Weekly tech bulletin for week ending 2015-03-15

Published: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 by Rad

Weekly news in technology sector, security threats, law and legal related to IT, big tech companies, tech stocks, programming languages and more.This week Panda antivirus false alarm, Joint efforts by Microsoft and Lenovo to detect and clean Superfish, Apple watch pricing announced, Facebook Wedge network switch goes to production, Darpa wants to protect your online privacy, Tech groups in fight for email privacy for cloud and few events, conferences to note in your calendar for March.

Panda antivirus software labels itself as malware

Published: March 12, 2015 security

After an update, essential components in two Panda Security antivirus programs became corrupted, leading them to be mistakenly identified as malign and quarantined. Panda said a fix had been released and warned that rebooting affected systems could exacerbate the issue.

Source:   bbc.co.uk

Tech Companies Likely to Benefit from an Improving Economy

Published: March 12, 2015 markets

Tech is also poised to reap the benefits of continued economic improvement. Capital expenditures (or capex), which is the investment in property and equipment by companies, is expected to increase for U.S. companies across the board. We anticipate that much of this investment will be used to upgrade corporate hardware, software and networking systems. On the consumer side, improving purchasing power, partly due to lower oil prices, may be a boon to companies like Apple (AAPL).

Source:   marketrealist.com

Joint effort guts Superfish

Published: March 12, 2015 security

Microsoft's malware detection data shows that Lenovo's crapware has been scrubbed from about 250K Windows PCs. In a blog post announcing the addition of another Superfish clean-up tool, Microsoft's security team said that the number of infected PCs detected by its software peaked at around 60,000 on Feb. 21, slumped slightly over the next two days before falling precipitously.

Source:   computerworld.com

Apple Watch prices and apps revealed

Published: March 09, 2015 tech

Apple's smartwatch collection will range in price from $349 to $17,000 (£299 to £13,500 in the UK) depending on the metals they are made from and the straps they are bought with. Apple also revealed that the devices are due to go on sale on 24 April. Rivals' smartwatches have only seen limited sales to date. A press event held in San Francisco held few surprises about the wearable tech beyond the fact that the mid-range stainless steel edition would start at $549 and go up to $1,099 in the US, and from £479 to £949 in the UK including VAT.

Source:   bbc.co.uk

Facebook's Wedge' network switch will soon be on sale to all

Published: March 10, 2015 tech

A network switch that Facebook designed for its own data centers will soon be on sale from Taiwanese manufacturer Accton Technologies, the latest sign of progress from the community hardware effort known as the Open Compute Project. Facebook set up the OCP about four years ago as a way for data center operators to collaborate on new hardware designs that they can then ask low-cost manufacturers to produce. Part of the goal is to get cheaper, more standardized hardware than what’s normally supplied by top-tier vendors like Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.

Source:   pcworld.com

Tech groups renew push for cloud, email privacy protections

Published: March 11, 2015 legal

This may finally be the year that the U.S. Congress gives email and other documents stored in the cloud for several months the same privacy protections from police searches as newer files or paper records stored in a file cabinet, say backers of electronic privacy reform. A coalition of tech companies, digital rights advocates and other groups on Wednesday renewed their call for Congress to change a 29-year-old electronic privacy law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act [ECPA].

Source:   computerworld.com

DARPA Says It Wants to Help Protect Your Online Privacy

Published: March 12, 2015 security

Of the many organizations in the world that might attempt to improve online privacy, it's rather surprising to hear that DARPA, the Defense Department's research and development arm, is getting in on the fun. The agency has announced an effort to help everyday Internet users keep personal data to themselves, and even named the program after Louis Brandeis, a Supreme Court justice from early last century who was one of the earliest privacy advocates. "The goal of the Brandeis program is to break the tension between maintaining privacy and being able to tap into the huge value of data," explained program manager John Launchbury in a press release. "Rather than having to balance these public goods, Brandeis aims to build a third option, enabling safe and predictable sharing of data while reliably preserving privacy."

Source:   nbcnews.com

BIG DATA SUMMIT: Effective Data Management and Analytics to Drive Successful Project

Place: London, The Waldorf Hilton, Aldwych, London WC2B 4DD

Date: 26 March, 2015 URL: computing summit

Agenda

• What are the best methodologies for institutionalising Big Data analytics in your organisation?
• How to initiate a cultural shift to a data driven decision making?
• How you can you benefit from predictive analytics and build a foundation for the Internet of Things?
• How can Software Defined Storage tame the Big Data deluge?
• How do you turn Big Data analytics into a competitive advantage?

The Sixth International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization, CLOUD COMPUTING 2015

Place: Nice, France

Date: March 22 - 27, 2015 URL: cloud computing

Agenda

• Cloud economics
• Software-as-a-service [SaaS applications]
• Platform-as-service
• Storage as a service in cloud
• Geographical constraints for deploying clouds
• and more ...

ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Place: Vancouver, Canada

Date: March 14 - 18, 2015 URL: CSCW 2015

Agenda

• Policy and the Legislative Context
• Aging Gracefully and Collaboratively
• Hacking and Making
• Understanding Deviance in Collaboration
• Understanding Copyright Law in Online Creative Communities
• Wireless Visions: Infrastructure, Imagination, and US Spectrum Policy
• and more ...

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