BetaNews Staff

Bitcoin remains one of the hottest financial topics of the last several years. The digital currency grew from less than $1,000 per coin at the start of 2017, to nearly $20,000 by the end of the year.

The buzz around Bitcoin continues to grow despite high volatility -- including a 50 percent drop between December and January -- and condemnation from figures like Warren Buffet who call it a "fraud." But how is it being used? And most important, what value does it really hold as an investment?

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If you have a large garden in need of a re-design, this can end up costing far more than you realize. Factor in a landscape designer, hiring a horticulturist and builders to lay paving flags, the costs soon add up.

You might be tempted to tackle this yourself. Problem is, you still need to hire a designer to interpret your ideas and, frankly, this might not save you much money at all.

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Machine learning (ML) is getting a lot of attention these days. Search engines that autocomplete, sophisticated Uber transportation scheduling and recommendations from social sites and online storefronts are just a few of the daily events that ML technologies make possible.

Cybersecurity is another area where ML is having a big impact and providing many benefits. For instance, ML can help security analysts shorten response times and dramatically improve accuracy when deciding if a security alert is an actual threat or just a benign anomaly. Many view ML as the primary answer to help save organizations from the severe shortage of skilled security professionals, and the best tool to protect companies from future data breaches.

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Many of us rely on free basic security, thinking that it offers comprehensive protection against the latest threats. Indeed, many free security tools do not include real-time protection, only running on demand.

With the rise of ransomware, it’s proving to be an easy way to obtain a quick release fee from individuals. No-one wants to lose their data and, if you work from home, you cannot afford to spend time trying to recover your data or paying for a professional to fix your PC. Many will pay the ransom to secure their encrypted data.

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Does your business or department still work with paper documents? In the information age, this practice has become profoundly anachronistic and usually a sign of business practices being left in the dust by the wheel of progress. Some companies do it because they’re afraid that making a change will disrupt the flow of business, others don’t want to retrain everyone and a few tell themselves that physical documents are more secure than an online document management system. If your reason is that last one, you could be falling for one of the most common security mistakes in the business world.

Among network and security professionals, the idea that avoiding well-traveled security methods and tools leads to a more secure system is a well-known logical fallacy called "Security through Obscurity." While paper documents and locked filing cabinets used to be the mainstream way, now holding out against digitization not only makes you an anachronism, it could be putting your private information at unnecessary risk.

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In its recent State of the Channel Ransomware Report, data protection firm Datto found that SMBs ponied up some $301 million to digital hostage takers over the course of the past year. According to the survey that claims to have spoken to some 1,700 MSPs, representing over 100,000 clients, 21 percent stated that their clients suffered six or more attacks last year.

Simply put, roughly one in five organizations were victims of ransomware. However more disturbing was that 99 percent of MSPs told researchers that they expect to see the rise in ransomware attacks continue to grow over the next two years.

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There are so many options out there for finding and booking a discounted hotel. Indeed, there are websites which will attempt to collate various booking options to pull together the best deals in a single location.

Although it’s great to obtain a discount from your hotel (and let’s face it here, if you call the hotel direct, you’ll often be able to negotiate your own deal), we want a website which pulls together feedback from people who have stayed in the hotel, take this feedback seriously, providing a good deal on the back of this.
Tablet Hotels has recently become our go-to booking site of choice having had had a very pleasant experience booking a hotel in Williamsburg, New York. At the last minute, we had to push back our flight due to bad weather in Texas, but Tablet took these circumstances into account and negotiated with the hotel to rearrange our last minute plans to accommodate. No cancellation or changes fees, at all. When we arrived at the hotel, we found Tablet had added its Plus feature automatically to our booking so were offered a room upgrade, free gifts and a (very) late checkout option.

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New data-driven services, strong light-weight materials and a rapidly built out infrastructure for EVs (Electric Vehicles) are trends impacting the automotive industry throughout 2018.

Stefan Issing, the Global Industry Director for Automotive at IFS, presents his industry predictions for the year ahead.

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On December 14, 2017 the United States Federal Communications voted to end Net Neutrality. In other words, they are reversing a 2015 FCC vote to classify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as "common carriers" rather than "information providers" according to Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

As common carriers, ISPs must provide equal access to all consumers and all businesses on all devices. They cannot throttle traffic, or block certain web sites, or charge more for consumers to access specific URLs such as www.amazon.com, www.netflix.com, or www.washingtonpost.com.

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2017 delivered a good deal of excitement (as well as massive, massive headaches) in IT security. WannaCry attacked more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries only to be followed by Petya a month later. And the pain extended beyond the enterprise when consumers bore the brunt of one of the most devastating hacks to hit the U.S.: the Equifax breach. The Equifax hack reportedly affected 145.5 million U.S. consumers -- or approximately 44 percent of the U.S. population -- leaving people vulnerable to financial fraud for potentially the rest of their lives.

These were just some of the year’s lowlights, all of which point to a future where nearly every organization is reliant on successful cybersecurity. It can literally mean the difference between a company’s survival and extension. As such, 2018 should be all about advancing enterprise security initiatives, and below are my top predictions to ensure the integrity of systems across the globe.

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There are two types of businesses in today’s mobile-first world: businesses that have a mobile app and those that do not. The one thing that these two sides have in common is that both are looking towards progressive web apps (PWAs) and wondering what the impact of this new app experience will be and how it will change the mobile world.

Businesses that have already invested in developing a native mobile app are looking at PWAs cautiously. While these new apps represent a new frontier to be explored and leveraged to improve and expand on an existing app experience, they also have the potential to elbow native apps out of the spotlight. Thus, these companies may find that their investment into a native app was not as long-term as they anticipated.

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As children, most of us learned the hard way not to touch a hot stove. The instant searing pain and the lingering bite that followed and lasted for at least a couple days is the bitter reminder that we had messed up. But ask yourself, have you touched a hot stove since?

The lesson learned here still follows us throughout our lives because learning from failure is the quickest path to growth. The first time one falls for a phishing email is no different.

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The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing everything about the way we live, shop and communicate. From Amazon’s incredibly helpful recommendation engine, and Target’s startlingly accurate pregnancy predictor, to the diagnosis and prediction of medical conditions, we’ve become simultaneously slightly creeped out, yet also somewhat dependent, on AI.

In some cases, it’s become so seamlessly woven into our daily lives that we hardly even notice. For example, Apple’s QuickType keyboard, which suggests the next word based on the context of your message, is an AI technology that many of us rely on every day without even realizing it.

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Not so long ago, when you stepped on a long-haul flight, you had to rely on their entertainment system to keep you and your kids entertained. And that’s if worked at all.

Thanks to your tablet or smartphone, you can now download your favorite movie or boxset and watch what you want, on your own personal device, when you want. You also control what your kids can watch, which is a bonus. You have the smartphone or tablet, now you need the relevant app to download content.

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For the fashion conscious, the change in seasons usually follows a change in wardrobe and when it comes to upgrading a wardrobe, everyone has different requirements.

But, there are people who avoid retail at all costs, shopping on the internet and ordering everything to their home. You can go one step further as many high street retails have sophisticated apps which make online clothes shopping a pleasant experience. We’ve picked three of the best.

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