If you are a road warrior that spends a lot of time in the car, you know how essential a quality charger can be. Low cost car chargers from little-known manufacturers may work, but not necessarily well. For instance, I have had many cheap chargers die after less than a week of use -- sometimes within a day. Even more often, despite the listed specifications, it can't charge fast enough to maintain battery life during heavy use. In other words, even though my phone is charging, the battery percentage still goes down -- albeit slower than not charging at all.

Ultimately, I learned the hard way, when it comes to chargers, you should always aim for one made by a quality manufacturer. One such company is Satechi, and today, it launches an impressive 72W Type-C PD Car Charger. Don't worry, it also has a USB-A port. In fact, those 72 watts are shared between the two. In addition, the company unveils a new Apple MFi Certified USB-C to Lightning Cable for iPhone and iPad users.

Continue reading →

Detections of ransomware aimed at businesses rose by a massive 363 percent between the second quarter of 2018 and the same period this year. Meanwhile consumer ransomware is down 34 percent.

The latest quarterly threat report from Malwarebytes also sees a 235 percent overall increase in threats aimed at organizations from enterprises to small businesses, with ransomware as a major contributor.

Continue reading →

Once upon a time you bought a license for a piece of software and you could, essentially, run it forever. While much of the market has now shifted to subscription models, 65 percent of producers are still offering perpetual licenses, while 74 percent utilize subscription models for some or all of their products.

A new report from Flexera, which looks at changing licensing and deployment models, finds that when software producers are asked how they will change their monetization models over the next 18 months, both usage and subscription models will see the strongest increases.

Continue reading →

AI and machine learning have demonstrated some impressive abilities in recent years, but the models behind the technology and the reasons why it came to the decision it did are often hard for the people interacting with it to understand.

In order to help people gain an insight into machine decision making, IBM Research is launching AI Explainability 360, a comprehensive open source toolkit of state-of-the-art algorithms that support the interpretability and explainability of machine learning models.

Continue reading →

Linux users are cheap as hell. Sorry, but it is largely the truth. I am not just talking about traditional Linux desktop users either, but Android users too. This is why iOS is so profitable despite its paltry market share compared to Android. iPhone users will actually buy apps, while Android users would rather look at ads than part with a measly dollar. Sadly, many people only choose Linux because it is free -- not because they prefer it.

And look, that's fine. There's nothing really wrong with being averse to spending money. Quite frankly, not wasting money is a noble trait. However, like it or not, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that includes open source software. Eventually, when developers can't pay their bills, that free software you love will disappear.

Continue reading →

A new report from enterprise file sharing platform FileCloud looks at cloud and data security and finds that 50 percent of companies don’t plan on moving mission critical workloads to the public cloud.

The survey of 150 professionals from industries including health care, financial services and educational institutions finds that shifts in perceptions of data security are impacting movement to the cloud.

Continue reading →

Do you like airplanes? I know I do. Get me inside an airport terminal and I become glued to the glass watching them move about on the tarmac. Big ones. Small ones. I love them all.

And not just from the outside. I love traveling in planes, too. In fact, I’ve flown in nearly every type of major short or long-haul jet in service. From humongous A380’s to diminutive MD88’s, I’m a seasoned veteran of the air travel game.

Continue reading →

Earlier today, Samsung had its big "Unpacked" event in New York, and BetaNews was there to take it all in. As was expected, the Galaxy Note10 was unveiled. Yours truly was in the third row, listening to well-placed Samsung employees loudly "ooh" and "ah" at every little thing shown off on stage. While their feigned enthusiasm was comically overdone, there actually was some exciting stuff revealed, including the removal of the old-school headphone jack -- finally!

This year, there are two new Android 9.0 phones -- Note10 and Note10+. This is the first time a Note smartphone has been offered in more than one screen size. The plus in the name indicates it is the better device, including having a bigger screen. It has a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED Infinity-O display with 3040×1440 resolution, while the non-plus has a 6.3-inch screen with a 2280x1080 resolution. Both are HDR10+ certified.

Continue reading →

Last week, Microsoft released Build 18950 to Insiders on the Fast ring, and it’s fair to say it wasn’t the most exciting of releases with the headline addition covering Japanese IME improvements.

Today’s new flight, Build 18956, is much more interesting with a redesigned Network Status page, notification settings improvements, and Calculator and Cortana app updates.

Continue reading →

The Internet of Things (IoT) industry is growing rapidly with the number of IoT-connected devices projected to surpass 20 billion by 2020. It’s an amazing number, but a number that wouldn’t be possible without the concurrent growth and availability of WiFi and cellular. However, even with all this growth, industry leaders don’t believe existing WiFi and cellular capabilities can keep up with IoT’s trajectory.

Thankfully, a little innovation called 5G is on the way. Offering the technological boost needed to sustain this growth, the imminent arrival of 5G presents valuable opportunities for IoT. Let’s take a look at where IoT is today, and what the future holds. 

Continue reading →

A developer has pointed out what many people have been complaining about for some time: Linux is terrible when memory runs low.

Writing in a message to the Linux kernel mailing list, developer Artem S Tashkinov says that the problem has been "bugging people for many years" and is still present in version 5.2.6 of the Linux kernel. He says that non-technically minded users could be prompted to ditch Linux-based OSes if they encounter the issue which he points out is "is reproducible in less than a few minutes under the latest and greatest kernel".

Continue reading →

The cybercriminal's most effective weapon in a ransomware attack is the network itself, which enables the malicious encryption of shared files on network servers, especially files stored in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud providers.

This is according to a new report from threat detection specialist Vectra which finds that by encrypting files that are accessed by many business applications across the network, attackers achieve an economy of scale faster and far more damaging than encrypting files on individual devices.

Continue reading →

Phishing threats tend to be fast moving, so the ability to block them quickly is essential for protection.

But a new survey finds that even large companies with multi-layer security controls and multiple threat feeds lack adequate safeguards to protect their employees from phishing attacks that employ links to malicious sites.

Continue reading →

Browse the internet and you’ll build up an offline database of all the sites you’ve visited, the type of products that interest you and your hobbies and interests. Ads targeting these interests will track you across various websites.

Most modern web browsers can block trackers and enable you to delve into your browsing history and quickly delete the information from your devices. But, has it really been deleted? Any computer expert would be able to retrieve some of this data if necessary.

Continue reading →

Ever since I installed one of those wireless "home automation kits," my house has been acting like it’s possessed. My lights dim randomly. My thermostat changes temperature settings on its own. And my digital door lock keeps "forgetting" I live here, prompting me to fumble for my keys (it always seems to be raining when this happens).

Just yesterday I came home to find my so-called "Smart TV" had somehow turned itself on and was streaming some weird foreign language content (the source it chose was "RT" -- or something like that). I changed the channel to "CNN" and went to the kitchen to make a snack. However, just as I began slicing open a fresh baguette, I heard that same foreign language stream playing. I then rushed back to the living room only to find the TV still tuned to "CNN."

Continue reading →