Become your own landscape designer by using Garden Planner
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.
Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Beaver' LTS will default to Xorg
The introduction of Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" saw the Linux-based distribution switching to Wayland as the default display server. However, when the next LTS release arrives this year, Canonical will offer something else instead.
Canonical says that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, codenamed "Bionic Beaver," will offer Xorg as the default graphics server. The distribution, which is set to land in April, will have Wayland available, but as an alternative.
Intel will release chips free from Meltdown and Spectre bugs this year
The discovery of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in processors caused a great deal of panic and confusion. The poor reliability and performance hit brought about by patches did little to help consumer confidence, but Intel says it will be releasing processors in 2018 that are free from the problems.
The move will be welcomed by customers who have been frustrated by problematic bug fixes designed to mitigate against the bug but which brought issues of their own. A timescale for the hardware solution has not been pinned down more specifically than "later this year."
Google tweaks Files Go to make it easier to free up space on your Android device and change file associations
Using any smartphone means having to work within its storage limitations. The prevalence of cloud services has taken some of the strain off physical storage, but running out of room locally can still be an issue.
To help with this problem, Google offers Files Go. Now the company has updated the app to make it an even more powerful tool for freeing up space. The app can now handle SD cards and tablets, and includes a new option to change file associations.
Corporations seen as a bigger threat to data privacy than cyber criminals
Ahead of this Sunday's (January 28) Data Privacy Day, enterprise cyber security company Tripwire has conducted a poll of Twitter users asking who they were most concerned about collecting their private information.
Of the more than 300 people who took part, 40 percent say they would be most worried about corporations stealing their information. While nearly a third (27 percent) say they are most concerned about the government gathering their critical data.
Google grants users more control over ads
Google is a company that's synonymous with advertisements. It makes huge amounts of money from delivering carefully targeted ads, much to the chagrin of those on the receiving end. To make life a little more bearable -- although not ad-free -- the company is making changes to Ads Settings and the Mute This Ad feature.
The changes affect not only the millions of websites that are filled with ads delivered through Google, but also the myriad of apps that are ad-supported. The latest changes make it possible to mute ad reminders, and also increases the level of control users have over ad muting.
How cybercriminals are attacking machine learning
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.
Dell Chromebook 5190 offers 13 hours battery life
While Dell is one of the largest Windows computer manufacturers, it is also a big proponent of Linux. For instance, the company sells machines running Ubuntu -- its relationship with Microsoft be damned.
Ubuntu is not the only Linux-based operating system that can be found on a Dell laptop. Actually, the company also sells Chromebooks, which run Chrome OS. Yes, Google’s web-focused desktop OS is a Linux distro. Today, Dell unveils its latest such Chromebook, the 5190. It is rugged, has USB-C, stylus support, and offers an impressive 13 hours of battery life.
Add an additional layer of security with Acronis Ransomware Protection Free
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.
UK should lead the world in safe, ethical AI
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos the UK Prime Minister Theresa May says she wants the country to lead the world in deploying artificial intelligence in a safe and ethical manner.
A new advisory body -- Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation -- will be set up to co-ordinate the UK's efforts with other countries, and the UK will join the Davos forum's own council on artificial intelligence.
Fall Creators Update on nearly 75 percent of all Windows 10 PCs
The Windows 10 Creators Update rollout was a bit of a mess. Shortly after it launched, Microsoft warned people not to install it, and a quarter of Windows 10 users still didn’t have it by the time its successor, the Fall Creators Update, arrived last October.
Microsoft has definitely learned its lessons this time around however, as the Fall Creators Update is being installed at a much faster rate. According to AdDuplex, last month (a mere two months after it launched), the Fall Creators Update was already on half of all Windows 10 PCs in use, and in January, that figure has increased to nearly three quarters.
Shippable opens up OS support for DevOps teams
Most CI and DevOps vendors are focused on Linux-based applications, which means supporting Windows or iOS requires multiple platforms, or managing their own instances of Jenkins. This can lead to an inefficient, expensive and inconsistent experience.
Automation platform Shippable is addressing this issue with the launch of support for applications built on Mac OS X, iOS, and Windows, plus new analytics tools.
Data threats are the new reality as organizations embrace transformative technologies
With 99 percent of organizations using big data, 94 percent Internet of Things devices, and 91 percent using or working on mobile payments, there are more attack surfaces than ever and new risks that need to be addressed.
A new study from systems and cyber security company Thales e-Security finds the extent and impact of increased threats clearly shown in levels of data breaches and vulnerability.
How secure are your documents?
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.
Record ransomware volumes seen in 2017
The latest annual State of Malware Report from Malwarebytes shows that ransomware had a bumper year in 2017, though it began to trend downwards towards the end of the year.
Ransomware launched against consumers was up more than 93 percent and ransomware against businesses up 90 percent. As the year end approached though many avenues known for ransomware drops were seen diversifying their payloads with banking Trojans and cryptocurrency miners instead.
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