Ubuntu Releases IoT Core Platform

Canonical last week released Ubuntu Core 16 for the Internet of Things to provide enhanced security and app store support for connected devices. The platform provides regular security updates and gives independent software vendors, manufacturers and enterprises control of system updates. Ubuntu Core 16 uses Ubuntu's snap packages technology to ensure that IoT applications access only necessary data. The operating system and kernel in Ubuntu Core also are delivered as snaps.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2egx076

Election 2016: Either Way, More Drama

In a few days, we will either be inundated by ISIS terrorists in our homes right after the U.S. government takes all of our guns, or we will be at nuclear war with the world, based on my Twitter feed. Women no longer will be allowed to vote, and global warming will turn us into crispy critters. After watching all three debates and some of the crap coming out of both campaigns, I finally can figure out why Mexico is paying for a wall: They want to keep the crazy people out of their country.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fUAuwC

Gadget Ogling: Mac's Back, Nintendo Returns, and Huawei Goes to the Edge

Apple has unveiled a redesigned MacBook Pro, giving the company's core laptop its first full refresh in a few years. The design has metal on all sides, along with a Force Touch trackpad double the size of previous versions. There's a customizable OLED touch strip above the keyboard that responds to gestures and taps -- a demo indicated one might use it for fast access to various emoji or for secondary controls within an app. It essentially replaces function keys, but with far more purpose and control.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fGfytW

Russia's Fancy Bear Attacks Microsoft, Adobe as Election Nears

Microsoft earlier this week said it had fallen victim to "Strontium," its code name for the Russian hacking group also known as "Fancy Bear," which has been linked to recent attacks on Democratic Party systems. The group launched a spear phishing attack that targeted vulnerabilities in both the Windows operating system and Adobe Flash, according to Terry Myerson, EVP of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group. The attack involved two zero-day vulnerabilities in Flash and the down level Windows kernel.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fkKu1u

Microsoft Sees 3D Future for Everyone

Microsoft last week unveiled its new vision for bringing 3D to the masses through a modernized version of its Paint application for Windows 10. Paint 3D will be available in the Windows 10 Creators Update. Anyone who would like to start creating and sharing in Paint 3D can do so by joining the Windows Insider Program -- available for PC and Phone. To date, most computer users have been limited to a two-dimensional canvas, even though we live in a multidimensional world, noted Megan Saunders, general manager for the Windows Experience Group.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2eiS4Fg

Lenovo's Yoga Book Aims for Top Shelf

Lenovo's recently unveiled 2-in-1, the Yoga Book, is available in Android Marshmallow and Windows 10 Home versions. Reviews have been mixed, with some praising its look and feel, but some considering its capabilities not up to scratch. Its Intel Atom processor doesn't provide enough power for a workhorse device, they have argued. The Android version costs $500 and the Windows version goes for $550. The Yoga Book runs on a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8550 with a 2-MB cache that goes up to 2.4 GHz.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2eVP0mC

Q4OS+Trinity Gives New Meaning to Lightweight

Q4OS is a lightweight Linux distro that offers some worthwhile alternatives to more established distros. Q4OS version 1.6.1 "Orion," released this summer, has as its main claim to fame the developing Trinity desktop. Trinity is a breakaway fork from the KDE 3 community. I took a detailed first look at this new distro last year, primarily to assess the Trinity desktop. Although it was a version 1 beta release, Trinity showed some potential. You won't find the Trinity desktop shipping as an option with most Linux distros.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fwpJBn

Microsoft: Google's Policy Endangers Windows Users

Google on Monday posted to the Internet a previously unpublicized flaw that could pose a security threat to users of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Google notified both Microsoft and Adobe of zero day vulnerabilities in their software on Oct. 21, wrote Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard, members of Google's Threat Analysis Group, in an online post. Google has a policy of making critical vulnerabilities public seven days after it informs a software maker about them. Adobe was able to fix its vulnerability within seven days; Microsoft was not.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2ekRJVK

MIT's Nightmare Machine Churns Out AI-Generated Horror

In honor of Halloween, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab launched the Nightmare Machine website, which allows visitors to vote on AI-generated horror images created via an open source deep neural network algorithm developed last year. Scientists from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization collaborated on the project. The Nightmare Machine features some 200,000 images of normal human faces the researchers fed into the neural network.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2faXkLS

Apple vs. Microsoft: Remixing the Magic

It's strange that most people can look at two companies, see the difference in their performance, and not learn the fundamental lesson. Microsoft and Apple are cases in point, because Apple was very successful under the initial founders, then was unsuccessful after the founders left, was successful again when Jobs came back, and now is struggling without him. Microsoft was very successful under Gates, struggled when Gates left, and is successful again now that it is run by someone very much like Gates.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fa9jcQ

Bot Armies Boost Candidates' Popularity on Twitter

Internet bots have many useful online purposes, but they have a dark side, too, as three researchers demonstrated in their analysis of Twitter traffic during the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Bots are used to automate functions on the Net. For example, if you belong to several social networks, you could use a bot to post a photo to all of them at once, saving the time of logging onto each network. What the researchers found was that bots also can be used to amplify support on Twitter.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2dXB6w6

Microsoft Open Sources AI Toolkit

Microsoft this week released an updated version of its Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit as an open source Beta. The deep learning system is used to speed advances in areas such as speech and image recognition and search relevance on CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. It also works with Microsoft's Azure GPU offering. The Microsoft computer scientists who developed the toolkit initially were looking for a tool to speed up and improve their own research. It morphed into an offering capable of taking on a wide variety of deep learning tasks.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2dPSaIW

Apple Brings a Surprising Touch to MacBook Event

Apple on Thursday unveiled two new MacBook Pro laptops, adding a touch more power to the line. Both the new 13-inch and 15-inch models will be offered in silver and space gray. They have a Touch Bar that replaces the row of function keys found on laptops, as well as a Touch ID fingerprint scanner incorporated into the power button. They sport a Force Touch trackpad that's twice the size of the trackpad in previous models. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is 17 percent thinner than its predecessor. It's also smaller, and it weighs half a pound less than the previous version.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2ePG824

Conspiracy Theories in the Information Age, Part 1

One of the most volatile conspiracy theories in recent times ended with a whimper last month, when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made the terse statement, "President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period." Though birthers may be with us always, it seems that many have turned their attention to other potentially scandalous topics -- and they need look no further than the place most conspiracy theories are born these days, the Internet.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2fdQgmN

Xiaomi Debuts Magical Mi Mix

Xiaomi on Tuesday fired another shot in the shrinking bezel wars, as it announced a smartphone with a front that's more than 90 percent display. The Mi Mix is a 6.4-inch phone that's stylishly crafted by French designer Philippe Starck. It sports a feature set that indicates Xiaomi wants to compete at the high end of the smartphone market. "For many years, Xiaomi has had a reputation of copying designs and branding from Apple and Samsung," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research. "This phone breaks with those designs."

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2egcj78

Microsoft's New Tech Targets Human Creativity

Microsoft made a slew of announcements at its New York City event Tuesday, focusing on the idea of user as creator. Among its new offerings: the Surface Studio, an all-in-one desktop computer with a touchscreen that's 12.5mm thick; the Surface Dial, a new input device that provides haptic feedback; the Surface Book i7; VR headsets for Windows 10; a revamped Paint app with 3D capability; and Creator's Update, an upcoming Windows 10 refresh providing 3D creation tools, live streaming, and custom Xbox app tournaments.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2eKRHr8

Tech on TV: A Little Realism Goes a Long Way

Watching TV shows often requires the suspension of disbelief -- that is, a willingness to press pause on one's critical faculties in order to believe the unbelievable. Realism often must be secondary to story, in other words. This very often is necessary when computers are used to advance plot lines, when programmers and hackers alike can bang away on their keyboards and produce tremendous results in seconds. One need look no further than the keyboard cowboys on such shows as The Blacklist or Scorpion.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2eUXffi

Gadget Ogling: Magnificent Mics, Intriguing E-Ink, and Compact Computers

I've tried dipping my toes into the world of podcasting with a friend this year. We haven't found it easy to get together to record, but for the two trial runs we've had, I bought a Blue Snowball mic. I'm very pleased with the sound quality, so I'm fairly certain I'd be happy to have Blue's latest microphone, Raspberry. It's a gorgeous, portable little thing, which you can connect to a PC or Mac using a USB cable. Its Mini USB to Lightning cable makes it easy to capture quality audio using an iPhone or iPad too.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2dJPQDh

Social Media Analytics, Meet Big Brother

The American Civil Liberties Union recently uncovered evidence that led Twitter, Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary to stop sharing data with Geofeedia, a firm accused of improperly collecting social media data on protest groups, and sharing that information with numerous law enforcement agencies. Geofeedia, a developer of location-based analytics, had been marketing its technology to law enforcement agencies. It was used for such purposes as monitoring Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2dLlxre

Antique Kernel Flaw Opens Door to New Dirty Cow Exploit

A Linux security vulnerability first discovered more than a decade ago once again poses a threat, Red Hat warned last week, as an exploit that could allow attackers to gain enhanced privileges on affected computers has turned up in the wild. Users need to take steps to patch their systems to prevent the exploit, known as "Dirty Cow," from granting access to unprivileged attackers. "What's changed isn't the vulnerability itself, but rather the manner in which it's being exploited," said Josh Bressers, a security strategist at Red Hat.

from TechNewsWorld http://ift.tt/2dGwfUK