date, with an array of specimprovements that include a bump up to the A10 chip and M10 motion co-processor with 2GBof RAM.

It's been suggested that the iPhone 7 Plus' screen size will increase to 5.7in, but withoutincreasing the overall size of the iPhone 7 Plus - this could be achieved with an edge-to-edgescreen or sidewall display. We just hope it'll improve the resolution as well.

In common with the smaller iPhone we could see a new D-jack headphone connector, andwaterproofing protection as standard.

There's loads more gossip floating around - check out the latest iPhone 7 Plus rumours here .

It's very early days for new Nexus 6 rumours, but we've already heard a tip-off that thesmartphone will once again be made by Huawei, and that it will feature a Snapdragon 820 chip,which is more powerful and energy efficient, and builds in support for Qualcomm Quick Charge3.0.

Some other stuff we 'know' includes the fact it will be the launch vehicle for the new Android OS,Android N , and it will most likely arrive in October. This will be a large-screen phablet (the clueis in the '6') and with support for USB-C now built into Android it will use that format for datatransfer and charging.

For the full new Nexus 6 2016 rumour round-up click here .

HTC has today (12 April) unveiled its HTC 10, successor to the HTC One M9. It continues tomajor on sound, but the BoomSound stereo speaker setup looks a little different at the front, withthe tweeter at the top and woofer on the bottom edge of the phone.

In common with the LG G5 it's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820-powered smartphone with 4GB ofRAM, but it's slightly faster-clocked at 2.2GHz. HTC has also upgraded the screen to a 5.2inQuad-HD Super LCD 5 screen, and implemented a fingerprint scanner.

The HTC 10 is priced in line with the Galaxy S7 at £569, and available to pre-order immediately.An exact release date has not been confirmed, but according to our friends at Clove it should goon sale the week commencing 9 May.

Read more about the HTC 10 in our Complete guide to the HTC 10 , HTC 10 hands-on review ,and HTC 10 vs Galaxy S7 vs LG G5 comparison .

On 6 April Huawei unveiled its new flagship P9 alongside a P9 Plus. You can re-live the launchevent in our Huawei P9 launch live blog.

The rumours were very much on the money, save for the naming scheme - there's no P9 Lite orP9 Max in sight. As expected, there's a new dual-camera system produced in collaboration withLeica. Unlike other dual-lens cameras, one sensor is RGB and the other monochrome. This andthe new super-accurate fingerprint scanner found in the Mate 8 are highlights.

Performance should be good with the octa-core Kirin 955 processor inside, alongside 3GB ofRAM and 32GB of storage (that's in the standard P9 - the P9 Plus has 4GB of RAM and 64GBof storage).

The Huawei P9 and P9 Plus are aluminium unibody handsets with full-HD displays - the P9 hasa 5.2in IPS panel, while the Plus is fitted with a 5.5in Super AMOLED screen.

Pricing is still to be confirmed, but the P9 and P9 Plus are expected to go on sale next month at£449 and £549 respectively.

Read more about the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus here.

It's not long since we welcomed the LG G4 , but the LG G5 was announced by the company on21 February. It's the company's first modular-design smartphone, which can be transformed intoa digital camera or Hi-Fi player. It features a sleek aluminium unibody with a slide-out battery.

In common with the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge the LG G5 has an always-on screen(here 5.3in), which makes it easier to check the time or notifications at a glance. Anotherinnovative feature is the two cameras on the rear - one with an extra-wide 135-degree lens.

Key specs include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage(with MicroSD up to 200GB), a 2800mAh removable battery and Android Marshmallow. The G5comes in Silver, Titan, Gold or Pink, and will be available to pre-order in March for an Aprilrelease.

The LG G5 costs £529 and goes on sale on 8 April 2016.

The LG G Flex 2 was an interesting smartphone, with its curved form-factor and material thatwould automatically heal scratches. Mark 3 should be more interesting still, with a rumouredmetal body and premium design.

Expect the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM inside, plus 32GB of (expandable viamicroSD) storage. Leaks suggest there will be a 3500mAh battery, a fingerprint scanner, and20.7/8Mp cameras.

Although the LG G Flex 3 has not yet been officially confirmed by the company, we expect it tomake an appearance in early 2016, with a price tag a touch over £500.

Surface Phone rumours have been few and far between, leading some to think it's nothing morethan a myth. But it was recently revealed by Wired that Microsoft Corporate VP Panos Panayhas been working on a prototype of a new phone.

Should it truly exist, the Surface Phone is expected to arrive in 2016, with a 5.5in Quad-HDAMOLED display, 4GB of RAM, 64- and 128GB storage options (with microSD support), a 64-bit Intel processor and 21Mp rear- and 8Mp front cameras. The Surface Phone could also get aSurface Pen and a USB-C port.

Things on Kickstarter are often a complete load of rubbish but the Nextbit Robin is a successstory which we're looking forward to seeing in the flesh.

The firm was founded in 2012 and its key staff have been involved with Android since thebeginning. Collectively, they've worked on launching phones including the G1, Nexus and HTCOne M8 and M8.

Due to arrive February 2016 with a price tag of $399, the 'cloud-first' smartphone has a differentapproach to most other Android devices on the market. There is on-board storage but the phonewill automatically optimise by doing things like moving unused apps and photos to the cloud.

Despite having only recently announced the OnePlus X, a smaller OnePlus smartphone than thecompany's flagship OnePlus 2, there are rumours that we'll soon see a third OnePlussmartphone.

This new OnePlus phone will be smaller than the OnePlus X, but with performance to match theOnePlus 2, so we assume it will be priced somewhere in between the two - that's if it ever seesthe light of day.

The rumours of a OnePlus 2 Mini phone stem from an entry in the GFXBench database of anunknown OnePlus device with a 4.6in screen (the OnePlus X has a 5in screen and the OnePlus2 a 5.5in screen). That's a full-HD (1808p panel), and other specs include a 1.7GHz QualcommSnapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and 12Mp/5Mp cameras. Incommon with the OnePlus 2, there's no NFC.

For all the latest OnePlus 2 Mini rumours click here . (Pictured: OnePlus 2.)

OnePlus spoiled us in 2015 with both the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X, but we're already hearingwhispers about a OnePlus 3.

The image pictured here is merely a render, and may be little more than an artist's impression ofwhat they'd like to see. Still if it's true, there's no sign of the fingerprint scanner previously builtinto the home button, which may mean OnePlus is going down the Sony route by building it intothe power button, or it could mean it's dropped it completely, possibly in favour of somethingmore radical such as iris-scanning.

Early leaked specifications include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip that will feature heavilyin 2016 flagships, offering improved performance and battery efficiency, plus support forQualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and Adreno 530 graphics. And OnePlus will allegedly continue tofit a 1080p full-HD screen, which suggests to us the OnePlus 3, like the One and 2 before it, willbe a great-value phone (probably under £300) with high-end specs and a mid-range price.

Read more OnePlus 3 rumours as we hear them here .

Great news for Samsung Galaxy Note fans in 2016 is that Samsung is allegedly ditching itsplans to bring a new edge+ smartphone to Europe and instead will be launching the new GalaxyNote 6 here this August!

Headline features are expected to be a 5.8in Quad-HD display, an Exynos 8890 processor, anenormous 6GB of RAM, IP68 certification and potentially an iris scanner. More outrageousrumours include a 4K screen, Android N preinstalled and a 20Mp camera.

Will Samsung bring back microSD support and the removable battery? Read more new Note 6rumours here.

Samsung has officially unveiled its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Samsung fans will be pleased toknow the handsets see the return of both a MicroSD slot and waterproofing, and although it's notremovable the battery has been bumped up to 3000mAh in the S7 and 3600mAh in the S7Edge. Also see: Samsung Galaxy S7 review.

Both phones feature a Quad-HD SuperAMOLED screen - the S7 at 5.1in and the Edge at 5.5in- and these feature new always-on (except when it's in your pocket or at night) technology,making it easier to check the time or read notifications at a glance.

Inside these Android Marshmallow phones you'll find either the Exynos 8890 or QualcommSnapdragon 820, depending on the market. You'll also get 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.Also see: Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

The camera has been downgraded to 12Mp, but larger pixels and a f/1.7 aperture will allow it toreceive 95 percent more light. This is also seen at the front for the 5Mp selfie camera, andSamsung says the S7 is the first phone with a Dual Pixel sensor.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are available to buy at £569 and £639 respectively fromSamsung, and are also available from UK mobile operators. See best Galaxy S7 deals.

ALSO SEE: RE-WATCH THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S7 LAUNCH LIVE STREAM | GALAXY S7LAUNCH LIVE BLOG

So Sony didn't just neglect to announce the Xperia Z6 at MWC 2016. It isn't going to announce itat IFA 2016 either. But while uSwitch says the Sony Xperia Z6 will never exist, Sony has since

clarified that it isn't ruling out the possibility at some point in the future. (Doesn't sound toohopeful to us.)

Sony has replaced the Xperia Z6 with a new 'X' family of smartphones, starting with the Xperia Xand Xperia XA, which we saw at MWC 2016. Read our hands-on review with the Sony Xperia Xand XA.

The Xperia X and Xperia XA boast next-generation camera technology, battery and design.They take Sony in a whole new direction , and the company says that the new series “embodiesSony Mobile's new brand vision.”

The two new phones, which both have 5in screens (full-HD for the X and 720p for the XA), 23Mpcameras, support for microSD and smart battery management, should be here in the summer.They won't be as fast as Sony's Z series, with a Snapdragon 650 powering the Xperia X and aMediaTek MT6755 inside the XA.

Read more about the Sony Xperia X and XA here.

Xiaomi chose MWC 2016 as the platform to unveil its new flagship, the Mi 5. It's a beast of asmartphone, which Xiaomi claims achieved a staggering 142,084-point score in AnTuTu. Thatscore was made possible by a combination of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor (withAdreno 530 graphics and Quick Charge 3.0 support) and up to 4GB of RAM.

Other specifications of interest include a 5.15in full-HD IPS screen, a 16Mp camera with opticalimage stabilisation and support for 4K video, a 3000mAh battery, a fingerprint scanner and theMIUI 7 operating system, which is based on Android Marshmallow.

Xiaomi phones aren't officially available in the UK, but they are obtainable from suppliers suchas Geekbuying , which lists the 32GB/3GB, 64GB/3GB and 128GB/4GB models for presale at£294.58, £334.81 and £387.98 respectively. The Mi 5 should be available from 1 March 2016.

Read more about the Xiaomi Mi 5 here.

We've just looked at some of the best new phones still to come in 2016, but some great phoneswere released in 2015. You can check out some of 2015's best flagships on the followingpages.

Also check out the best smartphones of 2016 , best Android phones of 2016 , best WindowsPhones of 2016 , best budget phones of 2016 , best cheap 4G phones of 2016 , best phabletsof 2016 and best selfie smartphones of 2016 .

Apple's iPhone 6s went on sale in the UK on 25 September. (See also: best smartphones forbusiness .)

There are some key changes in the new iPhone 6s, with a new Rose Gold colour option and a12Mp iSight camera with support for 4K video recording. Live Photo is a fun new feature, withthe iPhone recording a second and a half of video either side of the still image to help it come tolife.

iOS 9 comes preinstalled on the new iPhone, and there's a new 3D Touch screen that candifferentiate between a light and hard tap, allowing you to 'peek' and 'pop' into content. Thescreen is otherwise the same, a 4.7in Retina HD screen with 326ppi.

Also new is a second-gen Touch ID fingerprint scanner that's reportedly twice as fast, and anApple A9 processor, now with the M9 motion coprocessor built-in and always-on. Apple says it's80 percent faster for CPU tasks and 90 percent for GPU tasks.

As well as the iPhone 6s (previous slide), Apple has made available the new iPhone 6s Plus, onsale in the UK from 25 September.

As with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the key differences between these two phones are in theirscreen size and overall dimensions and weight. With a higher-resolution 5.5- rather than 4.7in

screen, the iPhone 6s Plus is necessarily larger and heavier, at 158.2x77.9x7.3mm and 192g. Italso has a larger-capacity battery.

The 6s Plus gets the same new features as the iPhone 6s, which means the A9 processor,12Mp iSight camera with Live Photo, the 3D Touch screen (which can also go up to three timesbrighter to serve as a Retina Flash for the 5Mp selfie camera), and new Touch ID fingerprintscanner.

We've yet to get our hands on an Asus Zenfone 2 , but the top-end model (ZE551ML) is nowavailable at Amazon for £309.99 ( Buy the Asus Zenfone 2 here ). This powerful phone has astaggering 4GB of RAM and a 2.3GHz 64-bit Intel Atom Z3580 quad-core processor. Forstorage 32GB is fitted, and you can get more through microSD. There's 4G LTE support (dual-SIM, dual active), a 5.5in full-HD IPS screen, and 13Mp rear- and 5Mp front cameras. The stylishbrushed-metal case is just 3.9mm thick at the edges. Running the fully customisable ZenUIsoftware, the Zenfone 2 also has Trend Micro security preinstalled. The Asus Zenfone 2 is wellworth a look.

Google's Nexus phones have always been popular, but the 2014 Nexus 6 didn't go down quiteso well. Was it too expensive? Was it too big?

Google is now hedging its bets with not only a new Nexus 5X but also a Nexus 6P - so, thereis something for everyone.

The new Nexus 5 is made by LG and comes with a 5.2in full-HD screen, a QualcommSnapdragon 808 CPU, a rear fingerprint scanner, a USB Type-C charging port, 12.3- and 5Mpcameras, 2GB of RAM and 16- or 32GB of storage, plus a front-facing speaker. It also runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow .

The new Nexus 5X is available to buy now .

This new Google phone is the more capable of the two new Nexus phones, with a 5.7in QuadHD display, a metal unibody chassis, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2 processor, 3GB ofRAM, a fingerprint scanner, a 12.3Mp rear camera and 8Mp at the front.

As with the Nexus 5X, the new Nexus 6P runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It is available to buynow and will ship in October.

HTC's One A9 is the much talked about iPhone 'copycat', but as HTC points out it has beenmaking metal unibody phones for several years now. HTC says it is 'simple, robust and withouttoo many frills'.

There's a 5in full-HD screen, a Snapdragon 617 processor, 2GB of RAM, microSD support, afingerprint scanner and a 13Mp camera.

The HTC One A9 costs £469.99 SIM-free ( Carphone Warehouse ) and should ship by 12November.

We are massive fans of the HTC One M8 , and the HTC One M9 is even better ( Buy HTC OneM9 here ). Although HTC has kept the full-HD screen rather than the quad-HD screens seen inthe new Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the HTC One M9 is a very attractive phone withsome impressive performance. You can check out our HTC One M9 review here, and learnmore about the HTC One M9 release date, price and specs here. The phone went on sale inthe UK on 31 March from £569 SIM-free, making it £30 cheaper than its rival the SamsungGalaxy S6.

A 5.5in-screen phablet version of the HTC One M9 is the HTC One M9+ - and this is the one wewere waiting for, with a Quad-HD screen and a fingerprint scanner. It's been announced only inChina at 4,299 Yuan (£522), and although HTC's PR team got in touch to tell us that the M9+ willnever officially make it to the UK, rumours are spreading that it is coming to Europe after all. Fornow, though, if you want one you'll have to buy it online from a grey-market importer.

Huawei's latest flagship has a gorgeous unibody metal design that's stylish enough to rival HTCand Apple, yet it undercuts the price of those smartphones with a starting price of 499 Euro, or£357. There is a standard 5.2in Huawei P8 , or a huge 6.8in Huawei P8 max. The phone andphablet should have gone on sale in the UK in April, with a worldwide launch following 15 May.We're unable to find the Max version for sale right now (check out our Huawei P8 and P8 maxUK release date, price and specs ), but keep your eyes peeled - it's worth hunting down.

LG is calling the LG G4 the 'most ambitious smartphone yet', which is focused on delivering'comfortable elegance, a great visual experience and a human-centric user experience'. ( Buythe LG G4 here .) We stand by our statement that the LG G3 was the very best phone you couldbuy in 2014, and things just get better with the LG G4 - although opinion is divided on that leathercase (also available in ceramic versions). Key specifications include a Qualcomm Snapdragon808 processor, a 5.5in Quad HD IPS Quantum display, 32GB of storage (with microSD support)and a 3000mAh removable battery. The LG G4 was unveiled at a press event on 28 April, andwent on sale on 28 May from £500 SIM-free.

The G4 and G4 Note aren't LG's only exciting new smartphones for 2015. At CES 2015 itunveiled the LG G Flex 2 , a curved-screen handset. ( Buy LG G Flex 2 here .) The G Flex 2 is a5.5in-screen smartphone with a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core chip, and itfeatures self-healing technology.

Part of the reason we're so excited about the upcoming Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL is thatthey are among the first handsets to run full Windows 10 - Microsoft is to finally tackle theWindows Phone apps problem by running one OS across phones, tablets, PCs and laptops.The Lumia 950 has the beefiest spec of any Windows Phone we've seen too, and the XL is alarger version with a 5.7in Quad HD screen and a faster Snapdragon 810 processor. You canpre-order them now, and both new phones will go on sale in November, priced at £450 for the950 and £530 for the XL.

The Moto X Force is the UK version of the Motorola Droid Turbo 2, and will go on sale in the UKin mid-November from £499 (32GB).

The waterproof Moto X Force features a shatterproof 5.43in Quad-HD (1440x2560 pixels)display, a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 21Mp rear camera and5Mp at the front. There are 32- and 64GB storage options, plus microSD support, and a high-capacity battery for up to 48 hours battery life.

The OnePlus One is an amazing phone that was for a long time virtually impossible to get holdof. Priced from £229 it has the spec to match a £600 smartphone, hence OnePlus marketing itas a flagship killer. The OnePlus 2 is so much better, with improved specs and just £239. It wasunveiled on 27 July in a unique virtual-reality product launch, and went on sale on 11 August (findout how to get a OnePlus 2 invite here). Highlights among the spec list include a second-genQualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of RAM, USB Type-C and a fingerprint scanner.Check out our full OnePlus 2 review.

The OnePlus X is a smaller, cheaper version of the OnePlus 2, and was unveiled at a Londonlaunch event on 29 October. It costs from £199 for the Onyx glass version, although a limited-edition Ceramic model will also ship.

It's lost the fingerprint scanner and USB-C port of the OnePlus 2, but features a smaller 5in1080p display and now features microSD support. Performance won't be as strong with aSnapdragon 801 under the hood, but that price tag is appealing.

Samsung has confirmed its Samsung Galaxy A7 , a gorgeous phablet with a 6.3mm unibodymetal chassis, a 5.5in Super AMOLED screen and a 64-bit octa-core processor. The SamsungGalaxy A7 is not yet on sale on the UK, but will come in both single- and dual-SIM variants.

Everyone always bangs on about Samsung's Galaxy S line-up, but it's the Note series that reallyimpresses. The Note 4 was unveiled at a Samsung Unpacked event prior to September's IFAtradeshow (3 September 2014), and right now sits at the top of our fastest smartphone and

best phablet charts. Traditionally Samsung's Note launches are held at IFA in September, butthe Samsung Galaxy Note 5 was this year unveiled several weeks early in August to give it aheadstart on the new iPhones. But in the US only, for now - the Note 5 is rumoured to come toEurope in January.

If you're a Samsung fan but would rather stick to a phone than a phablet then the SamsungGalaxy S6 is just what you're looking for. ( Buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 here .) With Samsungfinally answering build-quality criticisms, it follows in the trend of the Galaxy Alpha and GalaxyNote 4 with a metal and glass body. There's also a quad-HD screen, plus plenty of other radicalnew features, including a super-fast Samsung Exynos processor (paired with 3GB of RAM), anda redesigned fingerprint scanner that works a lot more like Apple's Touch ID and, you know,actually works. The Samsung Galaxy S6 was unveiled at a Samsung Unpacked event on 1March 2015, and went on sale on 10 April 2015. Prices start at £599 SIM-free.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 Active has now been confirmed by the company, althoughunfortunately for UK customers it's exclusive to the US. If you really want one keep your eyespeeled on the likes of eBay and Amazon. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Active is a rugged version ofthe Samsung Galaxy S6 with IP68 waterproofing protection and three physical buttons below thetouchscreen. Many of the remaining specs are the same as that of the S6 itself, although theActive also features an Activity Zone, allowing you to quickly launch a compass, torch orstopwatch.

A second version of the Samsung Galaxy S6 launched alongside the standard S6 at MWC. (Buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge here .) It follows the trend set by the Samsung Galaxy Note 4and Galaxy Note Edge , but with two curved screen edges rather than one and a marginallyhigher-capacity battery than is found in the S6. In other respects the specs are in line with thestandard S6, but expect to pay a premium for that fancy screen. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge went on sale in the UK on 10 April 2015. Prices start at £760 SIM-free for the 64GB version.

A larger version of the Galaxy S6 Edge has recently been announced as the S6 Edge+. It's inessence a larger version of the S6 Edge with a 5.7in screen. You can check out our hands-onreview of the Galaxy S6 Edge+ here.

After all the rumours that the Sony Xperia Z4 would be delayed until September, the Z4 wasrecently unveiled in Japan. The Z4 won't come to the UK, but in late May Sony announced itsSony Xperia Z3+ over here. ( Buy the Sony Xperia Z3+ here .) The UK version of the Z4, theZ3+ is almost identical - read our Z3 vs Z3+ comparison to see exactly how it differs to both Z3and Z4. In essence, the Sony Xperia Z3+ is a slightly slimmed down and much faster version ofthe Z3, with performance we expect to fall in line with the HTC One M9. The Z3+ went on sale inthe UK in June.

The new Sony Xperia Z5 is the flagship we were hoping for from Sony when we got the SonyXperia Z3+. It's caught up with its rivals with the Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAMinside, and gets one over on them with waterproofing protection, a brilliant 23Mp camera, andmicroSD support up to a whopping 200GB.

The Sony Xperia Z5 also comes in Premium and Compact versions and went on sale in the UKin October. For more details see our Sony Xperia Z5 hands-on review and Sony Xperia Z5 UKrelease date, price and specifications articles.

We've had mummy and dady, now here comes baby. The Sony Xperia Z5 mini (better known asthe Z5 Compact) is a great follow-up to the Z3 Compact, smaller in size and likely to be around£100 cheaper in price, yet with few sacrifices in the specification.

In common with the Z5 and Z5 Premium the Z5 Compact offers the Snapdragon 810 processor,along with microSD support up to 200GB, the new fingerprint scanner and 23- and 5Mpcameras. It has a smaller (4.6in) and lower-resolution (720p HD) screen, and has a lower-capacity 2700mAh battery, but remember that there will be less drain from the screen. One otherdifference is that you get 2- rather than 3GB of RAM.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact went on sale in October. For more details on the mini Z5 see ourSony Xperia Z5 Compact hands-on review and Sony Xperia Z5 Compact UK release date,price and specifications articles.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium is the first 4K phone to market, with a 5.5in 2160x3840-pixeldisplay that has a crazy-high pixel density of 806ppi.

The Premium is necessarily larger and heavier than the standard Z5, and has a slighly larger-capacity battery. In other respects it's the same phone, which means you get a QualcommSnapdagon 810 processor, 3GB of RAM, microSD support up to 200GB, 23- and 5Mpcameras and a brand-new fingerprint scanner.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium will go on sale in November. Read more about the Z5 Premium inour Sony Xperia Z5 Premium hands-on review and Sony Xperia Z5 Premium UK release date,price and specifications articles.

Xiaomi has officially unveiled its Xiaomi Mi Note and Mi Note Pro , with the latter hailed as themost powerful phone in the world. Both offer staggering value at £244 and £350 respectively,given their amazing specs. These two Chinese phones are fitted with 5.7in curved screens - theMi Note full-HD and the Note Pro Quad HD. The Mi Note Pro in particular should offer unrivalledperformance, thanks to a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 64-bit octa-core chip, a massive4GB of RAM and Adreno 430 graphics. And still it's thinner than the iPhone 6 Plus. There'sloads more to drool over in Xiaomi's juicy spec sheet too. The Mi Note went on sale in China on27 January and sold out within minutes, while the Mi Note Pro went on sale on 6 May. Thesephones won't officially go on sale in the UK, but it's probable that you'll be able to get them on grey-market or auction sites (see How to buy Xiaomi phones in the UK ).

Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter .

2016-04-18 10:48 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

15 Android N to mimic Apple's 3D Touch with pressure-

sensitive display supportWELL HERE'S A SURPRISE. Google's Android Noperating system will be the first version to supportpressure-sensitive displays, enabling manufacturersto create their own version of 3D Touch.

Phandroid has the scoop, having found the iPhone 6S-like feature in the code for Google's Android NDeveloper Preview 2.

The pressure-sensitive display support was hinted atby the software's new Launcher Shortcuts feature,which allows you to jump straight to specific appfunctions from the homescreen using certain unspecified 'gestures'.

But Phandroid teamed up with Nova Launcher developer Kevin Barry to test the new'setDynamicShortcuts(List)' feature.

It's unclear how exactly the feature will work in Android N, but Google offered four potentialscenarios in its release notes: navigating to a particular location in a mapping app; sendingmessages to a friend in a communication app; playing the next episode of a TV programme in amedia app; and loading the last save point in a gaming app.

Google has confirmed the incoming 3D Touch-style support to The Verge , saying thatmanufacturers building Android devices wanted this addressed by the OS itself, probably so thatthey wouldn't have to develop their own methods individually.

Of course, this doesn't mean that all upcoming Android N smartphones will support the feature,but that more Android handsets beyond the Huawei Mate S will soon attempt to emulate Apple's3D Touch function.

Google released the second Android N Developer Preview last week. Beyond LauncherShortcuts, the biggest addition to the operating system is support for the Vulkan graphics API.

This is a low-overhead API for GPU drivers that provides a way for graphics card drivers toreduce the amount of background processing power drawn from a CPU when interpreting thehardware demands required for running 3D applications.

Perhaps the most exciting addition is support for Emoji Unicode 9, which redesigns Google'sstock emoji characters to make them "more human-looking" and, frankly, less crap. µ

2016-04-18 10:32 Carly Page www.theinquirer.net

16 Leveraging the Cloud for Your DevOps Workloads

Enterprises are finding that Platform as a Service (PaaS) is more than atoolset for developers and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can be more thana place to host apps. Instead, IT departments can use the cloud to redefine thecontinuum of development and operation s— a process that is known asDevOps.

2016-04-18 12:21 www.itworldcanada.com

17 Southern Monsters is a game of monster hunting and PTSD

in ArkansasBravemule, purveyor of fabulous tales thatregularly feature in our Free Games of the Week, is at work on an ambitious (and commercial)new project. Southern Monsters will take youdown to south Arkansas, where loneliness andPTSD are your companions. Your outlet is aforum for monster hunters on the trail ofSasquatch and the like, and rumour has it there'sa new beast at large not far from your house.You've named it Cripplefoot.

Like Bravemule's other games, SouthernMonsters is an illustrated narrative adventure , but larger than ever before. With five days ofgame time allotted to you, the core game is split between managing your PTSD during the dayso you're able to go in search of Cripplefoot at night. It promises to roll in all of writer KevinSnow's frustrations at being disabled in the southern USA, laced with black humour.

There's likely to be a Kickstarter campaign down the line, but right now Bravemule is hoping torelease Southern Monsters before the year is through. Here's the whole poster on account of itbeing gorgeous:

2016-04-18 10:20 By Angus www.pcgamer.com

18 Supporting Your Data Management Strategy with a Phased

Approach to Master Data ManagementAs organizations begin to adopt master data management (MDM) techniques and tools, theyoften make presumptions based on faulty premises that lead to process flaws. If the goal of

MDM is to integrate into a long-term information strategy, the focus must shiftaway from the concept of creating a “single source of truth” towards providing“unobstructed access to a consistent representation of shared information.”

By rethinking MDM, organizations can develop a phased approach andincremental implementation plan, which will deliver the benefits of sharing

consistent, high-quality data while aligning the milestones and deliverables of a medium- andlong-term information strategy.

2016-04-18 12:21 www.itworldcanada.com

19 By changing the way it allows parents to give their kids

money to buy music, iTunes is taking some of the fun out ofgetting music as a kid.

Maybe I'm too much of a sentimentalist, but when I read that Apple is droppingits iTunes Allowances program on May 25, it made me feel sad.

The idea behind Allowances was simple—parents could automatically putmoney into a dedicated online iTunes account (pictured) for their children eachmonth so the kids could buy whatever music they want for their iPhones, iPods,iPads or computers. What a great way to show your children some responsibility and give thema bit of freedom to build their own digital music libraries as they grow and figure out the kinds ofmusic they like.

My daughter Hannah got her first iPod while she was in middle school and she loved puttingmusic on it from NSYNC, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Broadway shows. So I set her upwith an iTunes Allowances account, at $10 a month, and let her pick and choose what shewanted to buy and download.

As a parent, I felt good knowing that she was expanding her personal music catalog andlearning to appreciate new music as she and her friends discovered it. My parents did the samefor me whenever they'd bring home new records and play them on our old Lafayette Electronicsturntable, amplifier and speakers. That's how I learned about Bob Dylan, The Band, JimmyHendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Joan Baez, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis,Willie Nelson, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Buddy Rich, B. B. King,Vanilla Fudge, The Fugs, Jefferson Airplane, Leon Russell and others. Hey, my parents hadeclectic and varied musical tastes. That's a good thing.

I really liked that Hannah could make these musical decisions on her own, without having to askme to buy her some songs on a regular basis, as she did before I set up her account. And I thinkshe liked having that kind of autonomy, too.

If I hadn't had a daughter who used Allowances in the past, I may never have thought twice aboutApple's April 14 announcement that the service will end. But with the ending of the program, Ifeel sad for the kids who won't get a similar chance to get some well-earned freedom throughAllowances.

Apple wants users to transition to its more recent Family Sharing program, which lets up to sixpeople in a family share each other's iTunes and other Apple purchases through separateaccounts. But Family Sharing offers no autonomy, even to just buy some music. Instead, eachtime a child under 13 wants to buy a music track, the system's default Ask to Buy feature sendsa request to the parent, giving them a chance to approve or deny the child's purchase request.Ask to Buy can be set up for any child under 18 on a family's Apple account.

That's no fun and it certainly doesn't show a parent's trust in their child.

The iTunes Allowance program will be missed and its ending is unfortunate. Bad move, Apple.

2016-04-18 09:18 Todd R www.eweek.com

20 What you missed in tech last week: Kickass Torrents

blocked, Yahoo Mail downedHARD TO FIND WEBSITE Kickass Torrents riledINQUIRER readers last week after a phishingthreat saw the website blocked on Chrome,Firefox and Safari.

Kickass punters, presumably looking for a copyof The Ridiculous 6 after Netflix announced planslast week to up its prices, were greeted with apop-up note suggesting that not all is what itseems at the destination. The Kickass team saidthat it is trying to fix the problem and has madesome efforts to clean up entry.

Yahoo Mail also pissed people off last week after suffering yet another widespread outage,leaving users unable to access their email accounts for days. The firm blamed the downtime ona severed undersea cable.

We've rounded up the top 10 stories from last week below. µ

Kickass Torrents is kicked off Chrome, Firefox and Safari over phishing threat

Visitors urged to give site a wide berth

Elon Musk's Tesla cars have acid trip cowbell version

We are not making this up

iPhone 7 Plus: leaked picture shows iPad Pro-style Smart Connector

Could be the first iPhone to ship with an add-on keyboard

Man with nothing better to do gets Flappy Bird running on e-cigarette

The very idea has given us an attack of the vapes

BlackBerry CEO: Priv was a mistake, we'll focus on cheap Androids this year

But firm might soon give up on hardware altogether

Yahoo Mail suffers major outage due to undersea cable cock-up

And its users are not happy

Netflix to raise prices for UK customers next month

The Ridiculous 6 will not pay for itself

UK cyber cops order activist Lauri Love to hand over encryption keys

'Hacker' accused of keeping encrypted US government files on PCs

Security is the biggest bug of open source, says Linux Foundation CTO

Causal coding costs clean computing

USB group steps in with software solution to rogue USB-C cables

Take THAT, cheap cables. You got served

2016-04-18 09:47 Carly Page www.theinquirer.net

21 Microsoft refreshes Cortana and Edge in latest Windows 10

Mobile updateMICROSOFT HAS RELEASED a new Windows 10Mobile preview build that shows off features comingto Windows phones when the upcoming Redstonerelease of Windows 10 is delivered.

Windows 10 Mobile Preview Build 14322 has beenreleased to testers on the Fast Ring of Microsoft'sWindows Insider programme, and containsimprovements to the Edge browser for phones andthe Cortana personal assistant, as well as the usualbug fixes.

Microsoft has added new ways to create reminders with Cortana by taking a picture ofsomething you want to be reminded about, and also via the Share contract feature in UniversalWindows Platform apps that enables such apps to share data.

The Edge browser now makes it easier to copy and paste information, and has more intelligenthandling of tabs. If the user taps on a link in an app that opens in a new tab in Edge, pressing theback button when finished closes the tab and takes the user back to the app.

Build 14322 shows user interface improvements in Action Centre and Notifications. An app iconis now displayed only once, no matter how many notifications it may have pending, to savespace.

Action Centre is getting a more flexible layout for notifications similar to the way Live Tilesoperate, while it's now possible to manage the notification settings for individual apps andprioritise which app notifications are the most important.

Microsoft has enhanced the phone lock screen, providing the ability to launch the camera appand control music playback without unlocking the device.

The new Preview Build comes about a month after Microsoft finally released Windows 10Mobile as an update for older handsets running a previous version of the Windows Phoneplatform.

Microsoft supports these devices with builds for Mobile from its Development Branch, such asthe latest release, with the exception of the Lumia 635 for the moment.

Build 14322 contains a number of bug fixes for problems such as the screen flickering whilewatching a full screen video, phone calls being dropped if the ringing is interrupted by an SMSnotification, and the Start screen getting stuck when locking and unlocking the phone quickly withAction Centre open.

There are also a small number of known problems with this Preview Build, such as theFacebook Messenger app failing to launch and the camera app occasionally crashing whengoing into the camera roll. µ

2016-04-18 08:55 Daniel Robinson www.theinquirer.net

22 How to repair a broken gimbal mounting plate on a DJI

Phantom 3DJI designed the plastic gimbal mounting plate to break in the event of an impact rather than thearms of the gimbal itself. If you're lucky enough to have only damaged the plastic plate, here's

how to replace it.

We've got a Phantom 3 Standard here, but youcan also use this guide for a P3 Advanced orPro, reviewed. The process it similar on thePhantom 2 as well.

The part you need is DJI Phantom 3 StandardCamera Vibration Board - Part No.83 , whichcosts around £7 and comes with replacementscrews.

If you have a P3 Advanced or Pro the part is No. 39 as it's slightly different. You should findsome spare anti-drop pins and rubber gimbal mounts in your Phantom box.

The first job is to clear a work area and get some tools: a small Philips screwdriver, a smallflatblade and a 2mm Allen key. You'll also need some wire cutters or strong scissors to cutthrough the anti-drop pins. Ideally you should use a plastic spudger to remove the antennaewires. but a fingernail or screwdriver will do.

Remove the props and lay your Phantom upside down. Cut through the anti-drop pins as thesecannot be removed and reused. You will damage the white rubber suspension pieces, but thereshould be spares in your original Phantom box.

Use a small flatblade to gently lever out the main ribbon cable connector. Don't force it. It mayhave even become disconnected in the crash.

If any wires popped out of the connector, it should be possible to push them back in. If they allcame out, reinsert them in order (making sure the ribbon cable is flat) starting from the left-handside of the connector when viewed from the front of the Phantom. On a P3 Standard, there willbe two spare holes on the right-hand side.

The remaining two wires are for the 5.8GHz video transmission system. Unscrew the two screwsholding each of the plastic covers in place and keep them somewhere safe, as they're easy tolose.

Take a photo for reference so you know which wire connects to which socket.

Using a plastic spudger or a fingernail, carefully lift up each of the cables to disconnect it from itsconnector. Do not force these as you are liable to break the connector off the circuit board.

Now the gimbal can be removed completely.

Unscrew the four Allen bolts and carefully feed the wires through the hole in the plate.

Before you screw on the new plate, fit the anti-shake rubber grommets to it. Slide one anti-droppin into the top-left hole as it's impossible to fit this on the P3 Standard once the mounting plateis screwed down.

Again, carefully feed the three wires through the hole in the mounting plate and screw in the fourAllen bolts. It should look like this.

Now you can carefully reconnect the wires to the gimbal and refit the two plastic covers.

With the repair complete, test out the gimbal and make sure your camera is working asexpected.

2016-04-18 08:30 Jim Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

23

23 The half-price flagship from Xiaomi looks every bit apremium smartphone - Xiaomi Mi 5 in pictures

For more information on the Xiaomi Mi 5 seeHow to buy the Xiaomi Mi 5 in the UK and XiaomiMi 5 review.

For more information on the Xiaomi Mi 5 seeHow to buy the Xiaomi Mi 5 in the UK and XiaomiMi 5 review .

For more information on the Xiaomi Mi 5 seeHow to buy the Xiaomi Mi 5 in the UK and XiaomiMi 5 review .

2016-04-18 08:00 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

24 Is the patient the cure to AI healthcare ills?

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)works best on large volumes of data. One wouldthink that with all its complexity and itsmountainous volumes of data, the medicalindustry would be the perfect place for AI to be adisruptive force.

In 2014, the U. S. Government AccountabilityOffice reported $77.4 billion in improperpayments of Medicare and Medicaid collectively.These payments, that were made in an incorrectamount or should not have been made at all, arecontributing to excessive health care costs.

Which brings to light the real issue within the medical industry, that there is a silo of informationnot being shared between the providers and the payers. What incentives are there in place foreach of these parties to work together? Competition is focused on the wrong things. Providersare maximizing the number of procedures, whether they are medically necessary or not.Likewise, payers are insisting on lower reimbursements with no consideration of the impact onthe quality of care.

This issue is one of the main goals of President Obama’s Patient Protection and AffordableCare Act, to move from a fee-for-service model to a value based model. Providers under thefee-for-service model are paid based on service rendered with no real incentives to affect theoutcome of the patient. The value based model addresses this issue by incentivizing providersto cure the patient more effectively through bonuses

The Boston Consulting Group in its white paper “Competing on Outcomes Winning Strategiesfor Value-Based Health Care” articulates the point that “transparency of patient results can alignincentives so that payers, providers, suppliers, and patients all work towards the same goal.”

Having transparency of patient outcomes is a monumental step in providing AI with the rightdata. The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) is a non-profitorganization founded by the Boston Consulting Group, Michael Porter’s Institute for Strategy andCompetitiveness at Harvard Business School, and the Karolinska Institutet with the purpose oftransforming the health care systems worldwide by measuring and reporting patient outcomes ina standardized way.

Additionally, the U. S. Department of Health & Human Services Agency for Healthcare Researchand Quality (AHRQ) has created an Outcome Measures Framework (OMF). The framework is to

serve as a conceptual model for developing standard outcome measures for evaluating thesafety, effectiveness, or quality of medical treatments.

Having comprehensive patient outcomes is critical for building A. I systems that provide value atall levels of the health care ecosystem. Pooling data outcomes at a national or international levelwill allow for identifying fraud, waste and abuse against such standards.

Collecting patient-reported outcomes, however, can be challenging. Capturing certain outcomesdirectly after a procedure is relatively straightforward, but following a patient over time to trackthe evolution of his or her condition can be far more difficult.

Application developers should become ICHOM certified to assure data compliance with ICHOMGlobal Health Outcomes Benchmarking (GLOBE) program. The GLOBE program will create acentral place where data, collected in accordance with the ICHOM standard sets, are securelycompiled and stored. The GLOBE program will begin in Q2 of 2016.

AI solutions will benefit from having access to the best data and information. The greatestpossible competitive advantages stem from having knowledge of customers that yourcompetitors lack. Companies can’t be competitive if they can’t stay ahead of the disruptiveforces that are changing customer experience, which is changing customer expectations.

2016-04-18 04:02 Mitch De www.itnews.com

25 4 IT leaders share the mobile apps they use every day

Smartphones have become more than anyonecould have imagined. We use them as acommunication device, to pull analytics reports,to connect with colleagues on social media, andeven to help monitor core IT services. Yet, it canbe hard to know which apps are the mostvaluable to keep around or rely on during a hecticschedule.

To give you some ideas, CIO.com asked severalCIOs which apps they use each day, the onesthey rely on the most as part of their routine.Some of the apps they use are surprising (e.g.,games to pass the time in a meeting) and some are more for personal use.

Schick says this is the defacto app for collaborative messaging at Skytap, although he saysthere are a few “stubborn” users who still send SMS texts (and he obliges them).

Schick said LinkedIn is a big part of his job. “As a tech person, it took me a few decades torealize that people and relationships make the world go around,” he says.

This note-taking app is the one Schick uses on his laptop to take notes, but on his phone, hereviews the notes or reference some data points in a “lean back” way.

You never know if you end up at a meeting that is going to take longer than expected and mightnot apply to you, he says, which is where this popular game comes in handy.

Skype is his go-to app for working with technical folks. “I maintain global relationships withmultiple technical architects, evangelists and visionaries whom I have met over the years. Likemyself, I’ve found that many technical architect and visionaries were very early adopters ofSkype, and, in fact prefer to maintain contact in this fashion versus more “social” messagingplatforms,” he says.

Not a big surprise that Wagner uses an app for his own services. This data analytics app, whichruns on Tableau, allows him to keep tabs on internal systems and applications.

Wagner says he uses LinkedIn to keep tabs on technologists and to vet qualified personnel. Hesays it doesn't have the high signal to noise ratio of other social media platforms.

Almost every IT leader who shared their app picks mentioned at least one game. “This appallows me to catalyze creative problem solving in my professional life,” says Wagner. It’s alsogreat for ‘down time’ when you want to exercise your mental muscles.”

This is the go-to app Sprang and his team use for password management. He uses it for theirmultiple portals for secure browsing and to create and store strong passwords.

A bit surprising, this app is an integral part of Sprang’s day-to-day duties (he is the liaison fortechnical marketing activities as well). The app lets him check social media campaigns.

This unique app provides a quick glimpse into any packages he’s ordered and allows him tosee reports on shipping activity and track incoming packages.

There are many options when it comes to checking Twitter activity, but this app has somepowerful syncing capabilities to make sure you are seeing the latest posts and feeds.

As a personal app, Sprang uses Classdojo to communicate with teachers and to view anydisciplinary issues or positive feedback from the classroom for his kids.

Instead of Dropbox, Box.net or a host of competing products, Texas A&M uses this app due tothe simple user interface and geo-fencing features.

As most IT leaders can attest, it is critical to use a password manager at all levels of IT. “It's still abit clumsy on smartphone platforms, but it is the best when managing passwords and access tovarious platforms where you need solid security,” says Miller.

Miller says he uses this app for multi-factor authentication to secure Web apps. “It works so wellthat I'm even rolling it out on development teams for next-generation business applications thatuse live data for testing the applications,” he says.

For personal use, MIller relies on this Netgear home security app to keep an eye on his housewhen he isn’t home. It works with interior and exterior cameras.

2016-04-18 03:48 John Brandon www.itworld.com

26 EU investigating Google’s contracts with phone makers,

operatorsThe European Commission is still investigatingwhether Google’s Android operating system andAmazon’s contracts with e-book publishers havebroken antitrust rules, its CompetitionCommissioner said Monday in Amsterdam.

Margrethe Vestager’s remarks come amidreports that the European Commission couldformally press charges in the form of a "statementof objections "against Google as early as thisweek. Her speech suggests that formal chargesinto both Google’s Android operating system andAmazon could still take some time.

“Of course, our investigations into Google and Amazon are still going on ,” Vestager said in thetext of a speech set to be delivered Monday at a conference held by the Dutch competitionauthority. “So I can't yet say if either of them has broken the rules.”

The European Commission is looking closely at Google’s contracts with phone makers and

operators which use the mobile Android operating system. The Commission began itsinvestigation into Android in April last year on the same day it announced formal chargesagainst Google in an investigation that its Internet search in Europe favored its own comparisonshopping product.

The Commission said it was investigating Google of abusing its dominant position by, amongother things, requiring device manufacturers to pre-install its own services and applications withthe open-source Android operating system. In Vestager's speech the focus was on preloadedapps and services.

“We need to be sure that big companies don't try to protect themselves by holding backinnovation,” Vestager said.

While the EU antitrust chief expects that a smartphone should be ready to go when removedfrom the box, with its own basic apps such as a search engine app pre-installed by the vendor ornetwork operator, her concern is that, by requiring phone makers and operators to preload a setof Google apps, rather than letting them decide for themselves which apps to include, "Googlemight have cut off one of the main ways that new apps can reach customers. "

Android has an over 66 percent share of the European mobile device market in March,according to StatCounter.

If found guilty, Google may have to pay up to 10 percent of its annual worldwide revenue in fines,which could go to as high as US$7.5 billion on its last year revenue of close to $75 billion.

"Anyone can use Android, with or without Google applications," said a Google spokeswoman inresponse to Vestager's speech. "Hardware manufacturers and carriers can decide how to useAndroid and consumers have the last word about which apps they want to use on their devices.We continue to discuss this with the European Commission. "

In June last year, the European Commission also started an investigation into Amazon.com'scontracts with e-book publishers that require them to inform the online retailer if they offer abetter or even a different deal to its competitors. Publishers have to offer "at least as good"terms to Amazon, Vestager said.

“That could discourage e-book sellers from coming up with innovative business models thatcould compete with Amazon,” Vestager said. “Because they know that any deal they strike withpublishers will immediately be offered to Amazon as well.”

Amazon could not be immediately reached for comment.

2016-04-18 03:45 John Ribeiro www.itnews.com

27 Send in the Microsoft Surface clones

Several new Windows 10 tablet computers haveeither been released, or announced to bereleased soon, that copy the industrial design ofMicrosoft’s Surface Pro 3 and Pro 4. Like theSurface tablets, most of these clones have akickstand that you flip out to prop them up on aflat surface; and they use a keyboard which canfold over onto the tablet’s display to protect it.While the Surface Pro 4 starts at $899 and cancost as much as $2,699, these clones aregenerally less expensive.

The Aspire Switch Alpha’s kickstand is a frame,not a flap. The keyboard for this tablet is a cloneof the Surface line’s Type Cover, attaching to the

tablet with magnets that raise its elevation to make it more comfortable for typing. This Surfacecopy has a 12-inch display, though at press time we didn’t know what its pixel resolution andother details such as pricing will be. (Acer plans to officially make an announcement of its newproduct lineup on April 21.) It runs a 6th generation Intel Core Skylake processor, and includesUSB 3.0 and USB Type-C ports.

HP’s Elite x2 1012 has a frame design kickstand with a keyboard that is a copy of the Surfaceline’s Type Cover in form and function. The unfortunate thing about this Surface lookalike is thatits 12-inch display has a resolution of 1920 x 1280 pixels. The Surface Pro 3 also has a 12-inchdisplay, but its resolution is slightly higher at 2160 x 1440. On the plus side, the display workswith Wacom-compatible digital pens. The Elite x2 1012 is marketed as a business-classdevice: Starting at $900, it uses enterprise-level security measures, Windows 10 Pro, and isdesigned to be easy to service. You can choose an Intel Core m3, m5 or m7 processor, and4GB RAM or 8GB RAM. See it on Amazon

Samsung’s entry in this category actually looks more like it was modeled after the iPad Pro thanthe Surface – except that it runs Windows 10. It boasts being really thin at 6.3 mm. Its 12-inchdisplay (which has a 2160 x 1440 resolution) uses Super AMOLED technology. The TabPro Sruns an Intel Core M processor and uses 4GB RAM at a starting price of $899. It comes withkeyboard included. See it on Amazon.

Like the Surface Type Cover, the keyboard for the Miix 700 sticks to its respective tablet withmagnets in such a way that it is angled upward. With a 12-inch screen that has 2160 x 1440pixels, and starting at $750 for the lowest spec model (which runs an Intel Core m3 with 4GBRAM), the Miix 700 falls somewhere between the Surface 3 and Surface Pro 4. The Miix 700could serve as a replacement for the Surface Pro 3, since the two share the same display sizeand pixel resolution. See it on Amazon.

With a starting price at $749, this “for business use” tablet has a 10.8-inch display with a 1920 x1080 resolution. It comes with an Intel Core m3 processor and 4GB RAM. For more money, youcan configure a model to have a Core m5 processor and 8GB RAM. Dell sells two kinds ofkeyboards to use with this tablet. The Slim Keyboard props the tablet up with a kickstand (thetablet itself doesn’t have a built-in kickstand); the other keyboard option is heavier, and so it canprop the tablet without a kickstand.

This isn’t just the larger-screen cousin of the Latitude 11, sporting a 12.5-inch display, but it hasa sleeker design. The display resolution of this tablet’s starting price model ($1,049) is 1920 x1080, but it can be 3840 x 2160 if you’re willing to pay more for more pixels, a resolution that’sfar higher than the Surface Pro 4’s (2736 x 1824). You can choose for this tablet to run an IntelCore m3 or up to an m7 processor. Like the Latitude 11, there are two kinds of keyboards forthe Latitude 12: a slim model that props the tablet up with a kickstand, and a heavier one thatcan prop the tablet on its own.

Like Samsung’s Galaxy TabPro S, the MateBook looks more like it’s “borrowing” from thedesign of the iPad Pro than the Surface 3 or 4. In fact, the MateBook also shares many of thesame specs as the TabPro S: a 12-inch display with 2160 x 1440 resolution, an Intel Core Mprocessor, and 4GB RAM. It’s slightly thicker than the TabPro S at 6.9 mm, and its protectivekeyboard cover is sold separately. Introduced at Mobile World Congress, a specific releasedate in the U. S., as well as pricing details, have not been announced.

This second Surface clone by HP looks similar to the Elite x2 1012 -- it also has a 12-inchdisplay with a 1920 x 1280 pixel resolution, and is compatible with Wacom digital pens -- but isgeared for the non-business user. So it doesn’t include enterprise security, isn’t as easy to takeapart to fix, and uses a slower Intel processor. But it comes with Intel RealSense 3D cameratechnology, which can scan objects in three dimensions. Compared to the Elite x2, the Spectre2 starts at a lower price of $800 with the same configuration options of an Intel Core m3, m5, orm7 processor and 4GB RAM or 8GB RAM. See it on Amazon.

The gimmick with Lenovo’s second Surface clone is that you can attach one of three modules to

give it more hardware features: A 3D-scanning camera, a Pico projector, or a “productivity”module that adds more battery power and ports (HDMI and USB 3.0). The tablet itself runs anIntel Core M processor and can come with up to 16GB RAM. Its 12-inch IPS display has a 2160x 1440 pixel resolution. Its keyboard can be propped up into two raised angles, and this tabletuses USB Type-C for charging. Launched officially at a press event in Dubai earlier this month,pricing and release date in the U. S. hasn’t been announced yet.

This Windows 10 tablet features a frame design kickstand. The Arrows Tab has a 12.5-inchdisplay with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, an Intel Core i5 processor, and comes with akeyboard and digital pen. Released in Japan in March, it remains to be seen whether it will showup in other countries.

2016-04-18 03:41 Howard Wen www.networkworld.com

28 How a giant like GE found home in the cloud

For Jim Fowler, CIO of General Electric, there’s asimple reason he is marching the companytoward the cloud: “I’m not going to sell anotheraircraft engine because I run a global computefactory very well; I’m not going to sell anotherlocomotive because I figured out how to engineerthe user experience really well for my developers;I’m not going to sell an oil and gas pump becauseI’ve figured out how to do self-service,” he said atlast year's Amazon Web Service’s re:Inventconference. “That’s AWS’s differentiator. That'swhat they do well.”

GE, the 123-year-old staple of the global industrial sector, is going all in on the cloud. Thecompany plans to migrate 9,000 applications to public IaaS over the next three years. It isreducing its data centers from more than 30 to the single digits.

But for a company with $117 billion in annual revenue; tens of thousands of apps; hundreds ofthousands of servers; petabytes of storage and networks in hundreds of countries around theworld, migrating to the cloud isn’t as easy as lifting and shifting.

Chris Drumgoole, CTO of IT, General Electric

Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of GE Information Technology Chris Drumgoolesays it’s been a complicated process with many bumps along the way. And Drumgoole saysthere’s more that vendors, regulators and members of the open source community could do tohelp ease this process for others.

GE is a multi-billion dollar buyer of IT services, so what their executives say has sway in themarket. But teaming up with other customers only amplifies that voice. That’s why Drumgoolehas joined the Open Networking User Group and specifically ONUG’s recently formed HybridCloud Working Group. The group is preparing a list of recommendations that it will take toleading cloud and technology vendors. Drumgoole is hoping that aggregating concerns fromcustomers across different industries will help alleviate some of the leading issues thatcompanies moving to the cloud are facing.

“What we’re using to drive IT here is simplicity,” Drumgoole says. But fundamentally, many ITvendors thrive on complexity and helping customers manage it. “We’ve taken a step back andsaid instead of trying to manage the complex environment better, why don’t we simplify theenvironment?”

GE isn’t alone in advocating for a simpler world of IT. Facebook three years ago founded theOpen Compute Project , which gives big users a way to assemble their own customized

hardware instead of buying into proprietary hardware stacks. “The money is following simplicity,”Drumgoole says. “We don’t want to buy complexity we don’t need.”

Just because GE’s executive team made a strategic decision to embrace the cloud years agodoesn’t mean that its regulators, internal operators, partners and customers have been onboard.

Some of GE’s core industries – energy, health care and finance – are heavily regulated byprotocols that were written for a different era. “They assume the construct of a client-serverworld,” Drumgoole says. “The regulations are written in a way that assumes there’s a server, ahypervisor and a physical data center that you control. Fundamentally, those don’t apply in thecloud world.”

The whole point of the public cloud is that vendors – like AWS - provide those components as aservice to customers. “The constructs of the regulations haven’t taken into consideration theadvances in technology,” he adds. Through the ONUG working group, Drumgoole is hoping asingle, more modern nomenclature across various providers that regulators can use could bedeveloped for the next generation of policies.

Embracing a cloud-first mentality across the organization required adjustments internally, too.Drumgoole arrived at GE two years ago to find the traditional angst between softwaredevelopers and infrastructure operators. Devs can’t get the infrastructure they need; ops folksdon’t know what the software teams need. Cloud seemed like the natural answer to thisproblem.

GE invested in building tools, creating systems and processes for managing it and ensuringregulatory compliance. When GE’s IT team introduced the cloud services, some of thosesoftware developers and ops teams didn’t want to use it. “Some of the legacy, single-technologydevelopers struggled with deploying and moving apps when we took away the support envelopeof a traditional infrastructure team,” he says, adding that the challenge has largely beenovercome, though it required a shift in mindset.

So on the one hand, GE wants to enable developers to work as quickly as possible creating newapplications and not being held back by needing infrastructure. At the same time, that has to bedone in a sanctioned way that complies with regulations and customer priorities. Developerscan’t be running up unnecessarily large bills for IaaS public cloud services, or being exposingsensitive data without proper protections.

Drumgoole says there aren’t good tools in the market for this. Many cloud managementplatforms amount to putting up gates and checks, with people checking those processes andother people checking the checkers’ work, creating audit logs that basically amount tooverwhelming data dumps. “That wasn’t going to work,” Drumgoole says.

So what did GE do? It made its own tools called the Bot Army. It’s a series of small softwarecomponents developed internally that automatically enforce behaviors behind the scenes. TheReaper Bot is one, it searches cloud environments for customer, financial or other sensitive dataand takes immediate actions of shutting down a cloud service or quarantine the data or a user.

Drumgoole says the Bots work, but he’s disappointed the market doesn’t have better proprietaryor open source tools to manage these issues.

Some people may assume that going to the cloud is a substantial cost savings. But Drumgoolesays it’s not significantly less expensive to use the cloud for a company the size of GE. “And ifyou do it wrong, the cloud can be a lot more expensive,” he says.

GE has found a way to save up to 35% or more by running in the cloud though. The key is thatit’s not just infrastructure savings. Drumgoole says users can only achieve those savings byfundamentally changing the process involved in managing infrastructure and applications.“Instead of 10 people involved in a deployment cycle, it’s one, with a Reaper Box making surethey’re doing it right,” he says. “When you take out all of that outsourced contract labor, that’s

where the real savings come in.”

Instead of having to build the Bot Army, Drumgoole says he would have loved to have been ableto use an open source project, backed by a major technology vendor, that manages thoseissues.

There are other things vendors could be doing better too. Software makers are taking too longto evolve their platforms to a true SaaS model, he says. Just hosting the application andcharging for it monthly does not make it a true cloud app, Drumgoole contends.

On the IaaS public cloud side, Drumgoole still believes AWS is a more feature-rich platformcompared to any other in the market, but Microsoft has been investing heavily in Azure, makingthe gap between the two “smaller rather than bigger.”

Still, given GE’s international presence, Drumgoole says he’d like to see another non U. S.-based cloud provider of significant scale in the market to satisfy customers, particularly those inforeign countries, who may not be comfortable with the company’s cloud provider being subjectto U. S. law.

If there’s one thing Drumgoole has learned, it’s that when it comes to the cloud, it pays to go allin. “If you want to stick your toe in the water, then you’re probably going to be disappointed,” hesays. “If we weren’t all in, we wouldn’t get the real benefit of the cloud.” Now, through ONUG,Drumgoole is hoping to make this process easier for others to decide to go all in too.

2016-04-18 03:00 Brandon Butler www.itnews.com

29 Why even Google can't connect Cuba

When President Obama said in Havana lastmonth that Google would be working to improveInternet access in Cuba , I wondered whatGoogle might do in Cuba that other companiescould not.

Today, Cuba is an Internet desert where only 5%of trusted elites are allowed to have (slow dial-up)Internet connections at home, and a paltry400,000 people access the Internet throughsidewalk Wi-Fi hotspots. These hotspots haveexisted for only a year or so. Also, some 2.5million Cubans have government-created emailaccounts, but no Web access.

I spent a month in Cuba until last week, and I was there when the president spoke. I'm here toreport that those government Wi-Fi hotspots are rare, slow and expensive. While in Cuba, mywife, son and I spent about $300 on Wi-Fi. In a country where the average wage ranges from$15 to $30 per month, connecting is a massive financial burden available only to a lucky minoritywith private businesses or generous relatives in Miami.

Google's equipment exists in just one building at Havana's Museo Orgánico Romerillo. ButGoogle branding is everywhere, including this snack bar on the other side of the museumcompound.

And this is why I think the possibilities of what Google might accomplish in Cuba aremisunderstood.

It's not as if Cuba would have ubiquitous, affordable and fast Internet access if it just had themoney or expertise to make it happen. The problem is that Cuba is a totalitarian Communistdictatorship.

The outrageous price charged for Wi-Fi in Cuba can't possibly reflect the cost of providing theservice. The price is really a way to restrict greater freedom of information to those who benefitfrom the Cuban system.

The strange Wi-Fi card system is also a tool of political control. In order to buy a card, you haveto show your ID, and your information is entered into the system. Everything done online using aspecific Wi-Fi card is associated with a specific person.

Google is connected to the global Internet through satellite networks. Cuba is connected to theInternet by an undersea fiber-optic cable that runs between the island and Venezuela. The cablewas completed in 2011 , and it existed as a "darknet" connection for two years before suddenlygoing online in 2013.

So here's the problem with Google as the solution: The Cuban government uses high prices anddraconian laws to prevent the majority of Cubans from having any access to the Internet at all.The government actively prevents access as a matter of policy. It's not a technical problem. It's apolitical one.

In other words, Cuba doesn't need Google to provide hotspots. If the Cuban government allowedhotspots, Cubans would provide them.

While I was visiting Cuba, a permanent "exhibit" called Google+Kcho. MOR was on display atan art and cultural center in Havana that also promotes technology. Kcho (pronounced "KAW-cho") is the nickname of a brilliant, enterprising, prolific and self-promoting Cuban mixed-mediaartist named Alexis Leiva Machado. Kcho lives at the center, which he deliberately built in thetraditionally poor Havana neighborhood of Romerillo, where he grew up. The M-O-R at the endof the exhibit's name are the initials of the walled, multibuilding compound: Museo OrgánicoRomerillo.

The exhibit is an astonishing oddity to Cubans who have never traveled abroad, but it's packedwith oldish, cheap, everyday Google gear: 20 Chromebooks, Google Cardboard gogglespowered by Nexus phones -- and something that has never, ever existed anywhere in Cuba: freeWi-Fi.

The free Wi-Fi is the same slow, unreliable connection that a minority of Cubans elsewhere getto enjoy, minus the cost and the cards. The Chromebooks, on the other hand, offer a magicGoogle connection some 70 times faster than regular Cuban Wi-Fi. Only 20 people at a timecan enjoy the fast-connection Chromebooks, and each for just one hour at a time. When I wasthere, every Chromebook was in use, and each user's focus on the screen was total, as you canimagine.

The "exhibit" also had Google Cardboard viewers. (I had read the center has 100 of them, but Isaw only about a dozen.) To use them, you ask a guy working there, and he grabs a Nexusphone from a drawer and walks you through the process of launching the Cardboard app andstarting it. Each Cardboard viewer has preloaded content -- in my case I enjoyed a Photosphereof Tokyo.

During the half hour I spent in the Google+Kcho. MOR space, nobody else tried GoogleCardboard. And that makes sense. With no ability to create or explore Carboard content, it's justa parlor trick to be enjoyed for a minute or two. I got the feeling that all the people there had"been there, done that" with Cardboard and resumed their obsession with Internet connectivity.

It was, however, obvious that the two people helping us were used to minds being completelyblown by the Google Cardboard and Chromebook experiences. I didn't have the heart tomention that I've owned several pairs of Cardboard for two years and Chromebooks for threeyears.

The Google+Kcho. MOR installation is called an "exhibit," but it's not. In reality, it's a co-marketing, co-branding effort.

The Google+Kcho. MOR space in Havana has books and art, but the main draw is the fastestInternet in Cuba, featuring Google Chromebooks.

For the Kcho "brand," it's a "gateway drug" to lure Cuba's youth to the museum and get themexcited about art, culture and the world of Kcho. Along with a cheap snack bar, the free Wi-Fiand the hour a day on the fastest laptops in Cuba successfully bring hundreds of Cuban kids tothe center each day, and the Google+Kcho. MOR is the main event.

For Google, it's a massive branding effort. (Google declined to comment for this story.)

Nobody was willing to talk about it, but it's clear that Google is spreading some cash aroundhere. There's so much Google branding on everything in and on the Google+Kcho. MORbuilding, it looks like it could be at the Googleplex itself.

Even elsewhere in the compound, the Google logo is everywhere. It's in several outdoor spotswhere the free Wi-Fi is used, including all over the snack bar that serves coffee and soda.

If you're reading this, you probably live in a country awash in marketing, co-marketing andbranding on every surface. But the ubiquity of Google branding at the entire Museo OrgánicoRomerillo compound may be unique in Cuba. This is a country without a single Coca-Cola signor billboard, zero ads anywhere for anything (other than political propaganda for the revolutionand its leaders and ideals).

During the month I spent in in Cuba, I saw exactly six major public consumer branding units, andall of them were at the Museo Orgánico Romerillo, and all of them were about Google (andKcho). That makes Google by far the most heavily branded and marketed company in Cuba -- infact, the only one.

As far as I can tell, Google is getting away with it only because Kcho is massively favored by theCastro regime and the marketing is all presented as "art" or in the promotion of art.

Google appears to have begun its entry into Cuba in June 2014, when its executive chairman,Eric Schmidt, visited Cuba after slamming the U. S. embargo in a Google+ post. The visit wasnot reported in Cuba at the time.

Schmidt was accompanied on his trip by Brett Perlmutter, who was later appointed Cuba leadfor Alphabet, Google's parent company, as part of the Jigsaw organization, a "think tank" thatactually initiates programs for making the world a better place, and was formerly known as"Google Ideas. "

In January 2015, Perlmutter, as well as Jigsaw's deputy director, Scott Carpenter, toured Cubatogether.

One of their goals on that trip was to visit computer science students at the University ofInformation Science, as well as young Cuban Internet users. Another goal, it's easy to guess,was to meet with cultural figures like Kcho, and also key figures in the Cuban government.

Put another way, Google has been making friends and laying the groundwork for a future whenthe Cuban government allows greater and better Internet access.

The author discusses the popularity of Google Cardboard with Cubans at the Museo OrgánicoRomerillo.

No, Google isn't laying fiber, launching balloons or installing equipment all over Cuba. It's notplanning to sprinkle fast, free, magic Google Wi-Fi all over the island.

The best Google can do for now is make friends and influence people.

Cuba won't join the rest of the world in ubiquitous Internet access until the Cuban governmenteither becomes less repressive, or falls out of power. When that happens, Google, as thedominant and best-connected tech brand, will be ready.

Until then, no amount of magic Google pixie dust can help the Cuban people.

2016-04-18 03:00 Mike Elgan www.computerworld.com

30 The pain of training your replacement

At New York Life, IT employees are trainingoverseas workers to do their jobs. It's a difficulttask that takes an emotional toll, and there areodd rules and processes to follow.

The training starts with sessions over the Webwith the offshore contractors. Eventually, the ITemployees expect to train the contractors in-person.

One IT employee, who is training replacementcontractors, said she has been told bymanagement not to ask the contract workers any

questions. Even simple queries, like, "Did you have a chance to read this document? " or, "Areyou familiar with this technology? " to the contract workers, from India-based Tata ConsultancyServices, are not allowed.

"We should have the understanding that [the offshore contractors] have all the skill sets," saidthis IT employee, whose name cannot be disclosed because of the risk to her job. Askingquestions is "like insulting the process. "

There's also a regular survey process that seems like a Catch 22 system. As the replacementtraining moves along, the IT workers have to rate the offshore contractors on a scale of one tofive, with five being the highest. If the contractor receives the highest score, the thinking amongthe employees is it may accelerate their replacement. If the contractor gets a low score, the ITemployee may be blamed for providing poor training, which may also accelerate job loss.

"The employees are playing this game, playing defense, trying to figure out what to do," shesaid.

The IT employees also must be pleasant on the calls with contractors, not just matter-of-fact, butpleasant. The process is anything but that. As this IT employee, a computer science graduate,grappled with the reality of it, she said, "I break down. It's so hurtful. "

Meanwhile, the offshore contractor on the calls is beginning to use possessive pronouns, saying"our" or "my" to show he is taking ownership of her job. "It's bad for my heart when I hear that,"she said.

There was a time when working in IT was a good job, she said. Back then, there was promise,and computer science was a worthwhile major.

"I've been telling high school students and college students that you should not major in computerscience anymore," she said. IT work has "turned into a factory job. "

Two female employees were interviewed at the company and both are training theirreplacements. The interviews were arranged by Sara Blackwell, a Florida attorney who isrepresenting Disney IT workers who were also replaced by offshore workers.

What New York Life is doing is no different than what goes on at many other companies. Theemployer offers a severance package to laid-off workers contingent on a successful "knowledgetransfer. "

In New York Life's case, the severance pay for the laid-off IT workers was described as threeweeks' salary for the first year of employment, and two weeks for each year afterward, with

reports of bonuses above that amount, according to employees. The company said it is offering"a generous severance package," and that employees are given 90 days' notice, and oftenmore. There's a lump sum benefit, and for workers 50 and over, an early retirement benefit. Thecompany's retirement benefit normally begins at 55.

New York Life employees were told in 2014 that the IT department was undergoing a transition.Last December, IT employees were informed specifically which technologies would beoutsourced. It was a long list, according to a tape recording of the announcement made byanother employee. The workers weren't told how many of them would lose their jobs, but theestimates they offer is higher than the company's report.

A New York Life spokesman said the company began last year with about 1,400 IT employees.By the end of the transition process in 2018, it expects that number to decline to about 1,000, including departures and new hires.

"So to be clear, we will be adding hundreds more New York Life employees with cutting-edgeskills in analytics and big data, and complementing internal hiring with partners staffed forcertain functions," said William Werfelman, a company spokesman.

New York Life is "a thriving 171-year-old life insurance company, not a technology company," hesaid.

"While we would prefer to control all of our technology capabilities in house and on-shore, weare not going to distinguish ourselves in technology by staying wedded to that concept,"Werfelman said. "Even the expertise required to maintain our legacy systems has movedoffshore," he said.

“In order to maintain our position as a leader in our industry, we need to materially upgrade ourcapabilities,” Werfelman said.

The company knows that "there will be pain along the way," Werfelman said, adding that it alsoknows that "parts of our business can now be performed by others who have made a specialtyof certain capabilities. " The contractors are also bringing in proprietary technology skills theydon't have, he said.

Werfelman said throughout this process, New York Life, which employs 9,000 and also has12,000 agents in the U. S., will continue hiring hundreds of employees.

"This is an important point, because to maintain our position as a vibrant and growing company,we must make decisions that allow the majority of our employees to remain active and thriving inour company," he said.

Werfelman said the company is treating the laid-off employees "with great respect. " Some willbe hired by the contractor firm, and "a few have been offered other jobs" at the company. Theycan also apply for other openings at the firm, he said.

The technologies put "under scope," or under consideration for outsourcing, include somenetworking functions, Windows, storage, disaster recovery, databases, VMware, Citrix andmessaging. The belief among employees is that the majority of the work is being shifted tocontractors.

The fate of women in the IT workplace is a public policy issue. Less than 15% of the bachelor'sdegrees awarded in 2014 in computer science and computer engineering went to women,according to the Computing Research Association's annual survey of enrollments at Ph. D-granting institutions.

President Obama has spoken about the need to increase women in STEM fields, but the WhiteHouse has put a special emphasis on computer science.

In January, the Obama administration announced a $4 billion computer science traininginitiative. The corporate contributors to it included two of the largest IT offshore outsourcing

firms, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. Both are major users of H-1B visa workers. Thatvisa is heavily used by offshore firms.

A second IT employee, who is also training Tata employees, said she had written to hersenators and members of Congress about what was going on. "I didn't hear anything," she said.

"It's very devastating to see your friends saying good-bye. It's very devastating to see yourfriends crying. It's devastating to have to talk to [the contractors] -- to give them your job," thisworker said.

For women, the experience of training offshore contractors may be particularly difficult.

Karen Panetta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts University, hastestified in Congress on behalf of IEEE-USA on the impact of the H-1B program on women.

The vast majority "of imported STEM workers" are men, and they "do not treat U. S. women well,or any other woman in the workplace well, because they come from cultures where women arenot treated as equals," Panetta said.

"We are importing bad work cultures along with this cheaper labor. U. S. women will walk off thejob rather than be treated like dirt," Panetta said.

"This is just another added barrier that helps justify to girls another reason why STEM careersare not for them. It hurts," she said.

2016-04-18 03:00 Patrick Thibodeau www.computerworld.com

31 Encryption laws should think global, not local

Setting universal standards has never been easy.Over the centuries, the world hasn’t agreed onmuch of anything, from power outlets to politics.We must manufacture cars that have both left-hand and right-hand drive. Much of the world uses220-volt power systems, but North America runs110. Let’s not even get started on imperial versusmetric measurements.

One common element to these disparities: Theygenerally stem from a time when globalcommunication was either nonexistent or wascharacterized by latency measured in years.Solutions were developed in one area and became standards well before the locals knew ofsimilar efforts in distant lands.

They also generally come from a time when standards were set ad hoc, not by consciousthought. A good and omnipresent example of this would be the QWERTY keyboard.

But that’s no longer the norm. Not only has computing brought us substantially lower-latencycommunication, but we had to develop strong global standards in order for that to be possible.The communications system that allows you to read these words is based on internationalstandards. The only reason you can be anywhere on or off the planet and access this column isdue to the computing world working together for decades to develop, maintain, and adhere tostrong standards.

We may drive on different sides of the road and use wildly different power outlets, but TCP/IP,Ethernet, and Wi-Fi are universal. The idea that different countries or regions would have theirown network standards that were incompatible with those of other countries isn’t viable in theInternet era. Even if attempted, it would eventually be absorbed by the larger technology orsimply die out. See: ARCnet, Token Ring, and IPX.

The fact is, while there may be competition in standards when a technology is in the very earlystages, eventually a single standard is reached and must be accepted, or those who refuse willeventually be abandoned. Even North Korea’s isolated Kwangmyong is built on Internetstandards.

In the physical world, standards are still more geographically bound. Building codes can varyfrom town to town and state to state, for instance. Laws of some territories don’t apply to others.

But the Internet is very different because it crosses geopolitical boundaries. This fundamentaland vital fact is completely missed by legislative bodies that are currently trying to exertgovernmental control over encryption -- or any other area regarding the Internet. The rulesimposed by one government or locality on technologies that underpin the Internet areunenforceable outside of that jurisdiction. Thus, if one government produces laws that alter orconstrict global technology standards, those alterations will be abandoned by the largerstandard, and that government will find connection, communication, and commerce increasinglydifficult if not impossible outside of its silo. It would be a self-imposed embargo.

Imagine if the sky fell in and the comically absurd Burr-Feinstein bill were to pass in the UnitedStates. Beyond all of the massive problems the language of the bill would cause for … well,every digital device ever made and everything that relies on them, it would also wall off theUnited States. Easily crackable encryption is not encryption at all, and the rest of the world wouldroute around this problem by refusing to communicate with systems running code harboringbackdoors mandated by the U. S. government. This means that all international commerce andfinance activities would cease. It would mean the end of the U. S. economy.

A more likely scenario would be that U. S.-based companies simply ignore the law to savethemselves and begin the process of permanently relocating to other countries. Either way, itwould be an enormous price to pay for a few legislators who want laws that let them peek intothe personal lives of their constituents.

The nontechnical response to this might be, “We should develop an international encryptionstandard like the ones that currently run the Internet, but with backdoors.” Of course, while manycountries might desire the ability to decrypt anything they like, they certainly wouldn’t want othercountries to do the same. Besides, an international encryption standard with backdoors wouldbring about the same financial ruin the United States would face from Burr-Feinstein, but on aglobal scale.

We can say it until we’re blue in the face, but strong encryption keeps the world economyfunctioning and keeps us safe, not the opposite. Bills like Burr-Feinstein underscore theprofound technical ignorance that afflicts several world governments. They truly know not whatthey do, which is perhaps scariest of all.

2016-04-18 03:00 Paul Venezia www.infoworld.com

32 5 more timeless lessons of programming 'graybeards'

The HR departments and hiring managers in Silicon Valley have a challenge. They can’t ask anapplicant’s age because their companies have lost brutal discrimination lawsuits over the years.Instead, they develop little tricks like tossing in an oblique reference to “The Brady Bunch”(“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”) and seeing if the candidate gets the joke. Candidates who chuckleare deemed a poor cultural fit and are tossed aside.

Alas, the computer industry has a strange, cultish fascination with new technologies, newparadigms, and of course, new programmers. It’s more fascination than reality because old technever truly dies. Old inventions like the mainframe may stop getting headlines, but they run andrun. As I write this, Dice shows more than five times as many jobs postings for the keyword"Cobol" (522) than "OCaml," "Erlang," and "Haskell" combined (11, 52, and 27, respectively).

The stories of age discrimination are common,as are the rationalizations. Youngerprogrammers’ heads aren’t filled with old ideas,so they learn faster. Whippersnappers are morefocused and diligent. They don’t sufferdistractions, like having families, or at least theirdistractions keep them yoked to their PCs andsmartphones.

Even if these are true -- there’s evidence theyaren’t -- programming geezers have valuablewisdom you can’t absorb simply by watching aTED talk on YouTube or fast-forwarding through a

MOOC. They understand better how computers work because they had to back when computershad front panels with switches. They didn’t have the layers of IDEs, optimizing compilers, andcontinuous integration to save their bacon. If they didn’t build it right from the beginning, itwouldn’t run at all. The young punks won’t know this for years.

Our last story on “ 7 timeless lessons of programming ‘graybeards’ ” generated manyresponses, so we’re back with five more lessons everyone should learn, or relearn, from theirwizened, hardened colleagues.

Most people younger than 50 can’t recognize a statement like mov ah, 09h or cmp eax, ebx.Many probably think that computers naturally demand lots of curly brackets because the majorlanguages use them to delimit blocks of code. Even those who understand that languages likeJava or C must be translated into binary often have little to no experience crafting it.

Many older programmers spent their days writing assembler code, the name given to thehuman-readable version of raw binary machine code. Some could actually convert the assemblycode by hand and turn it into hexadecimal bytes. The very best could then flip the toggle switcheson the front panel to program the computers.

It’s not that writing assembler is great or essential. It’s a long slog filled with repetition and lots ofopportunities to make sloppy mistakes. The compilers have become good enough to recognizecomplex patterns that can be optimized; in fact, some compiler creators like to brag that theycan create better code than humans can.

That may be true, but the advantage of learning even a sliver of assembler is that you understandhow a computer works. The higher-order languages may offer lots of quick shortcuts forstandard operations, such as concatenating strings, but these can be a trap becauseprogrammers start to think that the plus operand (“ + ”) takes the same amount of time whetherit’s adding two integers or concatenating two strings. It doesn’t. One operation takesdramatically longer, and people who understand assembly code and the way the JMP (jump)operation works are going to make the right decision.

Understanding how objects are packed in memory and loaded into the CPU when necessary isa big help in minimizing the copying and overcalculation that can produce slow code. Folks whogrew up on assembler may not remember much about writing x86 code, but they still haveinstincts that tingle when they start to do something inherently slow. The whippersnappers don’thave these instincts, unless they train themselves through experience.

A long time ago, a programmer told me he hated Unix. Why? He started out programmingsingle-user microcomputers like the Altair or the Sol 20 that only ran one block of code at a time.

“A Unix computer will start running something else at any time,” he told me. “You’ll hear the floppydisks start up and you’ll have no idea why.”

This upset him because he was losing a powerful means of understanding what the computer isdoing. No one really knows what’s going on in a modern computer. There are countless layers ofsoftware running on four or eight cores. Viruses and worms can live forever without the user

noticing the lag.

Old programmers still watch for visual and auditory clues that help them understand and debugthe code. They watch the light on the RJ-45 Ethernet jack that flickers when data is flowing. Theylisten to the hard disk and can hear when the disk starts to change tracks, an indication thatsomething is either reading or writing to the disk. The really good ones can tell the differencebetween the paging that happens when memory is full and the sustained reading and writingthat’s part of indexing.

The value of these clues are fading as the hard disks are replaced with solid-state drives andmore and more data move wirelessly instead of through routers with blinking lights. But as longas the smartphones have little indicators that show when data is flowing, there will be value insleuth skills like these.

In the good old days, the programmers would pack as many as eight different Boolean valuesinto one byte. They flipped the individual bits because they didn’t want to waste any of them.

The modern data structures are incredibly wasteful. XML is filled with tags with long names, andeach has a matching closing tag with an extra slash. It’s not uncommon to see modern XML filesthat are more than 90 percent fluff added to meet strict parsing rules.

JSON is considered an improvement because it’s a bit smaller, but only because there are noclosing tags -- just curly brackets. There are still too many quotation marks on all the tags andstrings.

That detail from MS-DOS 3.0 dates from the early 1980s, a time when the personal computerwas already common and the computer revolution was well past its infancy. If you go back a bitmore, the code from the 1970s was even leaner. The code from the 1960s was amazing.

The operations for testing and flipping bits weren’t merely novelties for early programmers; theywere necessities. Some operations were so slow that programmers had to look for anyadvantage they could find. The best was understanding that dividing by two was equivalent toshifting a binary number to the right, like dividing by 10 is the same as shifting a decimal numberto the right.

Shifting all of the bits is a standard operation on CPUs, and it was often blazingly fast comparedto basic division. The good programmers used this advantage to write faster code that didn’tneed to wait for multiplication and division when a shift could do the same.

We’re losing the connection to powers of two. It used to be that designers would instinctivelychoose numbers that were powers of two because they would lead to greater efficiencies.Numbers like 512 or 4,096 appeared frequently because it was easier to work with limits thatare powers of two.

On many early processors, some operations took much longer than others. On the original 8086,dividing a number took anywhere from 80 to 190 times clock cycles, while adding two numberstook only three cycles. Even when the CPU could run at 5MHz, that could still make a bigdifference when doing the operation again and again.

Older programmers know that not every line of code or every instruction will execute in the sameamount of time. They understand that computation is not free, and not every line of code isequivalent. Choose the wrong kind of operation and your machine will dramatically slow down.

People forget that choosing the wrong data type can also have consequences. Using a doubleor a long variable can still be slower on some chips. Using the wrong data structure can turn theprogram into sludge when you scale.

Too many youngsters think that computation is instantaneous and CPUs can do an infinitenumber of calculations in the blink of the eye. Their elders remember the slow CPUs that wouldputter along doing addition and seize up when asked to divide. All of the little details gatheredover the years of hacking, debugging, and rehacking their code add up. The only way you get

this knowledge is with time.

2016-04-18 03:00 Peter Wayner www.infoworld.com

33 Q&A: Gene Kim explains the joy of devops

Devops is one of those volatile topics that mixeshuman behavior patterns with technology, oftenyielding dramatic increases in productive output -- that is, more high-quality software at a muchfaster pace. It's a fascinating area. But is devopsfascinating enough for a novel?

Gene Kim guessed that it was. His book,“ ThePhoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, andHelping Your Business Win ,” written with KevinBehr, actually became a best-seller, with TimO’Reilly and Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst callingit a must-read and legendary cloud architectAdrian Cockcroft dubbing it “the IT swamp-draining manual for anyone who is neck deep inalligators.”

Before his novel, Kim was best known as the founder and CTO of Tripwire, a creator of securityand compliance automation software that sold to Belden early last year. Over the past five years,he's built himself into one of the industry's foremost experts on devops, working with Jez Humble,Dr. Nicole Forsgren, and the team at Puppet Labs to produce the annual, influential State ofDevOps Report.

I caught up with Kim when he spoke at last week's Merge 2016 conference held by Perforce ,which provides secure version control software to developers. What follows is an edited versionof the interview, including the surprising revelation that one practice above all ensures greaterdevops productivity than any other:

It's been so fun. The thing that delights me most is when people say, "I read the book and itsounds like you were taking about us. "

What I love is that in many organizations the book is actually required reading for the executivestaff.

Disney's [Director of Systems Engineering] Jason Cox talked about how over the years he has alarge team of ops engineers that he embeds into the lines of business and dev teams. ... Whathe's doing is elevating their productivity so they're as productive as they would be at a Facebookor a Google. And so the appreciation they articulate to Jason is just incredible. They appreciatethe contribution, they understand how ops can help developers be productive, they get betteroutcomes, the business is saying thank you...

We actually found that ops using version control is a higher predictor of performance thanwhether dev uses version control. My conjecture is that when you think about where more thingscan go wrong -- is it in the code or in the environment? -- there are probably a hundred or athousand times more configurable settings in the environment: OS, database, storage,networking, and so on. If one thing goes wrong, the site is down. So you put ops and dev in thesame version control repo where everything is reproducible. It sounds like such a practical, trivialthing, but it's one of those foundational practices that underpin everything else.

2016-04-18 03:00 Eric Knorr www.infoworld.com

34

34 PlayStation Vue review: This is the skinny-bundle sweet spot(for now)

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By Jared Newman

TechHive | Apr 18, 2016 3:00 AM

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Sony seemed a little crazy when it first launched PlayStation Vue a year ago.The company offered a big bundle of streaming-TV channels at high prices,which is exactly what people are trying to escape by cutting the cable-TV cord.Even worse, the service lacked some popular channels, such as ESPN; it wasonly available in a few U. S. markets; and it only worked on PlayStation gameconsoles. Not surprisingly, few people bothered to sign up.

Sony took the gloves off last month: PlayStation Vue is now available across the U. S. at muchlower prices. ESPN and other Disney-owned channels have joined the bundle, and the servicenow works on other devices, including the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, and Google'sChromecast. PlayStation Vue has become a direct competitor to Dish’s Sling TV streamingbundle, and—as noted in our head-to-head comparison—is superior in almost every aspect.

The big question is whether Sony can keep it that way over the long haul.

For $30 per month in most markets, PlayStation Vue subscribers get 57 live TV channels, fromESPN to CNN to TBS to Comedy Central. (The price rises to $40 per month in Chicago, Dallas,Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where livelocal feeds from ABC, NBC, and Fox are part of the package.)

Want more channels? Another $5 per month gets you roughly nine more, including regionalsports. Another $15 per month ups the package to more than 90 channels. Showtime isavailable with any bundle for $11 per month. Compared to cable, the only major holes areleague-specific sports networks (such as NFL Network and MLB Network), A&E Networks (suchas History and Viceland), and HBO.

Beyond the live programming, Vue also includes a smorgasbord of on-demand video and a“Cloud DVR” that saves your favorite shows for up to 28 days. Access to nearly 60 “TVEverywhere” authenticated apps, such as WatchESPN and FXNow, are included as well.

Pay little attention to the name: PlayStation Vue does not require a PlayStation console towatch, as you can also sign up with an Amazon Fire TV or Amazon Fire TV Stick. Once youhave a subscription, you can install the Vue app on your iPhone and iPad, send video toGoogle’s Chromecast dongle and Android TV devices.

That said, the viewing experience is better on a PlayStation 4. The interface runs faster, andsports programming is smoother, running at a maximum 60 frames per second. The PlayStation3, by comparison, can’t maintain that steady frame rate, and other devices such as Amazon FireTV deliver 30 frames per second across the board. The PlayStation 4 can also time-shift up to30 minutes of live TV, while other devices resume playback after just a few minutes.

Time-shifting is built into every Vue channel (though some won’t let you fast forward).

As for viewing restrictions, Sony supports up to five streams at a time, though you can only havea single PlayStation 4 and a single PlayStation 3 streaming at once. Sony also requires that allTV devices connect to the same home network at the same address—no sharing passwords

with faraway friends—and you can only change your own address once. You are free to travel thecountry with Sony’s iOS app, but some channels don’t support mobile viewing.

(Our chart at the bottom of this review lays out all the channels and pricing.)

What’s it like to use PlayStation Vue? Depending on what you’re used to, it’ll either be acomplete shock or a refreshing take on the TV bundle.

Unlike a traditional set-top box, Vue emphasizes personalization. Up to five people can createtheir own profiles for specifying favorite channels and TV shows. The main menu then bringsthese preferences to the surface in its “My Shows” and “Favorite Channels” sections. It alsomakes recommendations based on what you’ve watched. Once you’ve built up a stable offavorites, you’ll spend less time flipping around and more time watching TV.

PlayStation Vue’s interface is far from familiar, but it’s a better way to think about TV.

Sony reinforces this idea throughout the PlayStation Vue interface. Every TV listing includesrecommendations for similar shows, and you’ll find popular picks from viewers on every channelpage. This is a smarter way to think about the TV bundle, which is bound to have plenty of showsand channels you don’t care about. Vue is smart enough to tune those out and focus on thingsyou might like.

That’s not to say Vue is without any creature comforts for cable converts. The service doesinclude a guide view, which lists channels and showtimes in an alphabetical grid, similar to whatyou’d find on a cable box. But even here, favorite channels appear first and the guide itself isplaced so inconspicuously in Vue’s menu system that you get the sense Sony doesn’t really wantyou to use it.

Vue still has an old-fashioned channel guide, but with the axes reversed.

Aside from its personalized interface, PlayStation Vue’s other key feature is the cloud DVR,invoked by hitting the “Add to My Shows” button from any TV listing. Instead of saving shows to alocal hard drive, like a traditional DVR, Sony records them to its own servers, where they remainavailable for up to 28 days.

Saving to the cloud has its benefits. Users don’t have to deal with scheduling conflicts or worryabout storage space, and recordings are automatically available on all devices throughout thehouse (recordings are not available outside the home when using Vue’s iOS app).

Still, it’s not a perfect system. Sony errs on the side of caution with its recording blocks,grabbing 32 minutes for a half-hour program, and while that’s better than recording too little, itdoes tend to require some fast-forwarding through commercials when an episode starts. I alsohad an instance where Vue failed to make a pristine recording, skipping over a couple secondsof video in a couple of spots.

DVR diehards might also get frustrated by Vue’s all-or-nothing approach to recording. Onceyou’ve added a program to “My Shows,” Vue will grab every episode it can. There’s no way toset up one-off recordings, or eliminate recordings past a certain date, which means you mightbe wading through dozens of episodes of SportsCenter when you only wanted to watch lastnight’s broadcast. PlayStation Vue’s 28-day time limit is also a major downside for people wholike to keep a months-long backlog of shows to watch.

To take a step back, however, it’s clear that the DVR is an antiquated concept in the age ofstreaming video. In a perfect world, TV networks would simply make all of their recentprogramming available on demand, with no scheduling or recording required. Users couldbookmark the shows they care about for easy access, and the TV service would give clearfeedback as to how long those programs will remain available.

While Sony roughly approximates this ideal with its cloud DVR, the recording aspect shouldn’teven be necessary anymore. At best, it’s a holdover technology until the TV industry gets a clue.

Having one foot in the past isn’t all bad. With PlayStation Vue, Sony has come up with anintriguing cable alternative, combining familiar TV channels with new ways to peruse and accessthem. And it does so at a price that may be cheaper than a cable bundle, especially once youfactor in cable’s hidden fees and equipment rental costs.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that Sony’s prices aren’t built to last. When PlayStation Vue firstlaunched a year ago, the base price was $50 per month, and that was before Disney and ESPNnetworks joined the package. The price has since dropped to $40 per month in markets with livelocal stations, and $30 per month everywhere else.

For some users, not having to pay local broadcasts is a blessing, since they’re also available forfree with an antenna. But as Sony makes more deals with local affiliate stations, it’s unclear if the$30 per month option will remain available.

Even at $40 per month, I wonder if Sony is using loss-leader prices to get people on board. Oneyear from now, will PlayStation Vue return to its original base price? Will prices shoot up evenhigher from there? If that happens, Vue will be no better than a traditional bundle with its teaserrates.

Fortunately, there’s competition. Sling TV has remained firm with its $20-per-month startingprice for more than a year, and AT&T is readying its own streaming service under the DirecTVbrand. That’s not to mention other streaming services that aren’t based on traditional TVpackages, such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Because PlayStation Vue is so easy tocancel compared to cable-TV service, competition stands a better chance of keeping Sonyhonest.

For now, Sony has found a sweet spot between big cable bundles and standalone streamingservices, while doing an admirable job of balancing live and on-demand viewing. Let’s hope itstays that way.

This table lists all the programming availabble on PlayStation Vue (click to enlarge).

This story, "PlayStation Vue review: This is the skinny-bundle sweet spot (for now)" wasoriginally published by

TechHive .

Jared Newman

Jared writes for PCWorld and TechHive from his remote outpost in Cincinnati.

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2016-04-18 03:00 Jared Newman www.itnews.com

35 Best cable-TV alternative: Which service should you

subscribe to?

Ever wished you could build your own TV package with only the channels you actually watch?

Too bad. In 2016, the TV industry is not yet sufficiently rattled by the rise ofstreaming video to produce the a la carte video plans people really desire. Fornow, we’re getting a proliferation of so-called “skinny bundles,” smaller TVplans that occupy a middle ground between choosing the exact channels youwant and paying for hundreds of channels you don’t.

Some cable and telco operators, such as Verizon , now offer these skinnybundles directly to their TV subscribers. But if that’s not an option where youlive—or you’d rather not deal with the hidden fees and contract shenanigans oftraditional TV service—you can opt for a streaming-video bundle instead.Right now, those options come down to Dish Network’s Sling TV and Sony’sPlayStation Vue.

If you're looking for an instant recommendation, Sony's PlaySation Vue is thebetter of the two services. But that doesn't mean it's the right choice for everycord cutter. Read on to understand why.

Sling TV launched about a year ago. It costs $20 per month, though the exact number ofchannels depends on which package you get. The “single-stream” plan, which lets you watch onone device at a time, has 24 channels, including ESPN, CNN, TNT, and AMC. Sling also sells$5-per-month add-on channel packs revolving around themes such as Kids, Sports, WorldNews, and Lifestyle, plus with a trio of Spanish-language add-ons. Add-ons for HBO andCinemax are available for $15 per month and $10 per month, respectively.

As of this month, Sling offers a separate “multi-stream” bundle, also for $20 per month, that letsyou watch on up to three devices at the same time. It has more channels—27 in total—includingFox, FX, and regional Fox Sports networks. This plan, however, doesn’t include ESPN orDisney channels, and it doesn’t allow add-ons for Kids and Sports.

Sling TV was the original skinny bundle.

PlayStation Vue is similarly complicated. In most U. S. markets, plans start at $30 per month for57 channels. But in a handful of cities—Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City,Philadelphia, and San Francisco Bay Area—the minimum price jumps to $40 per month. Inthose cities, Sony offers live local feeds from ABC, NBC, and Fox. All other markets are limitedto on-demand programming from those three networks, which means no local news or livenetwork-sporting events. There’s no option to pay more for those live feeds, either (although youmight be able to get them free with an antenna).

In any case, Vue subscribers can tack on roughly nine more channels—including regional sportsnetworks such as Fox Sports—for another $5 per month, or add 40 channels for $15 per month.Showtime is also available as an $11 per month add-on (an option you can’t get on Sling TV).

This is bundle economics 101, where the more you pay, the more “value” you get: Sling TV ischeaper and more flexible overall, but PlayStation Vue offers more channels for your money,including some you can’t get with Sling. (For a full comparison of Sling TV and PlayStation Vuechannels, head to the bottom of this story.)

To watch Sling TV or PlayStation Vue, you need a streaming device that runs their respectiveapps. Sling TV is far ahead on this count, with apps for Android TV, Chromecast, Amazon FireTV (and Fire TV Stick), Roku, Xbox One, iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Channel Master DVR.

PlayStation Vue’s app support is, again, more complicated. Without a PlayStation 3 orPlayStation 4, you can only activate a subscription through an Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.Existing subscribers can also watch on iOS devices, which can then use Google Cast to streamon Chromecast and Android TV devices.

This table shows all the options for each service (click to enlarge).

So what’s it like to use Sling TV and PlayStation Vue? Both services try to combine the live-TVaspects of a cable bundle with the kind of on-demand viewing people expect from streamingvideo. It’s an unenviable job, but overall PlayStation Vue handles it better.

With either service, you get live feeds from most channels, just like you’d get from cable. Bothalso offer a smattering of on-demand video from certain channels, and both offer “catch-up” or“replay” programming that lets you watch shows that recently aired on some channels.

But PlayStation Vue has a secret weapon in its cloud DVR feature. This lets you save anyprogram to a list of favorites, and Sony will automatically store new episodes to its own servers.You can then watch those programs from any device with the Vue app for up to 28 days. DVRdiehards may scoff at the time limit, or the inability to record individual air dates, but the cloudfunction also eliminates the hassles of storage management and scheduling conflicts. Basically,it’s a short-term way to keep a fully-stocked on-demand library. Sling TV offers nothing similar.

Sony’s cloud DVR lets you easily save and get back to your favorite shows.

Unlike Sling TV, Sony also allows you to bookmark your favorite channels, so they appear firstwhen viewing Vue’s channel guide. Between the bookmarks and shows saved to cloud DVR,Vue feels a lot more personalized than Sling. You spend less time flipping through channelsbecause everything you like is just a few remote clicks away. Vue even supports multiple userprofiles, so each family member can have their own list of channels and recordings.

In fairness, Sling TV is working on a big redesign that should make favorite shows and channelseasier to access, but it hasn’t said when the new interface will arrive. And with no cloud DVR,you’re far more likely to end up missing shows you wanted to watch.

At least on paper, Sling TV and PlayStation Vue offer similar video quality. Vue video resolutionis 720p across the board, and I suspect the same of Sling TV. (Dish has not confirmedstreaming resolution to me, but one third-party test by CuttingCords has shown 720p resolutionon most live channels.)

When you dig in, the issue of video quality is not so simple. PlayStation Vue, for instance, offerssmooth 60-frames-per-second-video playback for live sports across a wide range of channels,including ESPN, TBS, Spike, and NBCSN—but that’s only if you’re accessing the service on aPlayStation 4. On Fire TV, the framerate drops to 30 frames per second on all channels, whichis fine for most TV shows, but not ideal for sports. PlayStation 3 seems to bounce between thetwo framerates, which is more distracting than a consistent signal.

Both services must also deal with the reliability issues inherent to online video. With Sling TV, forinstance, I’ve experienced audio-sync issues on some channels, including HBO and HGTV.With PlayStation Vue, a boxing match I was watching froze up, forcing me to hit pause and thenplay to keep watching. I can’t say definitively if one service is more reliable than the other, butyou’re far less likely to have these issues with traditional cable TV.

Like most streaming services, Sling TV and PlayStation Vue come with viewing restrictions.

With Sling TV, you’re limited to viewing on one device at a time if you choose the single-streampackage with ESPN and Disney channels, making it a non-starter for some families. The multi-stream package allows viewing on three devices at a time, but local feeds of Fox are onlyavailable in a handful of markets (Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit,Gainesville, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, SanFrancisco, Tampa, and Washington D. C.). Those feeds won’t be available if you travel outsidethose cities.

PlayStation Vue’s restrictions are even thornier. Although the service allows five streams at atime, only one PlayStation 4 or one PlayStation 3 can be streaming at the same time. All TVdevices (such as PlayStation consoles, Fire TVs, and Chromecasts) must also be under thesame roof. If Sony detects an anomaly in IP addresses, you could get blocked from the service.Mobile viewing is also restricted, with certain channels unavailable on Vue’s iOS app in your

own house; even more get blocked when you're on the go.

One area where Vue excels is support for TV Everywhere apps such as WatchESPN, ComedyCentral, and FXNow. Sony’s service lets you authenticate with 60 of these apps, even onplatforms where there is no Vue app available. Sling TV provides authentication only toWatchESPN, making it feel less like a bona fide pay-TV package.

Are Sling TV or PlayStation Vue worth using instead of traditional TV service? That depends onseveral factors. You might not save money with either service, for instance, if your Internetprovider offers attractive bundle deals or skinny bundles of its own. Streaming round-the-clockvideo channels might also not be feasible if your Internet provider enforces data caps , as bothservices can consume up to 2.25GB of data per hour. (Sling TV, at least, lets you dial-downstreaming quality in its settings menu.)

On the other hand, a cable-TV subscription can get pretty expensive once you start rentingDVRs for multiple TVs, and those promotional bundle deals tend to disintegrate after a coupleyears. Part of the allure with streaming services such as Sling TV and PlayStation Vue is theirfreedom from hardware rental fees, hidden costs, and complex cancellation procedures.

As for which service is better, that distinction goes to PlayStation Vue. It offers more channelsfor the money, better personalization, easier access to your favorite shows, and higher-qualityvideo for sports. Sling TV is only worth considering if you really want to limit your spending, ordon’t own a device that Vue supports.

In a way, this is the cord-cutting trade-off encapsulated: The more money you want to save, theless cable-like your experience becomes.

This table lists all the channels available on each service (click to enlarge).

2016-04-18 03:00 Jared Newman www.itnews.com

36 WAAAAAY cheaper than getting the ax

This IT pilot fish has a co-worker who keeps a hands-free Bluetooth device clipped to the sun visor in his car,so he can handle mobile calls while he's driving.

"He found out that the device did a pretty good job oftranslating the names of the contacts in his phone, so hechanged our manager's name to 'The Biggest @#$%! InThe Entire World,'" says fish. "That way, if he got aphone call from the boss, the device would announce'Phone call from.... The Biggest @#$%! In The EntireWorld.'

"One day, he and I went to lunch with our manager andmy co-worker drove. As he and our manager werediscussing a customer, our manager said, 'Let me justtext you his number' and quickly sent a text.

"As the device began to announce 'Text from...' my friend yanked it down and tossed it out thewindow.

"'I always hated that thing,' he told us casually... "

2016-04-18 03:00 Sharky www.computerworld.com

37 New products of the week 4.18.16

Our roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World'sproducts of the week slideshow.

Key features: Altify Max is the first "augmentedintelligence" platform that combines human andmachine intelligence. Altify Max includes morethan 30 years of sales knowledge built-in andcombines the deep muscle memory of a millionsales engagements, knowledge of the world’sbest sales methodologies and insights from eachindividual business to create instant, real-timerecommendations about how to progress eachopportunity. More info.

Key features – Accellion’s new security features,including a number of "industry first" offerings, better enable enterprise employees to handleenterprise content securely. It does not matter whether employees are working remotely oronsite, collaborating with colleagues or external partners, or accessing content that is stored onpremises or in the cloud; enterprise content can be retrieved, edited and shared securely withinkiteworks. More info.

Key features: Apcera CE is the only cloud platform that lets developers and ITOps build aworking compute cluster in 15 minutes on a laptop, or in a small cloud computing environment.More info.

Key features: Asigra is now offering a freemium software tool, AWS Snapshot Manager, in theAWS Marketplace that automates the process of performing and managing EBS images ofvirtual machine volumes in EC2 environments. More info.

Key Features: Audit provides detailed discovery and visibility into usage of sanctioned andunsanctioned cloud apps, while delivering intelligence feeds to Blue Coat proxies for policycontrols to manage shadow IT risks. More info.

Pricing: Cloudera offers three main ways to purchase Cloudera Enterprise: Basic, Flex andData Hub editions. Each edition is priced per node, with Basic being the lowest starting pointwhere the typical cluster is sized in the 10's of node. Each Cloudera Enterprise edition is pricedin the $1000's, scaling up from Basic to Data Hub edition.

Key features: Cloudera Enterprise 5.7 provides leading performance across key workloads -including an average 3x improvement for data processing with added support of Hive-on-Spark,and an average 2x improvement for business intelligence analytics with updates to ApacheImpala (incubating). More info.

Key features: CSG unveiled security and functionality updates to its real-time messaging andencrypted voice/conference call app Cellcrypt, making it more secure and cost-effective for long-distance calls for enterprise communications. More info.

Key features: HyperStore 6.0 simplifies and automates data management for petabyte-scalecloud storage. New features include proactive repair, Amazon S3 cross-region replication fordisaster recovery, and smart storage analytics. More info.

Key features: Distil API Security provides an easy-to-use service which tracks API usage acrossboth identification tokens and IP addresses to detect and block malicious activity, developererrors, and abuse. More info.

Key features: FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure extends Software Asset Management toInfrastructure-as-a-Service by providing enterprises with comprehensive, accurate, actionableinsight into cloud infrastructure usage to optimize use and spend on these services. More info.

Key features: GreySpark leverages existing tools and sensors within an enterprise to measure

IT security health and report a simple, up-to-date score reflecting the overall IT risk present in anorganization. More info.

Key features - adds features including EZXploit, a simulated phishing attack, which whenclicked, comes up with a secondary ruse like a Java popup. A USB Drive Test provides aspecial "beaconized" Microsoft Office file on a USB drive which can then be dropped at an on-site, high traffic area and GEO-location which allows admin to see where simulated phishingattack failures are on a map, with drilldown and CSV-export options. More info.

Key features: Lucidworks View is a front-end for Fusion, Lucidworks’ flagship search platform,for quick and easy development of custom search-driven applications leveraging Apache Solrand Apache Spark. More info.

Key features: Mimecast’s industry-first Impersonation Protect uses advanced scanningtechniques to combat whaling and CEO fraud, protecting organizations from this multi-billiondollar cybersecurity threat that tricks users into sending fraudulent wire transfers. More info.

Key features - Keylight 4.4 extends the patented Dynamic Content Framework across the entireplatform to provide the context, efficiency and flexibility organizations require when strugglingwith new risks and compliance requirements. More info.

Key features – VSkyCube is a hyperconverged infrastructure solution for flexible, streamlineddata center and IT operations. It encompasses compute, networking and storage virtualizationtechnologies. More info.

Key features: Qumulo Core has real-time data analytics built directly into the file system, givingenterprises a view of their data and storage resources at scale. It provides greater visibility intowhich data is most valuable, where it is stored, which users or applications are accessing whatfiles, what should be archived, backed up or deleted, and why it grows. New features andbenefits in Qumulo Core 2.0 include scalable, efficient, and resilient data protection with erasurecoding, and capacity trends analytics. More info.

Key features: Spare5’s Intelligent Crowdsourcing Platform offers data enrichment, data clean-upand data labeling. Qualified specialists clean up, label and improve companies' data withspeed, scale, and unprecedented quality. More info.

Key features: This patch management platform adds search and customization features andsupport for cross referencing vendor patch bulletins with Department of Defense alerts. Itenables use of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager’s console to re-signcertificates, delete/republish updates and manage products published to Windows Serverupdates. More info.

Key features: Robin’s application-defined data center software has container-based computeand storage, which simplifies application lifecycle, enables no-compromise applicationconsolidation, and maximizes the performance of data-centric applications. More info.

Key features: ftServer streamlines and simplifies the continuous availability and management ofindustrial applications in three ways. Integrating Sightline Assure, adopting the OPC standard,and consolidating traditionally disparate systems. More info.

Key features: The Thanx Branded App equips businesses with Thanx’s suite of mobilemarketing tools. More info.

Key features: Remote Desktop Access drives efficiency for end users with worldwide access toendpoints through any Internet browser given its critical components that include accessibility,security, rapidity and compatibility. More info.

Key features: An Out-of-Band serial console port management solution for Gigabit Ethernetapplications. Features 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet port plus v.92 internal modem withcallback security. Also includes event monitoring and alarm functions. More info.

Key features: Wowza Streaming Cloud is a complete, straightforward solution that deliversprofessional-grade live streaming to viewers around the world. With its enhanced featurescustomers now benefit from new REST API that creates workflow options and enables on-demand use, significantly reduced latency and easy-to-use stream health monitoring. More info.

Key features: Adds object storage, flash cache, Fibre Channel. Common platform for anystorage type (object, file block); protocol (FC,iSCSI, iSER, NFS, CIFS, S3) ; location (on-premise, public, private or hybrid cloud). More info.

Key features: A10 Networks released six new Thunder Series appliances, including theindustry’s fastest single rack unit ADC. The new fourth-generation offerings expand customerchoice for entry-level, upper mid-range and high-end appliances. The company’s portfolio ofappliances provides even greater price/performance –with scalability to 220Gbps of traffic persecond, 10.5 million connections per second, and defense for over 300 million DDoS attacksper second. The fourth-generation Thunder appliances scale and secure the most demandingdata center applications and networks. More info.

Key features: Proofpoint Email Protection’s new dynamic impostor classifier quarantinesbusiness email compromise attempts—and helps organizations protect against malware andmalware-free threats. More info.

2016-04-18 02:54 Ryan Francis www.itnews.com

38 Master iOS 9.3 With These 9 Tips And Tricks

Apple announced the general availability of iOS 9.3 during as part ofa March 21 launch event. The update arrived alongside the debut ofiPhone SE and smaller iPad Pro , along with environmental andiPhone recycling initiatives.

iOS 9.3 had been in beta for months prior to its March rollout.Testers explored the operating system over the course of itsdevelopment and Apple watchers outside the beta test learnedabout new features coming their way.

Some of these capabilities grabbed a good deal of attention. NightShift gives the display a warmer tone to protect late-night iPhoneusers from the harsh effects of blue light, which can make it difficult tofall asleep.

The iOS update also packed a few new education features.Teachers and school IT admins have access to a setup assistant to

help them with creating Managed Apple IDs, buying apps and content, and handling deviceenrollment throughout a district.

[The iPhone SE is cheap for Apple, but these smartphones are more budget-friendly .]

Of course, not all news around iOS 9.3 has been positive. Shortly following its March debut,Apple pulled back from the release because of a problem with updating older devices. Aseparate problem would cause apps to crash or freeze upon launch.

iOS 9.3.1, an emergency patch issued to address problems in iOS 9.3, contained a major andpotentially dangerous flaw in the iPhone SE. Users discovered the audio for Bluetooth calls wasgarbled to the point they couldn't converse. This angered those who rely on in-car Bluetooth tochat on the road. Some could resort to the death-defying practice of handling the phone whenthey're driving. Apple is expected to deliver a fix in iOS 9.3.2.

By now, most people should be able to update to iOS 9.3 without significant issues. A fewweeks after updating, they may still be discovering its many features and subtle improvements.

In the following pages we put the spotlight on some of the most useful features available in iOS9.3. You may already know about some of these, but a few may have flown under your radar.Have you encountered these updates? Are there any you would add to the list? Let us know inthe comments section below.

(All images are screenshots by Kelly Sheridan/InformationWeek unless otherwise noted.)

2016-04-18 00:06 Kelly Sheridan www.informationweek.com

39 Los Alamos puts 30PB of Scality object storage into

productionThe US Los Alamos National Laboratory has gone into production with around30PB of object storage powered by Scality Ring software.

Object storage was chosen for its ability to make use of erasure coding fordata resilience and to avoid use of Raid. This is due to the increasinglycumbersome nature of Raid, especially during Raid rebuilds of large harddrives following disk failures.

The Scality tier of object storage forms part of an overall storage infrastructure that supports LosAlamos’s Trinity Cray-supplied supercomputer.

It is one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, with 2PB of memory, 200 CPUs andperformance of 40 petaFlops (floating point operations per second). It is used to manage theUS nuclear stockpile and carries out physics modelling and simulation.

The nature of input/output (I/O) on Trinity poses unique issues, with datasets that can comprisesingle files of many tens of TB or tens of millions of files in the 10s of Kb size range.

Kyle Lamb , computer engineer at Los Alamos, said: “We have two extremes of storage I/O todeal with. The big question was how we deal with that for the next five years. So we started tolook at object storage, specifically erasure coding because of data durability and with theperformance of data on disk.”

2016-04-18 00:00 Antony Adshead www.computerweekly.com

40 Teradata Universe 2016: MPP architecture recast as

‘Intelliflex’Teradata announced an evolution of the architecture of its “ massive parallelprocessing ” data warehouse at its Universe customer event in Hamburg.

The supplier also announced the expansion of its managed cloud service toEurope, and the availability of its data warehousing technology on AmazonWeb Services (AWS).

At a briefing on the eve of the conference, Oliver Ratzesberger, president of Teradata Labs,said “Intelliflex” – which is the new name of its MPP software – broke the “drawback” linkbetween storage and compute.

“Our customers have been asking us about scaling processing and storage independently. MPPplatforms have traditionally had the limitation that compute and storage come together.However, sometimes you need more storage, and sometimes more compute. Our customersalso want to grow more incrementally, and with faster upgrades. [Moreover], analytics are todayso operationalised that the data warehouse cannot have any downtime,” he said.

The Intelliflex architecture provides “multi-dimensional scalability, enabling companies to addprocessing power and storage capacity independently to meet their current and changing

business requirements”, the supplier said in a statement .

Additionally, the supplier claimed, it eliminates “87% of extended downtime due to unavailabilityof data. [And] it accommodates a denser, more efficient cabinet footprint (ie, more CPU cores,more memory, more hot data space) while making it easier for customers to re-rack, thusproviding more flexible placement of components in the datacentre”.

The company announced, too, the expansion of its managed cloud service to Europe in thesecond half of 2016. This will provide data warehousing, analytics and Hadoop capabilities on asubscription basis.

It also stated the immediate availability of Teradata Database on Amazon Web Services – thefirst of “multiple public cloud platform options to be available in the months ahead”.

“This is not a watered down version of the database, this is the full Teradata 15.10, optimised torun as well as possible on the AWS hardware stack,” said Ratzesberger . “Amazon told us thisis the largest enterprise software deployment in all of Amazon’s history.”

Teradata is also setting up an internet of things (IoT) analytics unit inside the labs thatRatzesberger heads. This will be staffed in the US, UK and India, and will consist of what thesupplier calls a “special-ops team of data scientists, data engineers and software designers”.

“The smartest people at Teradata are laser-focused on building the best technologies to powerthe analytics of things,” said Ratzesberger . ........................

2016-04-18 00:00 Brian McKenna www.computerweekly.com

41 Global trust in the Internet is in decline, survey says

Not so sure about your privacy and securityonline? You're not alone.

When asked about online privacy, 57 percentwere more concerned than they were a year ago,and only a minority of people surveyed (38percent) trusted that their activities on the Internetare not being monitored. Less than half ofrespondents (46 percent) believe that theiractivity online is not being censored. Only about athird believed that their own government is doingenough to keep their personal information safefrom private companies, and vice versa.

The survey was conducted among 24,143 Webusers between November 20 and December 4 2015, and included people living in 24 countriesincluding Australia, the UK and the US.

2016-04-18 00:00 Dong Ngo www.cnet.com

42 Police investigate British Airways drone collision at

HeathrowPolice are investigating a collision between a drone and a jet above Heathrow Airportyesterday.

The pilot of the British Airways flight from Geneva to London, which was carrying 132passengers and five crew, told police that an object, believed to be a drone, hit the front of theaircraft at 12.50pm, just before landing.

The Airbus A320 landed successfully, and BritishAirways engineers checked the aircraft andcleared it for its next flight.

But the incident comes after numerous near-misses between drones and planes as theunmanned craft becomes cheaper for hobbyiststo own and operate.

The UK Airprox Board examined six near-missesin December , rating five of them ‘A’, where itbelieves there was a serious risk of collision.

However, the government is still shaping rules onthe use of drones. Currently people can buydrones weighing under 20kg as long as they

keep it 50 metres away from people, vehicles, structures and vessels. They must also keep 150metres clear of congested areas.

A British Airways spokeswoman said: “Our aircraft landed safely, was fully examined by ourengineers and it was cleared to operate its next flight.

“Safety and security are always our first priority and we will give the police every assistance withtheir investigation.”

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “A pilot on an inbound flight into Heathrow Airportfrom Geneva reported to police that he believed a drone had struck the aircraft.

“The flight landed at Heathrow Terminal 5 safely. It transpired that an object, believed to bea drone, had struck the front of the aircraft.

“No arrests. Enquiries continue. Aviation police based at Heathrow investigate.”

2016-04-18 00:00 Joe Curtis www.itpro.co.uk

43 Hands-on: Stealth Machines NightHawk 2 offers fighter-jet

flair on a Pentagon budgetIt’s a little ironic that Stealth Machines' newcustom gaming PC, the NightHawk 2, is styledafter a plane that was never intended to be seen.

The Air Force’s F-117 “stealth fighter” wasdesigned to be nearly invisible to radar, and flewonly at night initially to further avoid detection.Stealth’s homage to this aircraft, though, is abrash desktop box that you couldn't miss on adesktop or even on the floor.

Stealth Machines has done a pretty good job ofcapturing the F-117’s aesthetic. The body isconstructed of laser-cut panels that have been welded together to echo the plane's facetedsurface. But it's a PC with many components to accommodate, so not surprisingly, theproportions of the machine are far boxier than the actual plane's. To some, it might look like oneof those kids’ toys that aren’t built to scale.

The NightHawk 2’s stubby wings add to its cartoonish quality. The wings attach using a Picatinny( MIL-STD-1913 ) rail system that lets you remove them or change their angle.

Why move the wings? Stealth Machines knows most people aren’t going to want to lay this

machine flat on a desk. It is, after all, the size of a full-tower or super-tower case—you probablycouldn’t fit your keyboard, mouse, and monitor alongside it. To convert the NightHawk 2 tovertical mode, simply unclip the wings, reorient them, and the NightHawk 2 will stand on end—where it bears a passing resemblance to the slightly ungainly Huey, Louie, or Dewey robots fromthe movie Silent Running.

The case itself is designed to be modular, and Stealth Machines says it hopes to market it tocase modders. For example, loosen four bolts at the corners and you can lift off not just the lidbut the entire top section of the case, giving you far easier access to the internals. The chassisitself allows drive bays to be removed and reconfigured, depending on the size of themotherboard and placement of the drive cages.

The company values the case at about $400, but it can't be purchased alone. You’ll have to buyan entire system to get the enclosure.

The case you see here is one of the prototypes and was built to spec for a customer. Inside area pair of 12-core Intel Xeon chips, two GeForce GTX Titan X GPUs, 128GB of DDR4 RAM, anIntel 750-series PCIe NVME SSD, four Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, plus an optical drive and anEVGA Supernova 1,600-watt PSU. With the CPUs costing almost $8,000 alone, this is not acheap build by any stretch of the imagination—Stealth Machines puts the price tag at $15,000.

Granted, the NightHawk 2 may fly high above many people's budgets, but you’ve got to giveStealth Machines props for coming up with something truly different.

2016-04-18 00:00 Gordon Mah www.pcworld.com

44 Remember Batman's Bat-credit card? Now you can get one

(in Malaysia)1997's "Batman and Robin" is known for manythings. Being a good movie is not one of them.

The company's choice of designs reflect differentBat-eras: one inspired by Tim Burton's twoBatman flicks -- with the classic yellow Batsignalbackground -- a less cartoonish ChristopherNolan-esque one in tasteful silver, and the ratherClooney-ish effort pictured above.

Malaysia is home to many comic bookenthusiasts, with a group of artists from thecountry recently making headlines by recreatingvarious DC heroes as traditional Wayang Kulitshadow puppets.

2016-04-18 00:00 Rahil Bhagat www.cnet.com

45 Hollywood or hostage crisis? Johnny Depp and Amber

Heard make Facebook apology to AustraliaJohnny Depp and Amber Heard are hitting screens for the wrong reasons, after the AustralianGovernment forced them to publicly apologise for 'disrespecting' the law and compromisingAustralia's biosecurity.

And all over a pair of Yorkshire terrier puppies.

In what many on social media are comparing to a "proof of life" video, Depp and Heard grimlyespouse the unique beauty of Australia, while apologising for failing to declare their dogs to

customs on a 2015 visit.

"Australia is a beautiful island, with a treasuretrove of unique plants, animals and people," saysHeard, somewhat lacking the pep of an ordinarytourism video.

"It has to be protected," Depp adds. "When youdisrespect Australian law, they will tell you firmly. "The video was first published on an AustralianGovernment YouTube channel, before beingshared on the Facebook page of Deputy PrimeMinister Barnaby Joyce (the very same man who'firmly' told the couple last year it was time theirdogs and "buggered off").

2016-04-18 00:00 Claire Reilly www.cnet.com

46 Apple vs FBI: Apple responds to latest request to unlock

iPhone18/04/2016: Apple has respnded to the FBI'songoing attempts to force it to unlock an iPhonerelated to a drugs case in New York.

In February a New York judge ruled in Apple'sfavour , stating that the company could not becompelled to break into the phone under the AllWrits Act - the same piece of legislation inquestion in the now resolved San Bernardinocase. In early April, however, the US Departmentof Justice (DoJ) vowed to fight back and have the

ruling overturned.

Apple has now lodged its own response, claiming the FBI has not exhausted all other avenues.

"The government seeks to compel Apple to take possession of an iPhone and breach itssecurity features absent any showing of the need for Apple's assistance, and under a sweepinginterpretation of the All Writs Act that has been soundly rejected by Magistrate Judge Ornstein,"the company said in the preliminary statement of its latest filing.

"As a preliminary matter, the government has utterly failed to satisfy its burden to demonstratethat Apple's assistance in this case is necessary - a prerequisite to compelling third partyassistance under the All Writs Act," it added.

This case in New York is one of two still ongoing between the DoJ and Apple, with the secondtaking place in Boston.

Little is known about the Boston case, as it is being held largely in secret, although it appearsthe judge in that case has ruled in favour of the DoJ, stating it is "reasonable" to ask Apple tohelp extract data from the device. It is also known that the device in question is running iOS 9 ,which is more secure than the older operating the San Bernardino iPhone 5c used.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion at the end of March asking the court to unlockall sealed dockets relating to the case, a decision on which is still pending.

14/04/2016: Nothing of interest or use has yet been found on the iPhone 5c at the centre of thenow concluded battle between the FBI and Apple, it has been claimed.

The phone, which belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters who claimed the lives of 14

people and injured a further 22, was cracked into last month by an unnamed third party - nowthought to be an individual, rather than a specialist business as had first been suggested.

It is now being reported by CBS News that, according to an anonymous law enforcement official"so far nothing of real significance has been found". This is despite the high-profile nature of thecase and the FBI's insistance that the device could contain details of a third shooter.

However, CBS News's source did stress that the iPhone is still being analysed.

13/04/2016: The source of the hack used to gain entry to the iPhone 5c belonging to SanBernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, is not Israeli forensics firm Cellebrite, it has beenclaimed.

In early April, the FBI dropped its case against Apple demanding the company create a customversion of iOS to get into Farook’s locked iPhone after a third party came forward with a way toaccess the device without the manufacturers help.

Initially, it was claimed an Israeli firm specialising in data forensics, Cellebrite, was the unnamedexternal entity that had developed the crack – the details of which are currently still secret, evenfrom Apple. However, The Washington Post has claimed the FBI paid professional hackers anunspecified amount of money to get into the phone and that Cellebrite was not involved at all.

Separately, IT Pro has been told the FBI was in fact approached by the hacker, who is based inthe US, much earlier in the course of the case, but that the amount of money they wanted fromthe agency was initially more than it was prepared to pay.

It is unclear if the price was reduced or the FBI decided it would be more beneficial to pay upand bring the court case to a close early.

11/04/16: The US Department of Justice has asked Apple to help it hack into an iPhone thoughtto be related to a criminal case in New York.

A letter filed by the DoJ to the courts said the government, "continues to require Apple'sassistance," to help it bust a drugs-related case in the city.

Jun Feng, who owned the iPhone, pleaded guilty to taking part in a methamphetaminedistribution conspiracy last year and although has apparently been convicted, the DoJ wished touse information from the iPhone in the ongoing investigation.

The case was put forward in February, but the letter was only made public last week. At the time,the judge ruled Apple could not be forced to provide the data the authorities, so the governmentlodged an appeal against the decision.

Meanwhile, a similar request was put forward regarding the extraction of data from an allegeddrugs gang member's iPhone in Boston. The request was put forward in February by USMagistrate Judge Marianne Bowler, but it was only unsealed last week and the judge involvedruled it was "reasonable" for the DoJ to ask for Apple's help by extracting data.

It's thought the FBI's methods of hacking into iPhones would not work to unlock the devicesinvolved in these latest cases as they are a different model to that used by San Bernardinoattacker Syed Farook's phone.

08/04/2016: The FBI has revealed the hack it used to break into the San Bernardino attacker'sphone isn't particularly useful for those outside of the investigatory agency.

FBI director James Comey told a gathering at Ohio's Kenyon College the tool it used to breakinto Syed Farook's iPhone 5c is extremely limited in its scope of use and will only work on aniPhone 5c running iOS 9.

“This doesn’t work on [an iPhone] 6s, doesn’t work in a 5s, and so we have a tool that works ona narrow slice of phones,” Comey said in the question and answer session with students andprofessors .

It means that anyone not using an iPhone 5c can be sure they are safe from the FBI's hack,which was achieved using third party software - at least for the moment.

However, the FBI isn't necessarily going to tell Apple how it managed to break into Farook'siPhone because it thinks the company will then close the vulnerability that allowed it to hack intothe device in order to protect its customers.

“We tell Apple, then they’re going to fix it, then we’re back where we started from,” he said. “Wemay end up there, we just haven’t decided yet.”

He's also pretty sure the third party software provider won't reveal its secrets to Apple either.

“I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it, and their motivationsalign with ours,” he added.

07/04/2016: Apple's sales could drop as a result of the FBI breaking into the San Bernadinoattacker's iPhone, according to a report by Fortune .

The publication surveyed more than 2,000 registered voters in the US and almost a third ofrespondents said they were unlikely to buy an iPhone folowing the news that iPhones could behacked by the FBI, while 21 per cent said they were unsure whether they would buy an iDeviceafter the news broke.

The majority of those saying they wouldn't buy the next iPhone were aged over 65, the surveyrevealed, while younger respondents, aged between 18 and 29, were undecided whether thenews would affect their next smartphone purchase.

However, one outcome of the hack by FBI officials was that almost half of those questioned saidthey were more concerned about their privacy.

The ease with which the FBI managed to break into the iPhone 5c alarmed a high proportion ofApple customers, demonstrating how easy it could be for non-governmental parties, as well asofficials, to access their data.

04/04/2016: The FBI's method for hacking into the locked iPhone 5c may soon be exposed,claim senior Apple engineers, threatening to make it useless in the future.

Once the way the FBI managed to break into the phone is revealed, experts say, Apple will setabout fixing the encryption issue in order to assure users that their devices can not easily behacked.

Further legal battles involving locked phones will likely compel the FBI to reveal its method -claimed to have come from a third party source - and this will then reveal it to Apple in theprocess.

"The FBI would need to resign itself to the fact that such an exploit would only be viable for a fewmonths if released to other departments," Jonathan Zdziarski, an independent forensics expert,told Reuters .

"It would be a temporary Vegas jackpot that would quickly get squandered on the case backlog."

A senior Apple engineer added: "Flaws of this nature have a pretty short life cycle. Most of thesethings do come to light. "

31/03/2016: The FBI has reportedly agreed to help prosecutors in an Arkansas murder trialhack into an iPhone 6 and iPod for the purposes of gaining access to evidence, reports the LATimes.

The FBI's Little Rock field office agreed to help prosecutors gain access to the Apple devicesowned by two suspects in the case, according to Cody Hiland, prosecuting attorney for

Arkansas' 20th Judicial District, although an FBI spokesman in Washington declined tocomment.

The issue with gaining access comes from an iPhone running on iOS 8 or later automaticallyencrypting data present on the device.

This news comes just days after the FBI decided to drop its court case against Apple regardingencryption of an iPhone 5c belonging to a terrorist who along with his wife had murdered 14colleagues at the Department of Public Health in December 2010, having gained accessthrough a third party.

29/03/2016: Hours, after the FBI dropped its court case against Apple, technology, security andprivacy organisations, are warning that many questions still remain regarding the case and itsrepercussions.

The court battle revolves around an iPhone 5c, owned by San Bernardino County in the US butused by Syed Rizwan Farook, a terrorist who worked for the county's Department of PublicHealth before he and his wife murdered 14 of his colleagues in December 2010.

Following the attack, the iPhone became locked and the FBI claimed it had no way to accessthe data stored on the phone other than for Apple to create a custom version of iOS with anencryption backdoor that would allow the data to be extracted.

The FBI had told the court that Apple engineers were the only people with the technical abilitiesto hack into the phone and that it had "exhausted all other practical options".

But last week it said an "outside source" - reported to be Israeli mobile data forensics firmCellebrite - had come forward and demonstrated a method to extract the data safely.

Drawing the case to a close now has advantages for both sides: the FBI will not be forced toface difficult questions about privacy and security in Congress while Apple's engineers will notbe forced to break their own encryption, something that could have cast a long shadow overconsumer confidence.

But this abrupt end to the case also raises a number of questions.

The most obvious of these is "How did they do it? " - if the case had progressed in court,Apple's lawyers said they would have demanded to talk to the mysterious third party and find outeverything they could about the exploit.

With the whole case being vacated (i.e. withdrawn), however, the FBI has apparently made themethod used to crack the phone "classified", according to the Guardian. This effort is ostensiblyto keep iPhones secure from criminal hackers, but also to keep Apple or any securityresearchers from reverse-engineering it and then creating a patch.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has expressed concern on this issue. Staff AttorneyAndrew Crocker told IT Pro : "EFF is pleased that the Justice Department has retreated from itsdangerous and unconstitutional attempt to force Apple to subvert the security of its iOSoperating system. However, this new method of accessing the phone raises questions about thegovernment's apparent use of security vulnerabilities in iOS. "

He said there should be "a very strong bias in favour of informing Apple of the vulnerability"under the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP), although if the Guardian 's report is correct, itwould seem they will not be taking that course of action.

Independent security researcher Graham Cluley also told IT Pro this is "not the end of the story"."The FBI will want to get into other iPhones, for which this method won't work. They will try tocompel Apple's software engineers to write code that they don't want to write, that they believewill put the privacy and security of millions of innocent users at risk," Cluley said.

"Alternatively, it will be a different technology company having demands made of it - perhaps a

company which doesn't have as much of a backbone (or the legal funds) that Apple did. And aprecedent will be set," he added.

28/03/2016: The FBI has announced it has dropped its iPhone hacking case against Apple, asit has managed to get into the device in question by other means.

Apple and the FBI had been involved in a months-long court battle, with the law enforcementagency trying to force the Cupertino company to build a custom version of iOS in order to getinto a locked iPhone 5c used by Syed Farook, one of two shooters who killed 14 people inDecember 2015.

The FBI has not yet released details of how it managed to get into the iPhone in question,although last week it said it had procured help from an "outside source" - rumoured to be Israelimobile data forensics firm Cellebrite - to help it get into the device.

24/03/2016: FBI director James Comey has slapped down assertions made by the Wall StreetJournal that the agency's court tussle with Apple is part of a wider strategy to establish a legalprecedent forcing phone makers to break their own encryption.

"The San Bernardino case was not about trying to send a message or set a precedent; it wasand is about fully investigating a terrorist attack," Comey wrote in a letter responding to theWSJ's editorial , in which the paper accused the FBI of "[fibbing] by saying the Apple case isabout one phone".

Referring to claims by the FBI that it had "exhausted all other practical options" to get into theiPhone 5c at the heart of the dispute, the WSJ said: "Now we learn the FBI, far from exhaustingall other practical options, had been pursuing such non-Apple leads all along. "

Comey issued a strong rebuttal, saying the WSJ was "simply wrong to assert that the FBI andthe Justice Department lied about [their] ability to access the San Bernardino killer's phone".

He claimed that the case had prompted "creative people around the world to see what theymight be able to do" to aid the FBI.

"I'm not embarrassed to admit that all technical creativity does not reside in government,"Comey said. "Lots of folks came to us with ideas. It looks like one of those ideas may work andthat is a very good thing. "

The court case between Apple and the FBI was suspended earlier this week when the FBI saidit had found an "outside party" that may be able to crack into the phone used by Syed Farook,one of the San Bernardino shooters, without Apple's help.

It was claimed yesterday that this helping hand is Israeli data forensics firm Cellebrite, althoughthis has not been confirmed by either party.

Lawyers from the Department of Justice are due to return to court on 5 April to state whether ornot they wish to pursue the case.

23/03/2016: Israeli company Cellebrite is the "outside party" helping the FBI break into theiPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, according to reports.

The FBI and Apple have been caught up in a legal dispute over an iPhone belonging to one ofthe shooters who killed 22 people in December 2015.

The law enforcement agency claims the device may contain important intelligence aboutpotential terrorist threats to the USA. It has asked Apple to create a custom version of iOS tobreak into the device after it became locked, allegedly after somebody in the San BernardinoCounty government reset the associated Apple ID in an attempt to gain access.

Apple has so far refused to comply with court orders to comply with the FBI's wishes, howeveron Tuesday the agency asked for a postponement of the latest court hearing, saying "an outsidesource" had demonstrated a way to break into the device without Apple's help.

Today, Israeli website Ynet News reported that Cellebrite, a company based in Petah Tikvaspecialising in data extraction, transfer and forensic analysis for mobile devices, is this thirdparty, citing "experts in the field familiar with the case".

The company has an existing relationship with the FBI to provide decryption technology as partof a contract signed in 2013, Ynet reported.

A Cellebrite spokesman and a spokesman for the FBI both declined to comment whenapproached by IT Pro .

IT Pro also contacted Apple but had not received a response at the time of publication.

22/03/2016: Less than 24 hours after Tim Cook used his iPhone SE launch keynote to reaffirmApple's commitment to the security and privacy of its customers, its court date with the FBI hasbeen postponed after the law enforcement agency announced it may not need Apple's help tocrack into the San Bernardino attackers' iPhone after all.

In the court filing requesting the postponement, the FBI said: "an outside source" haddemonstrated a way to get into the locked iPhone at the centre of the legal battle without theneed for Apple to custom write a new OS for this purpose.

"Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data onFarook's iPhone," the filing said, adding: "If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need forthe assistance from Apple. "

US Department of Justice spokeswoman Melanie Newman told BBC News the government was"cautiously optimistic" the third party's method to unlock the phone would be successful.

21/03/2016: Tim Cook used the Apple iPhone SE launch event to comment on Apple’s feudwith the FBI, claiming that Apple has “a responsibility” to oppose the government.

The statement came ahead of the company’s high-profile court clash, which begins tomorrowafter a lengthy series of hearings and public back-and-forths.

He said that Apple’s executives “owe it to our customers, and we owe it to our country” to fightfor encryption.

The company’s legal battle is an "issue that impacts all of us", Cook said, and added that Apple“did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government. "

21/03/2016: Proximity of court case to Apple Event leads to speculation

Apple CEO Tim Cook may address the company's ongoing battle with the FBI over the lockediPhone court case, with tonight's Apple Event taking place the day before witnesses are called.

Apple is widely expected to launch the smaller, cheaper iPhone SE and the iPad Air 3 during it'sMarch 21 press conference at the Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino.

On March 22 two Apple employees, chief privacy engineer Erik Neuenschwander and global lawenforcement manager Lisa Olle, will speak for the company in a requested cross-examination ofwitnesses from the government.

The fact that the two events are separated by mere hours has led to speculation as to whetherCook will mention the ongoing controversy surrounding iOS encryption alongside the launch ofApple's latest devices, with the timing not thought to be a complete coincidence.

21/03/2016: Witnesses called to locked iPhone hearing

Apple and the US Department of Justice will present witnesses for cross-examination tomorrowin the ongoing locked iPhone court case, according to Reuters .

The witnesses have already given written declarations on the legal briefs filed, an Apple lawyer

speaking on a conference call told the publication, adding that the government made a requestto cross-examine witnesses working at Apple last week.

Two Apple employees – chief privacy engineer Erik Neuenschwander and global lawenforcement manager Lisa Olle – will speak for the iPhone maker.

FBI electronics engineer Stacey Perino and supervisory special agent Christopher Pluhar will becalled up by the government.

Statements from Pluhar and Perino expand on the FBI’s attempts to recover data from thelocked iPhone through the iCloud service, via its automatic backup. The agency attempted togain access, but reset the account, meaning the latest data on the device was not uploaded intothe cloud, as it would usually have been.

However, Perino stated in her declaration that the FBI would not have been able to access thephone’s data regardless of whether the reset occurred or not.

The case will resume tomorrow, hours after Apple’s spring press conference today, where it isexpected to announce a new iPhone.

18/03/2016: Apple engineers may refuse court order, report claims

Apple engineers may quit or refuse to comply with a court order to hack an iPhone, if the USDepartment of Justice succeeds in its battle with Apple, according to the New York Times .

Apple has said in a court filing that it would require between six and 10 engineers to create whatit has dubbed ‘GovtOS’, a version of iOS that does away with a security barrier that wipes ahandset's data after 10 incorrect password attempts.

These engineers would be drawn from a number of divisions, the tech giant said.

It is unclear whether the US Department of Justice has accounted for a situation where keyApple members refuse to follow the court's instructions in the event it wins the case, but formerfederal prosecutor Joseph DeMarco told the New York Times the outcomes would likely not begood for Apple.

“If – and this is a big if – every engineer at Apple who could write the code quit and, also a big if,Apple could demonstrate that this happened to the court’s satisfaction, then Apple could notcomply and would not have to,” he said.

DeMarco added that if the engineers refused to code the OS but did not resign, Apple could beheld in contempt of court.

Riana Pfefferkorn of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society explained that iPhone makercould then face daily fines if a judge took the opinion that it was deliberately avoidingcompliance.

17/03/2016: Steve Wozniak backs Apple in ongoing fight for data privacy

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has sided with his former company in its ongoing battle withthe FBI and US Department of Justice.

The former Apple executive was asked for his thoughts on the case during a Reddit Ask MeAnything session on Tuesday and said the right to data privacy should not be relinquished.

“You know what, I have things in my head, some very special people in my life that I don't talkabout, that mean so much to me from the past. Those little things that I keep in my head are mylittle secrets. It's a part of my important world, my whole essence of my being,” he said.

“I also believe in honesty. If you tell somebody, ‘I am not snooping on you,’ or, ‘I am giving yousome level of privacy; I will not look in your drawers,’ then you should keep your word and behonest.”

Wozniak explained that undermining the iPhone’s encryption with the new code would inevitablyfall into malicious hands.

“I come from the side of personal liberties,” he said. “But there are also other problems. Twice inmy life, I wrote things that could have been viruses. I threw away every bit of source code. I justgot a chill inside. These are dangerous, dangerous things, and if some code gets written in anApple product that lets people in, bad people are going to find their way to it, very likely.”

Read Wozniak's full comments here .

16/03/2016: FBI's arguments are "an exercise in wishful thinking", says Apple

Apple has blasted the US government's legal arguments as "an exercise in wishful thinking" inthe final court filing before its court battle with the FBI.

The company said that the government's interpretation of the All Writs Act of 1789 - thelegislation law enforcement is using to strong-arm Apple into complying with its requests - "is notstatutory interpretation".

"The government seeks an order here that is neither grounded in the common law nor authorizedby statute," the brief read, explaining that for the All Writs Act to apply, an appropriate parallelmust have been established by common-law rulings.

As the government wishes to apply it, Apple contended, the act would have "no limitingprinciple". It also claimed that the government had yet to explain how there would be anydifference between "GovtOS today, and LocationTrackingOS and EavesdropOS tomorrow".

The filing claimed that the FBI and the DOJ are also attempting to use the All Writs Act tocircumvent CALEA, a pre-existing piece of legislation that limits the government's ability toconduct surveillance on civilian communications networks.

The government, in turn, has been making veiled threats about requisitioning Apple's sourcecode and signing key. This would essentially allow it to crack into any Apple product at will.

The company has said that this warning highlights "the government's fundamentalmisunderstanding or reckless disregard of the technology at issue and the security risksimplicated by its suggestion".

11/03/2016: Apple accuses FBI of smear campaign

Apple has reacted angrily to the latest court filing from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in itsongoing attempt to get the Cupertino company to help it break into a locked iPhone 5c.

In its filing, which can be read here , the DoJ said: "Apple and its amici [those who have filedamicus briefs] try to alarm this Court with issues of network security, encryption back doors, andprivacy, invoking larger debates before congress and in the news media. That is a diversion. "

It went on to accuse Apple of wishing to make its products "warrant-proof" and having"deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and aniPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans".

The DoJ also accused Apple of using "rhetoric [that is] not only false, but also corrosive", and of"extolling itself as the primary guardian of Americans' privacy". It also raised the fact Apple hasco-operated with the demands of other nations, singling out china in particular.

In response, Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and SVP of legal and government affairs,told a press conference that the filing "reads like an indictment".

"In 30 years of practice, I don't think I've ever seen a legal brief that was more intended to smearthe other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less focused on the real merits of thecase," Sewell said, according to Business Insider .

"For the first time ever, we see an allegation that Apple has deliberately made changes to blocklaw enforcement requests for access. This should be deeply offensive to everyone that reads it.An unsupported, unsubstantiated effort to vilify Apple rather than confront the issues in the case.

"We are going before court to exercise our legal rights. Everyone should beware because itseems like disagreeing with the Department of Justice means you must be evil and anti-American. Nothing could be further from the truth," Sewell concluded.

The case continues.

10/03/2016: An Apple executive fears that the FBI could eventually secretly spy on your phonecamera and microphone if it succeeds in forcing Apple to help weaken an iPhone's security.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, told broadcast Univision ( Business Insider received an English transcript from Apple): “When they can get us tocreate a new system to do new things, where will it stop?

“For example, one day [the FBI] may want us to open your phone’s camera, microphone. Thoseare things we can't do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that’s very bad.”

The significance of unlocking the single encrypted iPhone at the heart of the dispute has beenplayed down by the FBI.

Cue, however, claimed that it is the equivalent of giving them a key to the back door ofeverybody's houses.

"Since we don't have the key, they want us to change the lock," Cue said. "When we change thelatchkey, it changes for everyone. And we have a key that opens all phones. And that key, once itexists, exists not only for us. Terrorists, criminals, pirates, all too will find that key to open allphones.”

He stressed that Apple engineers are constantly working to make its devices more secure.

The current case, he suggested, should not be viewed as Apple versus the government, butinstead an example of Apple’s attempts to keep citizens safe from criminals and other maliciousagents.

“It’s Apple engineers against terrorists, against criminals. They are the people we are trying toprotect people from. We are not protecting the government," he said. "We want to help. Theyhave a very difficult job, they are there to protect us. So we want to help as much as possible, butwe can not help them in a way that will help more criminals, terrorists, pirates.”

He added that Apple would appeal the current case to the US Supreme Court if necessary.

07/03/2016: US Justice Dept asks New York court to overturn pro-Apple ruling

The US Justice Department has asked a New York court to reverse a pro-Apple ruling that couldthreaten the FBI's position in the ongoing encryption dispute.

US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled in late February that the tech company was notrequired to open an iPhone involved in a routine narcotics case.

In a 45-page brief, the Justice Department asked a federal court in Brooklyn to overturn thedecision, stating that it sets "an unprecedented limitation" on its judicial authority.

In both Orenstein's drugs case and the investigation into the San Bernardino shootings, which isat the centre of the FBI's request for Apple to help it break into the device, the government hasattempted to use the All Writs Act to compel Apple to divulge information kept on the devices.

However, while federal judges have sided with the FBI regarding the San Bernardino case byordering the company to render "reasonable technical assistance" to investigators, JudgeOrenstein has not.

Instead, he ruled that using the All Writs Act to force access to the device would "thoroughlyundermine fundamental principles of the Constitution".

The government has also argued that while the San Bernardino case would involve Apple writingcustom software to bypass security features, the New York drugs trial involved pre-establisheddata extraction methods that have already been used in previous cases.

07/03/2016: FBI wants us to turn back the clock on security, says Apple VP

Apple has accused the FBI of trying to undo years of security advancements for the iPhone.

Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at the tech giant, said that byreturning to iOS 7 security standards, hackers would be well-poised to hack into people'siPhones.

In a comment piece for the Washington Post , he said: “Our team must work tirelessly to stayone step ahead of criminal attackers who seek to pry into personal information and even co-optdevices to commit broader assaults that endanger us all.

“That’s why it’s so disappointing that the FBI, Justice Department and others in law enforcementare pressing us to turn back the clock to a less-secure time and less-secure technologies. Theyhave suggested that the safeguards of iOS 7 were good enough and that we should simply goback to the security standards of 2013.

“But the security of iOS 7, while cutting-edge at the time, has since been breached by hackers.What’s worse, some of their methods have been productised and are now available for sale toattackers who are less skilled but often more malicious.”

Since iOS 8, Apple has included device-specific encryption methods but claims the FBI woulderase this by rolling back to a previous operating system.

The law enforcement agency wants Apple to assist it in removing a security barrier on theiPhone of Syed Farook, one of the people responsible for killing 14 people in San Bernardinolast year.

Apple - and other Silicon Valley firms - believe that setting such a precedent would harmAmerican citizens, and is fighting the case in a California court and Congress.

Federighi added that while Apple’s software engineers are not always perfect in their work,“identifying and fixing those problems are critical parts of our mission to keep customers safe.Doing anything to hamper that mission would be a serious mistake".

Meanwhile, the judge overseeing the court battle between the two organisations has heard thatcriminals have been switching to the newer iPhone models as their “device of choice” to commitoffences thanks to the tough encryption present in each handset.

The US Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and two other bodies said in a courtfiling that they were aware of “numerous instances” of criminals who previously used throwaway‘burner phones’ switching to iPhones, Reuters reported.

No specific instances were listed in the documents the group presented.

However, it cited a prison phone call recorded by New York authorities in 2015, where an inmatecalled Apple’s encrypted operating system a “gift from God”.

04/03/2016: DA claims iPhone was "cyber pathogen" trigger

The iPhone at the centre of the Apple-FBI dispute may have been used to release a " cyberpathogen" on the infrastructure of San Bernardino, according to the District Attorney for thecounty.

A court brief spotted by Ars Technica , and filed by San Bernardino DA Michael Ramos, read:

"The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it wasused as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San BernardinoCounty's infrastructure. "

The iPhone 5c is owned by the county, which issued it as a work phone to Syed Farook, one ofthe two San Bernardino shooters responsible for killing 14 people.

Apple is fighting back against the FBI's demand that it create an alternative operating system forthe iPhone, so the agency can try as many passwords as possible on the phone withouttriggering the device's in-built security barrier that wipes its data after 10 incorrect passwordattempts.

However, the DA did not refer to any proof to back up his suspicions, and the county told Ars thatit had nothing to do with filing the brief.

An iPhone forensics expert, Jonathan Zdziarski, told Ars : " This reads as an amicus designedto mislead the courts into acting irrationally in an attempt to manipulate a decision in the FBI'sfavor. "

The news comes after the UN High Commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein,said the FBI's efforts to compel Apple to bypass the iPhone's security barrier could harmmillions of people.

He said in a statement : " In order to address a security-related issue related to encryption inone case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandora’s Box that could have extremely damagingimplications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financialsecurity. "

" A successful case against Apple in the US will set a precedent that may make it impossible forApple or any other major international IT company to safeguard their clients’ privacy anywhere inthe world,” the UN human rights chief added. “It is potentially a gift to authoritarian regimes, aswell as to criminal hackers.

"There have already been a number of concerted efforts by authorities in other States to force ITand communications companies such as Google and Blackberry to expose their customers tomass surveillance.”

Earlier today, dozens of Silicon Valley tech firms backed Apple's stance against the FBI, sayingits request to bypass security would harm American citizens.

04/03/2016: Apple vs FBI: Silicon Valley stands firm behind Apple

Google, Microsoft, Box and dozens of other tech giants have backed Apple in its battle againstthe FBI over weakening iPhone security.

The Silicon Valley giants filed a legal brief yesterday to call on a judge to support Apple’s refusalto bypass a security feature that wipes iPhone data after 10 incorrect passwords.

The FBI wants Apple to help it access the iPhone 5c that belonged to San Bernardino shooterSyed Farook.

Facebook, Dropbox, Cisco and Yahoo also signed the legal brief, which their lawyers submittedto the district court of California, ahead of a hearing on 22 March.

It read : “[These firms] here speak with one voice because of the singular importance of thiscase to them and their customers who trust [them] to safeguard their data and most sensitivecommunications from attackers.

“[They are] united in their view that the government’s order to Apple exceeds the bounds ofexisting law and, when applied more broadly, will harm Americans’ security in the long run.”

Various other amicus briefs – which allow outside persons to comment on legal cases - came

from other tech firms and privacy campaigners, while relatives of San Bernardino victims filedlegal briefs opposed to Apple’s stance.

The FBI wants Apple to write a new version of its operating system that would mean the iPhonewould not wipe its data after 10 incorrect password attempts.

Both sides made opening speeches to Congress last week, with the FBI comparing the securitybarrier to a “vicious guard dog”, while Apple claimed that bypassing the feature would weakenthe security of all American citizens.

The FBI admitted it had asked the California county to reset the password on Farook’s phone,meaning that the device did not send a fresh data backup to Apple’s servers though the FBIclaimed it would not have got all relevant data from the device.

Box founder Aaron Levie was the latest to call for a public discussion of the issue, saying afterthe legal briefs were filed: “Asking Apple to break or weaken its security features underminesour collective trust in technology in the digital age. Instead, we need an open, public dialoguefocused on helping us collectively strike the right balance between privacy and security. "

Amazon, which also signed a legal brief against breaking the iPhone's encryption, has droppedencryption support from its latest Fire OS.

02/03/2016: Apple vs FBI: Conflict moves from courts to Congress

Apple and the FBI have butted heads in Congress as the feud over a shooter’s locked iPhonehas grown into a debate about national security versus civil liberties.

The opposing sides made their opening remarks to a congressional judiciary panel on Tuesday,the Associated Press reported .

“We’re asking Apple to take the vicious guard dog away and let us pick the lock,” FBI directorJames Comey told the panel, referring to the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernadino shooterSyed Farook, who helped kill 14 people.

“The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products,” Apple general counsel BruceSewell responded later that afternoon.

“Is it the right thing to make our society overall less safe in order to solve crime? That’s the issuethat we're wrestling with.”

Comey admitted the FBI had made a mistake just after the San Bernardino attack when it askedthe county – which owned the phone – to reset the password for the perpetrator’s iCloudaccount. That data, stored on Apple servers, held backups of the phone. Had the password notbeen reset, the phone may have made a fresh backup available to investigators for furtherinspection.

“The experts tell me there's no way we would have gotten everything off the phone from abackup,” Comey added.

Tuesday’s hearing moved the debate from the courts to Congress, where both sides agree thelarger policy deliberation belongs.

However, in the past month, judges have issued conflicting opinions on whether or notcompanies should help law enforcement break encryption.

On Monday, a federal judge in Brooklyn, US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, said thegovernment could not force Apple to help it gain access to a phone in a drug case, saying thatrelying on the ancient All Writs Act would produce “impermissibly absurd results”.

But in California, Judge Sheri Pym instructed Apple to help the FBI crack the locked iPhoneused by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings, last December. Apple filed anappeal against this ruling late on Tuesday night.

Following these two conflicting rulings, Comey said Congress must address the wider collisionbetween privacy and public safety.

29/02/2016: New York case could set tone for California rematch

In a significant turn of events, a judge in New York has ruled Apple cannot be forced to unlock aniPhone, deeming that such an action under the All Writs Act would likely be unconstitutional.

The case, which involves an iPhone retrieved as part of a drugs investigation, is similar to theone Apple is currently fighting in California, where judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LAruled Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to FBI investigators who want togain access to the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

In both cases, the government has used a catch-all piece of legislation known as the All WritsAct to attempt to compel Apple to break its own security protocols. In the case of the SanBernardino iPhone, this means writing a custom version of iOS. However, while judge Pym in LAhas looked favourably on the FBI's request, judge James Orenstein in New York has not.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation campaign group said of the ruling: "It's a significant rejectionof the government's interpretation of the All Writs Act, which prosecutors have advanced inmultiple jurisdictions across the country. "

"While the government has argued that its extraordinary invocation of the All Writs Act is notintended to set a precedent, judge Orenstein properly recognises what is at stake. In particular,he casts shade on the very constitutionality of the government's interpretation, describing it asvirtually unbounded," it added.

It is unclear, however, what effect, if any, the New York ruling will have on the California case.Amicus briefs are set to be filed within the next 72 hours in LA, with oral evidence being heardwithin the coming weeks.

26/02/2016: Microsoft has become the latest company to announce its support for Apple in itsfight against the FBI's demands the company unlocks an iPhone belonging to San Bernardinokiller Syed Farook.

At a hearing on Thursday, Microsoft's chief legal officer said the company will file an amicusbrief - also known as a friend of the court brief - next week in support of Apple, according to Bloomberg. The news outlet also said Alphabet - Google's parent company - and Facebookplan to file a separate brief, citing "people familiar with the matter", while Twitter has publiclysaid it will also be filing an amicus brief.

Bloomberg reports that during Thursday's hearing Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chieflegal officer, told the court: "Every case has implications for others. " Microsoft is itself embroiledin a court battle with an unnamed US law enforcement agency, thought to be the FBI, which isseeking to access email data held in the company's Dublin data centre. In a mirror image of theiPhone case, Apple came out in support of Microsoft, along with a number of other tech giants.

Microsoft's move to support Apple is, however, in contrast to statements made by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on 23 February, where he claimed: "nobody's asking for a backdoor".

25/02/2016: Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the FBI wants his company to create "the softwareequivalent of cancer".

The tech giant is currently embroiled in a fierce battle with the agency over the iPhone of SanBernardino killer Syed Farook, which Apple has been court-ordered to help the FBI gain accessto.

In an interview with ABC News , Cook reiterated his claims that Apple has "passed all of theinformation that we have on the phone".

He stated that the only way to get any further data "would be to write a piece of software that we

view as sort of the equivalent of cancer".

"We think it's bad news to write," he said. "We would never write it. We have never written it. "

The proposed software, he warned, would be "bad for America", and went on to say "this caseis not about one phone... this case is about the future. "

"If a court can ask us to write this piece of software, think about what else they could ask us towrite," Cook explained. "Maybe it's an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability forthe law enforcement to turn on the camera".

"I don't know where this stops. But I do know that this is not what should be happening in thiscountry. "

"Some things are hard, and some things are right, and some things are both," he said. "This isone of those things. "

25/02/2016: Apple wants Congress to decide iPhone dispute

Apple will tell a US federal judge this week that its argument with the FBI over cracking a lockedand encrypted iPhone should be decided by Congress, rather than the courts, according to areport by The Associated Press.

Apple will also contest that the court order for it to help hack the iPhone, which belonged to oneof the San Bernardino attackers, is invalid under the 1789 All Writs Act, which has been used inthe past to compel companies to provide assistance to law enforcement.

Judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LA ordered Apple last week to create specialisedsoftware to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone used by one of the perpetrators of the massshootings in San Bernardino, California, last December.

Apple has not yet made any filings in the case because the US Justice Department asked themagistrate to rule before Apple had an opportunity to dispute.

However, according to the AP , the company intends to argue in its legal papers that the 1789law has never been used to coerce a company to write software to assist the government.

Michael Zweiback, the former chief of the cybercrimes section of the US Attorney’s Office in LosAngeles and a former prosecutor, told the AP it was very unusual for the US government to askApple to give the FBI specialised software that would weaken the protections on the iPhone.

“There’s a significant legal question as to whether the All Writs Act can be used to order acompany to create something that may not presently exist,” Zweiback said.

Speaking about the implications on data privacy the case could have, he added: “We are not theonly ones who are asking for encryption keys," he said. "The Chinese government has madesimilar demands upon them, the European Union has made similar demands upon them, so theimplications are really not even national. They’re international in scope.”

However, Josh Earnest, a spokesman for The White House, said: “Sending complicated thingsto Congress is often not the surest way to get a quick answer. In fact, even asking some of themost basic questions of Congress sometimes does not ensure a quick answer.”

23/02/2016: Apple vs FBI: Bill Gates calls for calm in iPhone encryption row

Bill Gates has dismissed claims the FBI wants a backdoor into Apple's iPhone as overblown.

Apple has defied a court order demanding the company help the FBI unlock the iPhone of SyedRizwan Farook, who killed 14 people and injured 22 in a shooting in California.

The Microsoft founder has now called into question Apple CEO Tim Cook's claims that creatingsoftware to bypass a security barrier on the phone would set a "dangerous precedent", andcalled for a sensible discussion around the issue.

"Nobody's talking about a backdoor", Gates told the Financial Times. "This is a specific casewhere the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some generalthing, they are asking for a particular case".

He likened the case to government agents requesting access to phone or banking records,stating "there's no difference between information".

A fierce debate has been ignited over whether or not Apple should comply with the FBI'srequests. Silicon Valley has largely closed ranks around the company, with multiple prominentindustry figures speaking up in the company's defense.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have both offered varyingdegrees of support for Apple's position, with the latter stating at MWC 2016 that his company is"sympathetic with Apple. "

Gates' own Microsoft has also indicated that it sides against the government on this occasion.Multiple spokespeople pointed to a statement from the Reform Government Surveillance group -of which Microsoft is a member - that backs Apple up.

The group demands that limits are set to the US government's capacity to collect data and that itoperates under better oversight and accountability.

22/02/2016: Tim Cook calls for data privacy discussion in internal memo

Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an internal email to staff reasserting his refusal of a federal courtorder to assist the FBI in cracking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino gunmen.

The FBI had obtained the court order to force Apple to help it bypass a security barrier thatwould have wiped the data on the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people in asuspected terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December, after 10 incorrect attempts.

In the memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News , Cook thanked Apple employees and the public forthe support the company has received in the days since its refusal hit the headlines.

He said that though Apple has no sympathy for terrorists, “the data security of hundreds ofmillions of law-abiding people” is what is at stake, and would set “a dangerous precedent thatthreatens everyone’s civil liberties”.

“Apple is a uniquely American company. It does not feel right to be on the opposite side of thegovernment in a case centering on the freedoms and liberties that government is meant toprotect,” Cook wrote.

The CEO called on the US government to withdraw its demand under the All Writs Act and hasencouraged an open discussion between intelligence, technology and privacy experts on theimplications for national security, privacy, and personal freedom.

Cook added that Apple would gladly participate in such a discussion.

According to him, members of congress want Apple to backtrack its data protection to iOS 7,undoing significant encryption changes it established with iOS 8.

“Starting with iOS 8, we began encrypting data in a way that not even the iPhone itself can readwithout the user’s passcode, so if it is lost or stolen, our personal data, conversations, financialand health information are far more secure. We all know that turning back the clock on thatprogress would be a terrible idea,” Cook wrote.

In tandem with the internal memo, Apple has today published a Q&A to answer questionspeople may have about its case with the FBI.

In the Q&A, the company underlines its commitment to protect its customers' data and alsorefutes arguments by the FBI claiming that unlocking the iPhone is not a big deal.

Apple is required to provide a formal response to its court order by the end of the week.

19/02/2016: McAfee offers to unlock iPhone for FBI in three weeks

Maverick cybersecurity legend John McAfee has offered to his services in helping the FBI unlockan iPhone that was used by one of the San Bernardino killers.

In an op-ed in Business Insider , McAfee said that the FBI doesn't "have the talent" to crack theiPhone.

"They don't have the personnel. And how could they? We're talking people with purple mohawks,face tattoos. They smoke weed all day long! Things that could keep them from working with thegovernment," he said.

McAfee insisted that he was on the side of Apple in its fight, but said his actions wold help bothsides.

"I have friends," he said. "They can tell you what the operating system is doing, in short order. "

"They are all prodigies with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75 percentare social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the NeilCavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pureand simple fact.

He said he would offer the services of his team free of charge.

"We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks," he said.

"If you accept my offer you will not need to ask Apple to place a backdoor in its product, whichwould be the beginning of the end of America.

"If you doubt my credentials, Google 'cybersecurity legend' and see whose name is the onlyname that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million. "

18/02/2016: Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns FBI's iPhone backdoor would set a "troublingprecedent"

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has backed Apple’s refusal to help the FBI bypass the iPhone’sbuilt-in security.

Apple boss Tim Cook plans to fight a court order he argues would compel his firm to build abackdoor into the iPhone.

The FBI obtained the order to get Apple’s help cracking an iPhone 5c belonging to Syed RizwanFarook, who killed 14 people in a suspected terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December.

But Google’s Pichai said Cook is right to challenge the court order, saying creating a backdoorinto the iPhone’s encryption could create wider risks to data protection.

In a series of tweets calling such a move a “troubling precedent”, he said: “Forcing companies toenable hacking could compromise users’ privacy.

“We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access todata based on valid legal orders. But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enablehacking of customer devices & data.”

The technical assistance the FBI has asked for would enable it to remove the iPhone’s ability towipe its data after 10 failed password attempts.

Cook called for a public discussion about the issue, claiming such a move would threaten Applecustomers’ security.

Whatsapp’s founder, Jan Koum, also came out in support of Apple’s stance, writing in a

Facebook post that “we must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set”, saying it would putpeople’s freedom and liberty at risk”.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) applauded Apple’s defiance of thecourt order and accused the US government of trying to create a “master key” to Apple devicesthat goes beyond the scope of needing access to a single iPhone.

“Once that master key is created, we're certain that our government will ask for it again andagain, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacityto offer strong security,” an EFF statement read.

Read more about why the FBI's request for a backdoor could spell trouble for your privacy here

17/02/16: Apple defies order to unlock San Bernardino shooter's iPhone

Apple has been ordered to disable some of the key security features of an iPhone 5c belongingto one of the San Bernardino shooters by a judge in Los Angeles.

However, the Cupertino-based company is refusing to comply.

Judge Sheri Pym of the US District Court in LA ruled Apple must provide "reasonable technicalassistance" to FBI investigators working on the San Bernardino case , which saw 14 peoplekilled and 22 others injured by Syed Rizwan Farook, to whom the iPhone belonged, andTachfeen Malik, his wife.

Such technical assistance includes helping the FBI to guess Farook's passcode and removingthe device's auto-erase function, which kicks in when the wrong passcode has been entered 10times.

Prosecutors acting on behalf of the FBI said: "Apple has the exclusive means which would assistthe government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily. "Despite the ruling, however, Apple continues to refuse to comply.

In an open letter to customers , CEO Tim Cook said: "The United States government hasdemanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of ourcustomers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.

"This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around thecountry to understand what is at stake. "

Cook went on to explain the need for strong encryption, saying that "compromising the securityof our personal data can ultimately put our personal safety at risk".

In direct reference to the San Bernardino case, he said Apple has "no sympathy for terrorists"and has aided the FBI both in the immediate wake of the attack and provided data subsequentlyto the agency that was in the company's possession in response to what it describes as validsubpoenas and search warrants.

"We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions aregood. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the lawto help them," said Cook. "But now the U. S. government has asked us for something we simplydo not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. "

He continued: "Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operatingsystem, circumventing several important security features... in the wrong hands, this software —which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’sphysical possession. "

Cook contends that the implications are far-reaching and could undermine "the very freedomsand liberty our government is meant to protect".

"The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version

of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while thegovernment may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guaranteesuch control," he said.

The case is very reminiscent of an ongoing court battle in New York between Microsoft and anunnamed US law enforcement agency - widely thought to be the FBI - regarding email data heldin its Dublin datacentre.

Both Apple and Microsoft have also been strongly opposed to attempts in the UK to underminedata security through the Investigatory Powers Bill - commonly known as the Snooper's Charter .

The case continues.

2016-04-18 00:00 Jane McCallion www.itpro.co.uk

47 Wozniak: Uber doesn't pay its drivers enough money

Uber is not looking out for the wellbeing of itsdrivers, according to Steve Wozniak.

The Apple co-founder told press at the FutureTransport Summit in Sydney today that heharbours concerns about the tech company’streatment of its workforce, as reported byMashable .

"Like a lot of people, I have some distrust of Uberand how their drivers don’t really realise at firstthat they aren't making much money… maybelosing money on the wear and tear of their cars," said Wozniak.

Wozniak claimed that Uber’s freelancer drivers who effectively run its taxi-hailing business mayhave it particularly rough.

"Uber will push their workforce down to the absolute lowest minimum wage that they can getaway with," he said.

"That's how I think of Uber - not very nice thoughts," he explained. "I want to use Lyft instead ofUber when I can now. "

Lyft is a competing ridesharing service currently available in major US cities including New York,Austin and Washington DC, but it is not yet available in Australia or the UK.

Greater competition in the taxi-hailing and ridesharing space is something Wozniak said hewould like to see. "I would rather there be a lot of competitive forces. I'd like there to be four orfive choices that are like Uber anywhere you go," he said. "It's a little disappointing to me andsad that we don't have that. "

David Rohrsheim, general manager of Uber in Australia, contested Wozniak’s claims, saying:"More than 20,000 [driver-partners in Australia] monthly are putting money in the bank accountusing Uber, and they've got complete flexibility to log on as much or as little as they want to.That's the number one thing drivers come to the platform for.

"It has to be a good deal for partners or otherwise they won't use the platform. "

Uber has become the best-known service of its kind in developed countries. However, servicessuch as Lyft in the US, and taxi hailing app Hailo in the UK, are offering alternatives. Meanwhile,German company Car2Go is the largest car sharing company in Europe.

Meanwhile, Uber has faced troubles in its expansion plans, some of them related to Wozniak’scriticisms.

It closed its ridesharing franchise, UberPop , in Brussels last year following heavy criticism.Meanwhile two of its former employees have faced charges of allegedly operating itsridesharing business in France illegally.

Image: Flickr-CC/Campus Party Bogotá/Carlos Mario Rios

2016-04-18 00:00 Aaron Lee www.itpro.co.uk

48 Doom multiplayer open beta has been extended

If you've enjoyed lobbing rockets at garishlycoloured space marines this weekend, thenhere's welcome news: the Doom open beta hasbeen extended by a day. The announcementcomes via Bethesda's official Twitter account,which specified that the beta will now closeat 11:59pm ET. on April 18. That's about 9amEST in Australia.

I've played only a tiny bit of the beta and thought itwas decent, though I was disappointed that I

couldn't run at the same speed as my rockets. The game is raising ire among Steam users ,with most objecting to the loadout and progression systems, as well as the perks. The gist of itis: it's not enough like the Doom of old.

Still, now's a better time than ever to make that decision for yourself. Evan wrote about thegame's guns a couple of weeks ago, and here's a more general round of impressions basedon the closed beta. Doom releases on May 13.

2016-04-17 23:50 Shaun Prescott www.pcgamer.com

49 Mod lets your XCOM 2 soldiers have time-traveling children

This week on the Mod Roundup, your XCOM 2soldiers can hook up with each other, sort of, andhave babies, sort of, and then the babies willtime-travel from the future as fully grownadults and join your squad. (Look, sex in the alienapocalypse is a little complicated, okay?) Also,Skyrim's cities and towns get a massive overhauland brand new citizens, and Fallout 4'sconvenient quickloot system comes to Fallout:New Vegas.

Here are the most promising mods we've seenthis week.

Joe recently wrote about an XCOM 2 mod that promotes relationship building for yoursquad members. The same modder has expanded on that premise by allowing your soldiers tohook up with each other and make babies. And, thanks to a time machine, the kids can then joinyour squad as fully grown adults. Why the hell not? Stranger things have happened.

This overhaul, years in the making, focuses on Skyrim's cities, expanding and sometimes evenrebuilding them from the ground up to make them bigger and more densely populated. Thereare more settlements and forts, a bunch of new named NPCs with their own stories andschedules, and even new books that expand on the lore and history of Skyrim. The video aboveshows some of the changes.

Nexus Mods link

The convenient quickloot system from Fallout 4, which we saw modded into Skyrim recently ,has also been modded into Fallout: New Vegas. You no longer have to open a container to seewhat's inside, and the mod is fully customizable: you resize and reposition the quickloot pane,and it will match your custom HUD color. Thanks to Owen at Polygon for the tip!

2016-04-17 18:15 Christopher Livingston www.pcgamer.com

Total 49 articles.

Created at 2016-04-18 18:01