Latest Technology News

Companies face the possibility of security breaches from many different sources, which means they must constantly react to new threats.

New player in the security field Balbix aims to put security professionals ahead of the game with the launch of its predictive breach-risk platform. It can be used to predict top breach scenarios, prioritize security fixes and provide risk insights to prevent security incidents before attacks happen.

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New evidence has emerged detailing Russia's attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election. A leaked, top secret NSA report shared by the Intercept reveals that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the manufacturer of US voting systems.

The Intercept says that the authenticity of the documents has been independently verified, and they show a concerted Russian effort to sway the result of the battle between Trump and Clinton. Following the leak, a government contractor called Reality Leigh Winner has been arrested for allegedly removing classified material from a government facility in Georgia.

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The highest performing organizations have automated 72 percent of all configuration management processes. And those same high performers spend much less time (28 percent) in manual configuration processes that stall innovation and deployments.

In comparison, low performers are spending almost half of their time (46 percent) on manual configuration. These are among the findings of the latest State of DevOps Report by Puppet, which surveyed 3,200 respondents from organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries.

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With the arrival of any new operating system, the focus tends to be on what has been added and what has been improved. But it's also important to keep an eye on what has been removed, and this is true of Apple's newly announced iOS 11.

One of the things to have been removed from the upcoming version of Apple's mobile OS is social media integration. Specifically, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo have been dropped from Settings, meaning that these services will no longer be able to offer an easy way to sign into apps and services using social media accounts.

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Elon Musk thinks he can increase the speed of his Tesla production line in Fremont, California by 20X. I find this an astonishing concept, but Musk not only owns a car company, he also owns the company that makes the robots used in his car factory. So who am I to say he’s wrong? And if he’s right, well then the implications for everything from manufacturing to the economy to geopolitics to ICBM targeting to your retirement and mine are profound. We may be in trouble or maybe we’re not, but either way it’s going to be an interesting ride.

My friend Jerry Kew from the UK brought this article to my attention in which Elon Musk says he expects to increase the speed of his Tesla production line from the current five centimeters per second to one meter per second. Here’s Jerry’s back-of-the-envelope calculation of what this means:

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Yesterday at WWDC 2017 Apple not only announced details of iOS 11, the company also unveiled a completely redesigned App Store. Central to the entire iOS experience, the change is due to arrive later in the year, and when we say it's a complete redesign, we mean it's a complete redesign.

It goes without saying that Apple refers to the redesign as "beautiful," and the extreme makeover is something that has been a long time coming. But while the look of the store is markedly different to its current incarnation, it is still somewhat familiar. It borrows style ideas from iOS 10's Music and News apps.

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Apple makes terrible mice, but boy, oh boy, the company makes a mean keyboard. The iPhone-maker understands how to create a quality typing experience -- including on its laptops. Its wireless Magic Keyboard is a personal favorite for both macOS and Windows.

Unfortunately, the company has made buying their keyboards a tough affair. You see, it produces both wired and wireless variants, but only the former has a numeric keypad. In other words, you had to choose between having a wireless keyboard and having a number pad. Today this changes, however, as Apple releases the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. The company released it quietly, which is understandable, as it made many announcements during WWDC today.

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Ever since the first iPad was released back in 2010, people have dreamed about replacing their laptop with the tablet. The big draw, of course, was not having to carry a heavy and bulky notebook. At the time, many such portable computers were quite thick and heavy, making them a chore to lug around. Even though there are much thinner and lighter notebooks nowadays, the dream of replacing them with an iPad remains; even more since the release of iPad Pro.

Earlier today, Apple announced new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro tablets. While the company makes its own keyboard case for these slates, that hasn't stopped third-party companies from making arguably superior offerings. Today, Logitech unveils its latest such keyboard cases for the newest iPad Pro models. Called "Slim Combo," it will protect your iPad Pro while also making it a powerful laptop -- it even has a place to hold the Apple Pencil. The keyboard is removable, so you can use the iPad as a traditional tablet without removing the tablet from the case. It even draws its power from the Smart Connector, meaning no need for batteries!

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Hadoop, for all its strengths, is not without its difficulties. Business needs specialized skills, data integration, and budget all need to factor into planning and implementation. Even when this happens, a large percentage of Hadoop implementations fail.

To help others avoid common mistakes with Hadoop, I asked our consulting services and enterprise support teams to share their experiences working with organizations to develop, design and implement complex big data, business analytics or embedded analytics initiatives. These are their top seven mistakes, and some advice on how to avoid them.

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When Amazon released the Echo hardware and Alexa voice assistant, no one knew for sure how successful it would be. Since the release, however, it has proven wildly popular -- not only with users, but with developers and hardware-makers too. There are many devices that work with Alexa, not to mention, countless skills.

Following Echo being a runaway success, Google copied it with its Home assistant. Curiously absent in this copying, however, was Apple. Since the company already has a voice assistant with Siri, it seemed like creating a hardware speaker would be a no-brainer. Sadly, one did not surface -- until now. Today, Apple announces the product for which many people were clamoring -- HomePod. Unfortunately for the company, the product will be a tough sell.

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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is traditionally about software, but that certainly isn’t the case this year as the tech giant has refreshed its Mac line, and introduced a new HomePod speaker.

Apple today also introduces all-new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros powered by a new A10X Fusion chip that Apple says "delivers incredible performance that rivals today’s fastest PC laptops" -- a clear dig at Microsoft.

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At WWDC 2017, Apple has lifted the wraps of the next version of its mobile operating system. iOS 11 introduces a lot of new features, including improvements to Siri, Apple Photos, Apple Maps, and Apple Pay, a redesigned Control Center, a new Augmented Reality feature, and more.

With Siri, Apple is introducing improved voices that sound more natural, and the digital assistant will be able to perform language translations. English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish will all be supported. Siri will also be able to make suggestions of things that might be of interest to you -- such a news article -- via a new on-device "Intelligence" feature.

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It's WWDC 2017 and if there is one thing that you can count on is Apple showing off the new versions of its main operating systems. So, today, we catch a glimpse of macOS High Sierra, which is shaping up to be a pretty impressive upgrade over its predecessor, macOS Sierra.

There are a couple of notable new features in macOS High Sierra, namely the introduction of Apple File System, VR support, a better browsing experience in Safari, faster graphics, and improved video support.

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UK companies were hit with fines totaling over £3.2m last year after falling foul of data protection laws, a new report reveals.

Analysis of figures from the ICO by PwC found that the 35 fines handed out in 2016 were almost double of  the previous year, despite repeated warning that the new GDPR regulations are just a year away.

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When Apple unveiled the newest MacBook Pro laptops in October of 2016, some people were upset that they didn't come with 7th-generation Intel Kaby Lake processors. Instead, the company opted for the 6th-gen chips. One big issue with this is that the memory was limited to DDR3 rather than the newest DDR4. Despite these shortcomings, the machines sold well -- they were hard to come by for quite some time after launch.

Today, Apple finally refreshes the MacBook Pro machines with the latest such Intel processors. But that is not all. In addition to the Pro laptop, the company is delivering Kaby Lake to the newest MacBook (non-pro) and iMac computers too. Surprisingly, the MacBook Air gets a little speed bump to 1.8GHz.

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