Quick News - regular industry news

Big Oil Faded. Will Big Tech?

Published: Sun, 30 Aug 2020 by Rad

Less than a decade ago, Exxon Mobil was the most valuable company in the world. Now, it's being kicked out of the Dow Jones industrial average after nearly a century of inclusion in the stock index. Read more ...

Thought of the day

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

C. A. R. Hoare

Renault and Google Cloud join forces to accelerate Industry 4.0 transformation.

Published: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 by Rad

Groupe Renault and Google Cloud announced a new industrial and technology partnership to accelerate the digitization of Groupe Renault’s industrial system and of Industry 4.0 transformation. Read more ...

Docker, AWS working together to better integrate #Docker with Amazon ECS

Published: Thu, 09 Jul 2020 by Rad

Docker Inc. and Amazon Web Services (AWS) today at the online AWS Cloud Containers Conference announced they are working together to better integrate Docker Compose, Docker Desktop and Docker Hub with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate cloud services. Read more ...

Google's Compute Instances cheaper (again). Welcome Preemptible Virtual Machines

Published: Fri, 22 May 2015 by Rad

This week Google made developers around world excited by lowering cost across Compute Engine instances. Generally it costs approximately 30% less to run your Compute Instance on Google's cloud. At the same time company announced Preemptible Virtual Machines with very friendly pricing. These are ideal for batch jobs or increase in compute capacity for fault tolerant apps. It is the latest attempt to compete with Amazon Spot instances. Read more ...

AdBlocks - advert blocking browser plugin beats Microsoft, Google and advertisers

Published: Thu, 23 Apr 2015 by Rad

AdBlocks - advert blocking browser plugin beats Microsoft, Google and advertisers. The creator of software that stops adverts from appearing on websites has won in German court and defended itself against 2 news publishers that wanted to prevent its tech being used on their pages. A court in Hamburg ruled that users do have the right to use the plug-in. Read more ...

Nokia in advanced talks with Alcatel-Lucent seeking growth.

Published: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 by Rad

Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent are in advanced merger talks, both companies confirmed on April 14, 2015 following media speculation that a deal was in the works. A mobile broadband specialist Nokia seeks to merge with Alcatel-Lucent, which has a strong position in fixed networks, according to Mark Newman, chief research officer of Ovum's telecoms research business. Read more ...

Ubuntu closed deal with Ericsson to power up cloud for one of the biggest telecom providers in the world.

Published: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 by Rad

Canonical is making a lot of headway with its Ubuntu system and has closed yet another important partnership, this time with Ericsson, which is a giant telecommunications company. Some of you might think that it's that company that used to make phones, but in fact it's a company that provides crucial communication services across the globe. Read more ...

Amazon launches really cheap unlimited cloud drive storage plans

Published: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 by Rad

Amazon's a new cloud storage plan that's ridiculously cheap. You can now store an unlimited number of files in the cloud for $60 a year. That's five bucks a month for everything. So how does this standup to the competition? Well, unlimited is a huge amount of space. Today, the going benchmark is 1TB of space, which services offer for between $2.50 per month (MediaFire) and $10 per month (Dropbox, OneDrive). Read more ...

Pay bills directly inside email with Google project - Pony Express

Published: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 by Rad

Google is currently working on a project that will allow Gmail users to more easily receive bills in their email inbox instead of their mailbox. Called Pony Express, the service also is designed to let people pay their bills within Gmail, rather than having to go to a telecom or utility company's website to complete a payment. Read more ...

China's anti-censorship GreatFire hit by first DDoS attack

Published: Sun, 22 Mar 2015 by Rad

GreatFire is the non-profit organization helping Chinese Internet users bypass the censorship of the Great Firewall. China's Great Firewall (GFC) is among the most technically sophisticated Internet filtering/censorship systems in the world. Its depth, scope, and capacity is certainly impressive. Read more ...

Yahoo China is closing and 300+ staff laid off

Published: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 by Rad

Yahoo is moving out of China with the closure of its research center in Beijing - its single location in the country - reported by South China Morning Post. US internet giant Yahoo will close its research and development centre in Beijing as the firm seeks to consolidate some jobs into fewer offices. The Sunnyvale, California-based company told its 350 employees, mostly engineers and scientists, on Wednesday that the centre will shut down. Lay-offs would begin at the end of this month, a person familiar with the matter said. Read more ...

Big victory for NetNeutrality campaigners in USA in Feb 2015

Published: Sat, 07 Feb 2015 by Rad

Big victory for NetNeutrality campaigners in USA in Feb 2015. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler wants to reclassify Internet service providers as utility providers under the FCC's Title II authority. The move aims to preserve the principles of net neutrality in law, barring ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing traffic. Read more ...

OpenShift gets prestigious Technology of The Year award, Jan 2015

Published: Tue, 03 Feb 2015 by Rad

OpenShift gets prestigious Technology of The Year award and it is recognized as one of the year's best tools and technologies for developers, IT professionals, and businesses. Red Hat's platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, has received InfoWorld's 2015 Technology of the Year award. The annual awards identify the best and most innovative products in the IT landscape, selected by InfoWorld Test Center editors and reviewers. Winners are drawn from all of the products tested by InfoWorld during the past year. OpenShift was the only PaaS offering - and one of the only open source offerings - to receive the award, emerging as the top PaaS offering in InfoWorld's testing. InfoWorld lauded OpenShift for its ability to support high application densities and standard continuous integration. Read more ...

Nova - Google's rumoured attempt to get into mobile operator business

Published: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 by Rad

Google could be making its first serious move into the mobile operator space as rumours suggest it's looking to launch a new project known only as "Nova". Google is plotting out an mobile virtual network operator service that could run on the networks of **Sprint** or **T-Mobile**. That's a similar approach to other companies in US like Straight Talk, MetroPCS or Virgin Mobile but the rumours suggest the point of the "experiment" is to push down prices and improve the experiences customers have with their wireless networks. Read more ...

New Amazon Web Services data center on fire in Northern Virginia

Published: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 by Rad

An Amazon datacentre in the US caught fire last week during construction. According to US reports, no one was hurt in the blaze and firefighters had it under control in 50 minutes. A spokeswoman at the fire department that attended the incident said the fire was confined to the roof and construction materials. Amazon reportedly said: "It was not a production facility and caused no impact or risk of impact to operations" Read more ...

Hackers released 'iDict' tool for hacking your Apple iCloud account - make sure your password is not on the list

Published: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 by Rad

Hackers released 'iDict' tool for hacking your Apple iCloud account - make sure your password is not on the list. The tool , according to the hacker, has been released to force Apple to act on the issue and nothing else. The company needs to fix the "painfully obvious" vulnerability before it's "privately used for malicious or nefarious activities," Pr0x13 explains on GitHub. The tool, dubbed iDict, actually makes use of an exploit in Apple's iCloud security infrastructure to bypass restrictions and two-factor authentication security that prevents brute force attacks and keeps most hackers away from gaining access to users' iCloud accounts. Pr0x13 claims iDict to be a "100 percent" effective and simple to use method of cracking individual iCloud account login credentials. So, those using easy-to-guess passwords on their iCloud account are in more danger than those using a complex chain. Read more ...

Digital crime in 2015: Industry predictions - fragmentation, specialism and big data

Published: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 by Rad

The past five years have seen an increasing industrialisation of the cyber criminal marketplace. Specialisms such as malware authoring, counter-AV testing, exploit kits, spamming, hosting, money-muling, and card cloning are becoming miniature markets of their own. Crime as a service is a reality, lowering the barrier to entry for budding criminals and fuelling the growing threat, year after year. Read more ...

New Regin malware is an incredibly sophisticated spy tool possibly linked to western governments.

Published: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 by Rad

The discovery of an advanced piece of malware that has been used to spy against organisations for at least six years underlines the need for skills and vigilance, say security experts. According to further work by Kaspersky and other securityresearchers, it appears that Regin might be the result of a _combined effort from US and UK_ intelligence agencies. It also seems that Regin has infected numerous GSM base stations - the cell towers that provide 2G and 3G mobile coverage. Read more ...

DDoS attacks real problem in 2014, attacks have accelerated in terms of size and volume in the third quarter of 2014

Published: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 by Rad

DDoS attacks real problem in 2014, attacks have accelerated in terms of size and volume in the third quarter of 2014. Compared to last year, this quarter saw a 389 per cent increase in average attack bandwidth, a 366 per cent increase in average peak packets per second, a 43 per cent increase in infrastructure layer attacks and a 22 per cent overall increase in DDoS attacks. "In the third quarter alone, Akamai mitigated 17 attacks greater than 100 gigabits-per-second, with the largest at 321 Gbps,". Read more ...

Big security breach in JPMorgan data of 83 million compromised

Published: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 by Rad

Names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the holders of some 83 million households and small business accounts were exposed when computer systems at JPMorgan Chase & Co were recently compromised by hackers, making it one of the biggest data breaches in history. Read more ...

Germany tells Google to restrict use of data

Published: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 by Rad

A German data protection watchdog told Google Inc to seek users' permission for creating data profiles from its various services, adding to pressure on the U.S. technology giant in Europe over its privacy policy. Commissioner Johannes Caspar said that Google previously had refused to grant users more control over how it aggregates data across its services including Gmail, smartphones operating system Android and the web search engine. Read more ...

Shellshock Security Flaw, Responds by Google and Amazon, Industry review of recent threat

Published: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 by Rad

Hackers exploit 'Shellshock' bug with worms in early attacks on Thursday Sept 25, 2014. They have begun exploiting the newly identified "Shellshock" computer bug, using fast-moving worm viruses to scan for vulnerable systems and then infect them. Cyber security experts are sounding the alarm that the Shellshock bug, a 22-year-old flaw in the code of a commonly used software, could be used by hackers to take over millions on computers. Read more ...

Bitcoin exchange rates below $400 USD in September 2014

Published: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 by Rad

Bitcoin has fallen to its lowest price since April 2014 following a turbulent 24 hours for the world's most valuable cryptocurrency. The price crash has been blamed on a variety of factors, with some analysts citing market traders setting their lowest bound exit point at $450. When the price dipped to this point, it would have therefore sparked a mass sell-off. Read more ...

ISPs post-net-neutrality world is built on bribes

Published: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 by Rad

Now the father of the World Wide Web is up in arms about the state of net neutrality in the United States. Sir Tim Bernes-Lee railed against the telecommunications companies' push to introduce differential pricing for internet content – such as charging subscribers more to watch YouTube. Such practices were counter-intuitive to the idea of an open internet, and would mean internet firms would shun the US as a market, he warned. Read more ...

Windows 9 Details Expected on Sept. 30, 2014

Published: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 by Rad

Microsoft last night sent invitations for an event in San Francisco on Sept. 30, where it will show off "what's next for Windows and the enterprise." The company didn't give too much else away, but the presentation will almost undoubtedly include a look at the successor to Windows 8, currently codenamed "Threshold." Read more ...

UK is third most network-connected country in the world

Published: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 by Rad

The Huawei Global Connectivity Index claims to be an objective study of the impact of connectivity on economic growth. The UK is behind only Germany and the US in its development of internet services, according to an index of the most connected countries. Read more ...

Google launches $105 Android One low-price android smartphone.

Published: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 by Rad

Google Inc. launched in India on Monday a $105 smartphone, the first device from its "Android One" initiative which is aimed at boosting sales in key emerging markets through cheaper prices and better quality software. Read more ...

NSA secret Google-like search engine for metadata analysis revealed, codenamed ICREACH.

Published: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 by Rad

The NSA has built ICREACH, a Google-like search engine that secretly provides data — metadata of both foreigners and citizens on US soil — to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and CIA, The Intercept reported. Read more ...

Google updated SAFE BROWSE and now warns of deceptive software downloads that appears to be helpful – that actually does other things.

Published: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 by Rad

Google is to update the Safe Browsing feature of its Chrome browser to warn users about deceptive software downloads that make unexpected changes to computers. Chrome users will get a warning if they try to download software that appears to be helpful – such as a toolbar that actually does other things in the background such as change browser settings. Read more ...

Hackers found way to abuse url shortening tool bitly in novelty way. Public API key for bitly misused to redirect users to fake news site.

Published: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 by Rad

One of the best known URL shortening services bitly (Motto: The power of the link) has been affected by bug which enabled malicious party to redirect users to fake news website. The attack abused the company’s publicly available Bitly application program interface (API) key to create custom URL shorteners for redirecting victims, the researchers said. Read more ...

Introducing Raspberry Pi model B+, credit-card sized little computer upgraded with additional 2 USB without performance loss for same price

Published: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 by Rad

In the two years since Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the current Raspberry Pi Model B, they often talked about their intention to do one more hardware revision to incorporate the numerous small improvements people have been asking for.This isn’t a “Raspberry Pi 2″, but rather the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi. Today, they are very pleased to be able to announce the immediate availability, at $35 – it’s still the same price, of what they are calling the Raspberry Pi Model B+. Read more ...

Hacker working for start up defends American national security journalists.

Published: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 by Rad

For the last month, 34-year-old Morgan Marquis-Boire has been the director of security for First Look Media, the media startup founded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar that has recruited journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.1 The website has become the most prolific publisher of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s remaining secrets. Marquis-Boire’s daunting task is to safeguard those documents, and the communications of reporters who have perhaps the press’ most adversInnoDBl relationships with Western intelligence agencies. Read more ...

Internet of Things already stretching networks to capacity

Published: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 by Rad

Although enterprises feel increasingly confident that they are prepared for the advent of the [Internet of Things (IoT)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things), the underlying network is in growing danger of grinding to a halt as the flood of connected devices becomes a deluge. This was the key finding in a study of IT pros in the US and UK, conducted by network control supplier Infoblox, which looked at opportunities and challenges surrounding the impact of the IoT on enterprise networking. Read more ...

Privacy International and 6 ISPs take legal action against GCHQ over network surveillance

Published: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 by Rad

Internet service providers (ISPs) from around the world – including the UK’s GreenNet – have filed a legal complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, calling for an end to what they term GCHQ’s “attacking and exploitation” of network infrastructure for mass surveillance. Besides GreenNet, which bills itself as an ethical ISP, the collective is composed of Chaos Computer Club, from Germany; GreenHost, from the Netherlands; Jimbonet, from Korea; Mango, from Zimbabwe; May First/People Link and Riseup, both from the US; as well as pressure group, Privacy International. Read more ...

Nokia makes launcher for competing Android despite being Microsoft company.

Published: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 by Rad

Nokia makes launcher for competing Android despite being Microsoft company. The company that transferred some 32,000 of its staff to Redmond in exchange for more than $7.2 billion has just released a launcher (aka an alternative homescreen) — for Android smartphones. So the devices which compete with Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Read more ...

UK online snooping policy challenged and revealed by charities

Published: Wed, 18 Jun 2014 by Rad

A top UK counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret government policy justifying the mass surveillance of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google users in the UK. The policy was revealed after a legal challenge brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and six national civil liberties organisations. Read more ...