Weekly tech bulletin for week ending 2015-03-22
Published: Mon, 23 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 - iPhone Encryption Petrified NSA, 30% of adults try to shield cyber information from authorities, Google filed a patent for a wearable to zap cancer, US turns to rewards in hunt for overseas cyber criminals, 9 companies make Apple look like a pauper and mor reading, plus few events, conferences to note in your calendar for April.
iPhone Encryption Petrified NSA: Glenn Greenwald
Published: March 18, 2015 security
Stronger encryption in Apple's iPhones and on websites like Facebook has "petrified" the U.S. government because it has made it harder to spy on communications, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first reported on Edward Snowden's stolen files, told CNBC.
Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden caused major shockwaves around the world in 2013 when he unveiled the surveillance body's wide ranging spying practices, which included regularly attempting to snoop on data held by major technology companies.
Source: www.nbcnews.com
Thirty Percent of Adults Try to Shield Cyber Info: Poll
Published: March 16, 2015 security
Thirty percent of adults in the United States have taken steps to hide their information from government surveillance programs monitoring phone and electronic communications, a Pew Research Center survey said on Monday. About a quarter, or 22 percent, said they had changed use of various technology platforms "a great deal" or "somewhat" since Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, disclosed the surveillance programs in mid-2013, the Pew survey showed.
Source: nbcnews.com
Google Filed A Patent For A Wearable To Zap Cancer
Published: March 19, 2015 tech
In a recently issued patent application, Google provided details on a novel medical treatment that would involve sending tiny magnetic particles into patients' bloodstreams. The magnetic particles, activated by a smart wristband, would attack cancer cells and pathogens linked to other diseases. The patent was filed in September 2013 by Andrew Conrad, head of Google's life sciences division.
A patient would first inject, ingest, inhale, or absorb tiny magnetic particles into their bloodstream. These nanoparticles, as they're also known, would be designed to selectively bind with or recognize the targeted molecules. For example, they might be designed to stick to proteins that appear to foster the development of Parkinson's disease, according to documents. Source: buzzfeed.com
US turns to rewards in hunt for overseas cyber criminals
Published: March 19, 2015 security
The FBI considers Evgeniy Bogachev one of the world's most prolific and brilliant cyber criminals, slapping his photos - bald, beefy-faced and smiling faintly - on "Wanted" fliers posted online. The Russian would be an ideal target for prosecution - if only the Justice Department could find him.
Unable to bring him into custody in the 10 months since his indictment, the government has turned to a time-honored technique long used for more conventional crime: putting a bounty on Bogachev's head. Source: uk.news.yahoo.com
Corning's germ-fighting glass means you can touch an ATM with less worry
Published: March 17, 2015 tech
The special glass is just beginning to make its way into public displays such as ATMs and payment terminals, but Corning hopes it will eventually get into consumer electronics. Glassmaker Corning, whose tough Gorilla Glass displays front Apple's iPhone and Samsung's new Galaxy S6, is hoping to make our more-touchable electronics world a little less grimy, thanks to its antimicrobial version of Gorilla.
Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass is one of the ways Corning is working to make its blockbuster glass more useful in more areas, including bringing an antireflective Gorilla to operating room displays, and strengthening the material and making it more scratch-resistant to make Gorilla more desirable for the automotive and interior architecture industries. If Corning can convince people that they want a glass that prevents the sniffles, it could expand Gorilla's reach well beyond its base in smartphones, potentially for use on surfaces in hospitals, food storage facilities or public transportation.
Source: cnet.com
9 companies make Apple look like a pauper
Published: March 11, 2015 markets
There are nine non-financial companies in the S&P 500 with so much cash and investments squirreled away - it amounts to more than $50 a share and up to $155 a share, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ. Buy these stocks - think Priceline (PCLN), Google (GOOGL) and Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) - and you get a huge piggy bank to go with it.
Make no mistake. We're not talking about companies that have the most cash. Apple wins that battle with its mound of $178 billion in cash and investments. Here's the problem. By the time you split that pile between 5.8 billion shares - it's just 31 bucks a share. We're talking about stocks that have the biggest claims to cash and investments per share.
Source: americasmarkets.usatoday.com
Uber sued for false advertising by California taxi companies
Published: March 19, 2015 legal
Taxi companies in California have sued Uber Technologies in a federal court, charging the ride-hailing smartphone app company with misleading advertising regarding the safety of its rides.
Uber has made false and misleading advertisements regarding the safety of rides on its UberX platform, and criticized the safety of taxi rides offered by the taxi companies, the 19 firms said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division.
The suit comes in the wake of problems Uber is facing in some countries. On Wednesday, the Frankfurt Regional Court issued a nationwide ban against the company's UberPop service after declaring its business model illegal. Using a smartphone app to connect passengers with private drivers that use their own cars and don't have the required licenses is illegal, the court observed.
Source: itworld.com
Nvidia promises a 10-fold performance jump with next GPU tech
Published: March 19, 2015 tech
Nvidia held its annual GPU Technology Conference this week and the opening keynote made it clear that the leader in GPU technology isn't slowing down or remotely impacted by Moore's Law.
Pascal will use TSMC's 16nm FinFET+ process, which is a three-dimensional manufacturing process instead of 2D. Huang claimed that Pascal will achieve over 2x the performance per watt of Maxwell in single precision math.
The other big improvement is the use of High Bandwidth Memory. HBM is 3D stacked memory, which will provide three times the bandwidth and nearly three times the frame buffer capacity of Maxwell.
Source: itworld.com
Events - selected events in next 30 days
ICS Cyber Security conference
Place: Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel, 354 Queenstown Road, London, SW8 4AE
Date: Apr 28-29, 2015 URL: ICS Xyber Security
Agenda
- The Cyber Protection of UK Critical National Infrastructure
- Cyber Security for ICS - 'Good Practice Guidelines'
- Providing for the Cyber Security of the UK's Critical National Infrastructure
- ENISA's Approach to ICS-SCADA Security
- Advanced threats require advanced ICS cybersecurity: An Intelligence-Driven Defence
- Cyber Security Architecture for Operating Technologies (ICS/SCADA)
- and more ...
UC expo - the largest Unified Communications and Collaboration event in Europe
Place: Olympia, London
Date: April 21 - 22, 2015 URL: UC Expo 2015
Agenda
- The future of working
- Cyber threats to your communications network
- Consolidate your Communications - the rise of global unified communication platforms: Interoute One Bridge
- Using the Cloud and WebRTC to Combine Lync and Embedded Communications
- Why Privacy is Good for Business
- Innovating with Mobility to Transform Business
- Become a savvy buyer - How to buy UC for the Enterprise
- Transforming Productivity and Increasing Efficiency: Next Generation Unified Communications and Collaboration
- and more ...
NoSQL Training Day and Conference
Place: Paris, France
Date: March 26 - 27, 2015 URL: NoSQL Paris
Agenda
- NoSQL: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Hadoop real time for dummies
- Advanced search for your legacy application
- Why postgres SQL deserve noSQL fan respect
- Real time analytics with Cassandra and Spark
- Using Riak for Events storage and analysis at Booking.com
- and more ...
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