Famous American blogger strikes back against China
A few weeks ago I published a column here about online journalism. You may remember it from the picture of Jerry Seinfeld which I am using again here. While I have many readers in China, my work isn’t normally distributed there so I was surprised when a reader told me that column had been translated almost in its entirety and republished on a Chinese web site. How should I feel about this?
I might be flattered or I might be angry. Certainly the translation was not authorized by me and I received no payment for it. It goes far beyond the 250 word excerpt that is the day-to-day definition of Fair Use so it is a copyright violation. But the worst part, if Google Translate is to be believed, is that it doesn’t represent very well the ideas I was trying to present. Yet, having used my name and attributed the work to me, they are claiming this is what I wrote.
Security pros find it hard to measure ROI on spending
The majority of IT security experts actually struggle to measure the return on investment in security measures, Tenable Network Security says.
Based on a survey of 250 IT security professionals, conducted during the Infosecurity Europe 2016 summit, it says that the majority can only measure the return on less than 25 percent of their security spend.
Is anyone at Yahoo paying attention? Probably not
So Verizon is buying the heart of old Yahoo! I include the exclamation point because it was always there in the Yahoo! we knew back when the Internet was young. $4.83 billion in cash is a lot of cash, but for Verizon it’s a way of buying into the future while buying what to many of us seems to be the past.
So let’s get the business part out of the way: Verizon can see Yahoo! as a bargain because Yahoo! has nearly always been more profitable on a gross margin basis than Verizon, a phone company. Even Yahoo! in decline will pull Verizon up. But that’s not why I’m writing about Yahoo! I’m writing because a reader yesterday more or less suggested I do so. At the risk of my sounding like Donald Trump, the reader suggested I had been right all along about Yahoo!
Chew on this: Ubuntu Core Linux comes to the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 board
Linux and other open source software have been in the news quite a bit lately. As more and more people are seeing, closed source is not the only way to make money. A company like Red Hat, for instance, is able to be profitable while focusing its business on open source.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux-based operating systems, and it is not hard to see why. Not only is it easy to use and adaptable to much hardware (such as SoC boards), but there is a ton of free support online from the Ubuntu user community too. Today, Canonical announces a special Ubuntu Core image for the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 board.
Bitdefender Total Security 2017 beta now available
Bitdefender has announced the first public beta of Bitdefender Total Security 2017 for Windows, OS X and Android. The major addition this time is Wi-Fi protection. Every time you connect to a new network, Bitdefender analyses it and warns of any vulnerabilities.
Bitdefender’s Startup Optimizer can now be used remotely, allowing you to check a device and disable unwanted applications from anywhere in the world.
Russia becomes main target for DDoS attacks
There has been a huge increase in the number of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks in the second quarter of this year, a new research report by security experts Nexusguard says.
According to Nexusguard’s Q2 2016 Threat Report, there has been more than 182,900 attacks in Q2 this year, with the majority falling onto Russia.
The SwiftKey keyboard app is busy leaking email addresses and phone numbers to strangers
Who doesn't love a good AI-driven keyboard, eh? Well, people who have discovered that the keyboard is sending their email address and phone number to strangers, for starters. And that seems to be precisely what's happening with SwiftKey.
The Microsoft-owned company has disabled the syncing of data between devices after users complained not only about the appearance of unknown email addresses and phone numbers in suggestions, but also suggestions in unknown foreign languages. The problem became apparent when users who saw the random email address suggestions contacted the owner of the address.
It's official: Windows 10 Mobile is irrelevant
If you still think that Windows 10 Mobile has a future then you must not have yet seen just how many Lumia smartphones were sold last quarter. We have known for quite some time that the operating system has no place in today's landscape, and now Microsoft is officially confirming it.
Microsoft has not provided a sales figure for the Lumia line when it announced its earnings results earlier this month, like it has done previously, but the software giant has revealed how many units it moved during the whole fiscal year 2016, giving us just what we need to complete the puzzle.
Dropbox launches AdminX dashboard for business users
Dropbox has just announced AdminX, a new dashboard aimed at helping IT admins better manage Dropbox Business users. AdminX, which has been in development since last year, will have a couple of new features, including new versions of folders for both individuals and groups.
With a more tier-style permission system across the board, it will tighten up security, and the permissions will be managed from AdminX. Enhanced file sync controls are also coming, which will allow admins to choose which files to sync locally, and which not to.
Check internet speed and web page download times with Speedtest for Chrome
Speedtest is a free Chrome extension which allows testing your internet connection speeds and web page download time. It gives you access to the core of the Speedtest.net website in a click or two, wherever you are on the web.
Click Speedtest’s icon at any time and a panel appears. By default this displays the name of the currently displayed page, and the time it took to load.
Reminder: You now have mere hours to upgrade to Windows 10 for free
Today is the big day -- July 29, the last day when you can upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. Actually, the cut-off point really depends on where you are in the world, but you have until 11:59 pm UTC-10. Timeanddate.com has a handy conversion to work out what this means for you.
It would be fair to say that there has been plenty of warning about the impending deadline, but there are still people who are putting things off. But really there is no reason not to upgrade; even if you decided you don’t want Windows 10, you can rollback, and you have the option of changing your mind further down the line without having to cough up for the upgrade.
Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and ninety-one in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.
The Anniversary Update will be out in a couple of days bringing exciting new features to Windows 10.
New platform detects mobile threats at the app level
Increased reliance on mobile devices opens enterprises up to a new range of threats. While mobile management solutions can do a good job of protecting the device, it's harder to guard against attacks on individual apps.
Mobile security company Appmobi is launching a new solution that detects and resolves attacks at the app level.
WhatsApp doesn't properly delete 'deleted' chats
A security researcher is warning WhatsApp users that their chats can be retrieved even after they have been deleted, cleared, or archived. Jonathan Zdziarski says that even using the 'Clear All Chats' option leaves behind a 'forensic trace'.
He warns that the only way to be certain that your chat history is deleted, is to get rid of the app entirely. The problem appears to stem from WhatsApp's use of SQLite which fails to overwrite deleted data by default, rendering it recoverable.
Cybersecurity at the election has been less than spectacular
At a time when computer security has been front and center in the Election news, given the Clinton private server scandal and the DNC hack, not to mention one candidate calling on a foreign nation to hack our systems -- something he later walked back on, saying it was sarcasm -- this is a bad time to put additional questionable practices on display.
Now that things are wrapped up and we have two official nominees, we also have a report of the major failures that were on display (not just politically).
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