Happy birthday, Internet! 50 years old today
50 years ago, on October 29 1969, a packet was sent between two computers -- one at UCLA and the other at Stanford Research Institute -- on the ARPANET. This doesn’t sound hugely exciting, but it was first step in the creation of the Internet.
In the half century since then, the world has transformed beyond recognition. The arrival of the World Wide Web in 1991 showed what the Internet could be and ultimately changed everything, bringing us online shopping, up to the minute news, social networking, and more.
Retailers turn to crowdsourced security to protect their systems
As the holiday season approaches and there's a consequent spike in the amount of money spent online, retail cybersecurity comes under the spotlight.
Bugcrowd is releasing its State of Retail Cybersecurity report that explores the vulnerabilities found among retailers over the last year. Among the key findings is that crowdsourced security adoption increased by 137 percent year on year.
Two-thirds of IT leaders want DevOps skills to modernize operations
A new survey of enterprise IT operations leaders by infrastructure monitoring and management specialist OpsRamp reveals that 64 percent indicate DevOps is the most sought-after skill.
Other in-demand skills are cloud certifications (61 percent), industry knowledge (56 percent), data science (47 percent) and machine learning (44 percent).
Ransomware sees a revival in 2019's worst cybersecurity threats
Cybersecurity company Webroot has released its third annual Nastiest Malware list which shows ransomware making a comeback in addition to other threats.
Phishing and botnets are still popular attack methods and threats across the board are also becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Google is expanding its handy .new TLD shortcuts to third-party sites
It's not something that everyone knows about, but Google owns the top-level domain .new, and the company has gone beyond using them as simple web addresses. Instead, addresses such as cal.new, doc.new and keep.new can be used as shortcuts to create new calendar events, Google Docs files, and Keep Notes.
Until now, .new shortcuts have only worked with Google's own products and services, but this is about to change. There are already shortcuts that can be used in conjunction with the likes of Spotify, Canva, Word and GitHub, and Google has announced that other sites will be able to register domains -- and therefore shortcuts -- very soon.
Do you hate your child? Buy them a Microsoft Surface Go Kids Bundle!
Most people love their children, but hey, I guess there are some folks that don't. If you hate your young child, I have some great news -- Microsoft has a new Surface Go Kids Bundle that is perfect for you. You know how most kids want an iPad for all of the great apps? Well, rather than buy them what they actually want, you can instead get them an under-powered Windows 10 tablet.
Yeah, Microsoft has decided to push the Surface Go to children for some reason by dressing it up in a clown suit. You see, the Surface Go Kids Bundle is just the tablet in a colorful case plus some colorful headphones. Truth be told, the Gumdrop FoamTech Case does look very durable, but it is hilariously over-the-top in its design. I suppose the colors will appeal to young children, but beyond that, what little kid is clamoring for Windows?
Loss of mainframe skills represents a risk to businesses
Mainframe systems are still essential to many organizations, but a new study reveals that as many staff with mainframe skills approach retirement almost two thirds of IT decision makers say the consequent loss of skills presents a big risk to their business.
The report from enterprise computing specialist LzLabs, based on research conducted by Vanson Bourne, shows 99 percent consider their organization's mainframe applications as important or critical to business operations, yet 93 percent also express serious concerns about the mainframe environment.
DoH! Google tries to clear up DNS-over-HTTPS confusion
Google has already revealed plans for Chrome which it says will increase privacy and security. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) was announced back in September, and the company is already worried that people are confused about the implementation.
The company has published a defensive blog post in which it says that "there has been some misinformation and confusion about the goals of our approach and whether DoH will impact existing content controls offered by ISPs". It goes on to try to dispel the incorrect beliefs it says have built up.
Report: Alphabet wants to buy Fitbit
Google's parent company Alphabet has made an offer to buy health and fitness wearable maker Fitbit, according to reports.
Although unconfirmed by either party, such a bid would not be entirely surprising. Although Google has produced its Wear OS operating system for wearables, it is yet to produce any devices of its own -- despite users clamoring for a Google-made smartwatch for some time.
Apple announces AirPods Pro for professional music listeners
Despite being wildly popular (largely for fashion purposes) Apple AirPods are a terrible product. Yeah, they have some nice technology inside, and they sound pretty good, but holy cow, they are extremely uncomfortable. Seriously, how can a company worth many billions of dollars not come up with a better design than a rock-hard piece of plastic that you shove in your ears?
Well, today, Apple announces that it has finally fixed the AirPods. No, it is not revising the product, but instead, it is launching a more comfortable version. Called "AirPods Pro," these new wireless earbuds are apparently designed for professional music listeners. Nah, I am being facetious -- they are designed for all users -- but the "Pro" branding is absurd. But thankfully, they do have replaceable ear tips, allowing the user to find the best fit. In other words, the one-size-fits-all approach taken with regular AirPods was, in fact, stupid. AirPods Pro offer more than just increased comfort, however -- noise cancellation is the real selling point here.
How sharing information can help strengthen cyber defenses [Q&A]
Organizations face a greater range of cyber threats than ever before. The key to dealing with these threats is better intelligence about the latest vulnerabilities.
We spoke to Jay Prassl, CEO of cyber hygiene startup Automox, which has recently launched an open community to foster cyber hygiene best practices, to find out more about how crowdsourcing and information sharing can help reduce the corporate attack surface.
Automated verification solution helps spot spoof and deepfake accounts
A major problem for social media and other online businesses is the creation of spoof accounts. Guarding against these can be difficult but identity-as-a-service company Jumio has come up with a solution.
Jumio Go is a real-time, fully automated identity verification platform. It includes liveness detection to spot when photos, videos or even realistic 3D masks are used instead of actual selfies to create online accounts.
HyperX CloudX Flight is an officially licensed Xbox wireless gaming headset
Kingston Technology's gaming brand, HyperX, is mostly known for catering to PC gamers. Today, however, the company is launching a new product for console gamers. To be more specific, the new wireless headset, called "CloudX Flight," is designed for the Xbox One.
Truth be told, it is not an entirely new product. It is simply an Xbox version of the existing Cloud Flight headset -- notice the lack of "X" after Cloud? But hey, it is still cool. You get the same specs and 30 hours of battery life, but this time, it has a stylish green paint job.
Kodi-focused Linux distro LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2 Beta 2 available to download now
LibreELEC is a lightweight Linux distro that is designed to run Kodi, the hugely popular open source home theater software. It is ideal for installing and using on a Raspberry Pi, although it runs on other hardware too.
LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2 Beta 2 is now available to download, with a complete overhaul of the underlying OS core to improve stability, as well as a number of refinements to the user experience.
US government eases sanctions and grants Adobe permission to offer services to Venezuela
Following an announcement that it was pulling out of the country because of sanctions imposed by the US government, Adobe has now said that it has been granted permission to offer its services in Venezuela.
The company had previously said that it would be deleting all Venezuelan user accounts and would not be offering refunds. But now, having been granted a license by the US government, people in the country will be able to continue using Creative Cloud and Document Cloud.
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