Moving to 'intelligent operations' will help businesses thrive
Organizations that can harness the combination of innovative talent, diverse data, and applied intelligence will be best placed to use data-driven insights to improve business outcomes and enhance the customer experience, according to new research.
The study conducted by HfS Research for professional services company Accenture shows that 80 percent of those surveyed are concerned with disruption and competitive threats, especially from new digital-savvy entrants.
iPhone X sales reportedly below expectations
Smartphone buyers are not all that impressed with the iPhone X. According to a new report released by Nikkei, Apple saw "slower-than-expected" sales in major markets like US, Europe and China during the holiday season.
Nikkei claims that, as a result, Apple has decided to halve the production target for its flagship smartphone in the first quarter of 2018 from 40 million units to 20 million units.
New solution delivers universal threat intelligence
Threat intelligence is becoming an essential part of protecting systems. But this information often comes from many different sources, making it hard to see the big picture and limiting flexibility and effectiveness.
To address this issue, Recorded Future is launching a new product providing centralization, collaboration, and customization of intelligence. Called Fusion, it's powered by machine learning and allows users to centralize and customize proprietary and internal threat data with external threat intelligence.
Linus Torvalds announces Linux kernel 4.15 with a focus on Spectre and Meltdown
After a long wait, the much-anticipated Linux kernel 4.15 is finally here. While these kernel releases are always important, this one is particularly noteworthy. Why? Because it largely focuses on Spectre and Meltdown mitigation. With that said, it is not only about those vulnerabilities, of course.
Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux, has been quite critical of Intel’s patches of the aforementioned vulnerabilities, and Microsoft seemingly agrees -- the Windows-maker has disabled one of Intel’s shoddy "fixes" with an emergency update. With kernel 4.15, Torvalds is quick to say that the work on Spectre and Meltdown is far from finished.
Strava says military users should opt out of heatmap feature to avoid revealing secret army base locations
Military personal who used the fitness app Strava have unwittingly contributed to revealing the location of secret army bases around the world. Strava published a "heatmap" of global user activity in November, and from this data visualization the location of secret military bases was accidentally exposed.
The company argues that the information had already been made public by users who chose to share their location data. It goes on to suggest that military users might want to consider opting out of the heatmap feature of the iOS and Android app.
Ahead of GDPR laws, Facebook publishes privacy principles and promises to educate users
Facebook has published its privacy principles for the first time, ahead of the European Union's general data protection regulation (GDPR) which comes into force on May 25 -- although the company is pitching it as being part of Data Privacy Day.
On top of this, the social network has also detailed plans to use videos to educate its users about privacy. The videos will explain how to control who has access to personal data, as well as how to manage the data Facebook uses to control the ads it shows users.
Why consumers love shopping online
While the majority of shopping is still done offline, it's the internet retailers that are growing at a three times faster rate.
Online retail portal Shopping.fm has produced an infographic comparing the online and brick and mortar shopping worlds. It looks at what people buy where and what factors drive their decision to shop online.
Microsoft issues emergency Windows update to disable Intel's shoddy Spectre variant 2 mitigation
The computer industry is in utter chaos right now. Despite a slight increase in PC sales for Q4 2018, the market is still extremely unhealthy. Not to mention, pretty much all existing hardware is fundamentally flawed thanks to both Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. At least major companies such as Intel, AMD, and Microsoft are working together to mitigate these risks, right? Wrong. These patches have proven to be problematic -- for instance, some AMD computers were rendered unbootable. Ugh, what a failure.
To make matters even worse, Intel's Spectre variant 2 mitigation is causing instability (random reboots) on some Windows computers. Microsoft has apparently had enough of Intel's shoddy patches, and as a result, it has issued an emergency update to disable the Spectre variant 2 mitigation on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.
Watch the Grammys live on your Roku
Tonight is the annual music extravaganza known as the Grammys. It's a long-standing awards show and many prominent artists are up for receiving one of the coveted trophies, most notably Jay Z who is nominated for eight of them.
Artists set to perform include Lady Gaga, Pink, Elton John, Miley Cyrus, Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar and Little Big Town. There will also be a tribute to the victims of the shooting in the Las Vegas nightclub last year.
Trump was almost ten times more popular with Russian Twitter bots than Clinton
In the run-up to the 2016 US election, Russian bots shared Donald Trump's tweets 470,000 times -- nearly ten times those of Hillary Clinton.
The figures come courtesy of Twitter, who shared the data with Congress for a review into Russian influence on the election. In the period September 1 to November 15, 2016, Russian bots accounted for more than four percent of Trump's retweets.
OnePlus denies sending clipboard data to China
Phone-maker OnePlus has had a tough time of things in the press recently with claims about users' clipboard data being mined, and the problems following a credit card breach. A second suggestion that the company was sending clipboard data back to China surfaced recently, but the company has been quick to deny any wrongdoing.
Suspicions were raised when a OnePlus user noticed a file called badwords.txt which includes a list of words such as "chairman," "private message" and "address."
Hackers hijack YouTube ads with Coinhive to mine Monero cryptocurrency
The clandestine mining of cryptocurrency is something that we have seen in various forms over the last year or so, in website code and Android apps. A new discovery by security firm Trend Micro shows that hackers have found a way to inject Coinhive mining code into ads that appear on YouTube.
The crypto-jacking technique means that hackers have been able to profit by using other people's CPU time to mine the Monero cryptocurrency while they watch videos. Trend Micro reports that there has been a huge increase in Coinhive web miner detections in recent days, with hackers abusing Google's DoubleClick to distribute the code through big sites including YouTube.
Malwarebytes gets defective update that slows computers -- here's how to fix it
Malwarebytes is great software, designed to protect Windows, Mac, and Android devices. As someone who fixes computers for both friends and family, I often rely on the free version to detect malware on Windows machines -- it is a great tool to keep in your virtual "toolbox."
Unfortunately, this software which normally helps computers to run well, has started making them run poorly. You see, a recent update is causing high CPU and RAM usage, making the computer slow to a crawl. Luckily, a fix is already available. Keep in mind, the bug is caused by the web protection feature, which is only for "Premium" subscribers. Users of the free Malwarebytes software should be unaffected. Here's how to return your PC or business workstation to its full speed potential.
Netrunner Rolling 2018.01 KDE-focused Manjaro Linux-based operating system is here
There are many Linux-based operating systems out there, but not many I would call great. My absolute favorite is Fedora, as I am a GNOME fan that likes using a distro that focuses on truly free and open source software. Not to mention, it quickly gets many updated packages while also retaining stability. So yeah, Fedora is great.
Another great Linux distro? Netrunner Rolling. This Manjaro-based operating system uses KDE Plasma for its desktop environment. As the name implies, it follows a rolling release, meaning it is constantly being updated to fresh packages -- no major upgrades needed. It has a lot of polish and many quality pre-installed programs which indicates the developers truly care about the overall user experience. Quite frankly, it reminds me of Windows 7 -- in a good way -- which also makes it a wise choice for those unhappy with the much-maligned Windows 10. Today, Netrunner Rolling gets its first ISO refresh of 2018.
Prediction #4 -- Bitcoin stays crazy until traders learn it is not a currency
2017 was a wild ride for cryptocurrencies and for Bitcoin in particular, rising in price at one point above $19,000 only to drop back to a bit over half of that number now. But which number is correct? If only the market can tell for sure -- and these numbers are coming straight from the market, remember -- what the heck does it all mean? It means Bitcoin isn’t a currency at all but traders are pretending that it is. 2018 will see investors finally figure this out.
Confusion abounds, so let’s cut through the crap with an analogy. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and a ton of others operate almost exactly like a market that uses only U.S. one dollar bills and doesn’t allow exchanging those bills… ever. If you need five dollars, that will be five one dollar bill, please. If you need less than a dollar then you and your counter-party have to agree how much of a one dollar bill you each own. And they aren’t just any one dollar bills: they are specific bills, each with its own unique serial number that can be checked against a U.S. Treasury database to make sure the money is real -- that it is actually worth a dollar.
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