Computer technology trends for 2016

933 Comments

1. December 30, 2015 at 11:09 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   4 predictions for the European tech market in 2016
   http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/19/4-predictions-for-the-european-tech-market-in-2016/

   1. There will be more EUnicorns (European unicorns) at this point next year than there are today

   2. Investment from the United States in European tech startups will continue to increase

   3. 2016 will see a record year for European tech IPOs

   4. Bigger unicorns will start buying smaller unicorns

   Reply
2. December 31, 2015 at 9:23 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Om Malik / New Yorker:
   In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All
   http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/in-silicon-valley-now-its-almost-always-winner-takes-all

   focus on what Branson, a self-made billionaire, who is more often right than wrong, said about ride-sharing not being a “winner-takes-all” market. What Branson says is generally true for companies that sell analog products, such as packaged goods or soda, or analog services, such as air travel. Coke isn’t going to drive Pepsi out of business, and Toyota isn’t going to eliminate Honda. But in today’s Internet-always-on world, that maxim increasingly doesn’t hold true. Most competition in Silicon Valley now heads toward there being one monopolistic winner. And that is why it is hard not to see that, right now, the only competition that matters in ride-sharing is between the two largest companies: Uber and Lyft.

   In the course of nearly two decades of closely following (and writing about) Silicon Valley, I have seen products and markets go through three distinct phases. The first is when there is a new idea, product, service, or technology dreamed up by a clever person or group of people. For a brief while, that idea becomes popular, which leads to the emergence of dozens of imitators, funded in part by the venture community. Most of these companies die. When the dust settles, there are one or two or three players left standing. Rarely do you end up with true competition.

   Reply
3. December 31, 2015 at 10:35 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   List of Major Linux Desktop Problems Updated For 2016
   http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/12/30/1737235/list-of-major-linux-desktop-problems-updated-for-2016?

   Phoronix reports that Artem S. Tashkinov’s Major Linux Problems on the Desktop has been updated for 2016. It is a comprehensive list of various papercut issues and other inconveniences of Linux on the PC desktop. Among the issues cited for Linux not being ready for the desktop include graphics driver issues, audio problems, hardware compatibility problems, X11 troubles, a few issues with Wayland, and font problems.

   Reply
4. December 31, 2015 at 10:36 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Rockport’s Torus prises open hyperscale network lockjaw costs
   Hyperscalers rejoice; toroidal doughnut fabrics open the door to 10,000 node and beyond networking
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/rockports_torus_prises_open_hyperscale_network_costs/

   Hyperscale IT is threatened by suicidally expensive networking costs. As node counts head into the thousands and tens of thousands, network infrastructure costs rocket upwards because a combination of individual node connections, network complexity, and bandwidth in a traditional (leaf-and-spine) design has a toxic effect on costs.

   The effect is exacerbated when the individual nodes are cheap as chips, relative to servers and storage arrays, as with kinetic disk drives and, eventually, SSDs. Kinetic drives have individual Ethernet connectivity, and an on-board processor responding to object style GET and PUT commands. Seagate commenced building this kind of disk drive with its Kinetic series in 2013. Western Digital/HGST and Toshiba followed suit and a KOSP industry consortium has been formed to drive standards.

   If you imagine a hyperscale data centre has an archive array formed from kinetic drives then a 10,000-node network is a realistic conception. Traditional data centre networking is based on a hierarchical 3-layer core-distribution-access device/switches design

   This is transitioning to a 2-tier spine and leaf design better suited to larger-scale networks and east-south traffic flows across the fabric rather than up and down a hierarchy. Arista, for example, advocates such a design.

   Rockport Networks, a networking startup, says this too becomes complex, unwieldy and costly as network node counts move from 1,000 to 10,000 and above. The company is developing its own torus-based networking scheme* to combat the spine and leaf disadvantages.

   Reply
5. December 31, 2015 at 11:25 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Intel unveils 8 new Broadwell and Skylake processors
   http://betanews.com/2015/12/30/intel-unveils-8-new-broadwell-and-skylake-processors/

   US chip maker Intel has recently announced eight new processors, as it expands its Broadwell and Skylake families. The chips will be available for both desktop and mobile CPUs, the company added.

   The new processors announced today include the Celeron 3855U, Celeron 3955U, Core i3-6098P, Core i5-6402P, Core i5-5200DU, Core i5-6198DU, Core i5-5500DU, and the Core i7-6498DU. Out of these, the two new desktop CPUs are the Core i3-6098P and the Core i5-6402P. Like previous processors with a “P” prefix, it is likely that these processors do not come with an integrated GPU. They have been priced at $117 (£79) and $182 (£122), respectively.

   Intel launches new desktop and mobile CPUs
   http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2015/2015122701_Intel_launches_new_desktop_and_mobile_CPUs.html

   Reply
6. December 31, 2015 at 11:28 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Cloudy With a Chance of Lock-In
   http://jacquesmattheij.com/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-lock-in

   lots of products that came to market in the recent past and that will come to market in the near future that use some kind of cloud hosted component. In many cases these products rightly use some kind of off-device service in order to provide you with features that would otherwise not be possible. Sometimes these features are so much part of the core product that the whole idea would be dead in the water without it.

   But there are also many products for which it makes very little or even no sense at all to have a cloud based component. In many of these cases if you look a bit more closely at what is being sold you’ll realize that these are just instances of a business-model that was grafted on as an afterthought onto something that would have worked really well stand-alone but where the creators weren’t happy with a one-time fee from potential buyers.

   The last couple of years have seen ever more blatant abuses of this kind of trick to the point where even the most close study of the applications has not been able to reveal a reason why the ‘cloud’ should even be a factor in the design of the product. Some examples: internet-of-things applications that come with a mandatory subscription to get your own data back, televisions that require you to sign up with an online service in order to be able to use the TV’s built in browser, navigation devices or apps that contain all the bits and pieces required to work except that they somehow also require you to sign up with a service before the device will function. The list is absolutely endless.

   I hate these clouds-grafted-on devices and applications with a passion. There are only a few things more certain than death and taxes and one of those is that the device I own will outlive the required service component so sooner or later (and plenty of times sooner)

   Software as a service to many people is the way to convert what used to be licensed software into a repeat revenue stream and in principle there is nothing wrong with that if done properly (Adobe almost gets it right). But if the internet connection is down and your software no longer works, if the data you painstakingly built up over years goes missing because a service dies or because your account gets terminated for no apparent reason and without any recourse you might come to the same conclusion that I came to: if it requires an online service and is not actually an online product I can do just fine without it.

   Reply
7. January 1, 2016 at 6:35 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Oculus:
   Oculus Touch controller delayed to second half of 2016, Oculus Rift remains on schedule to ship in Q1 2016 — Update on Oculus Touch Ship Date — On the path to perfecting Touch, we’ve decided that we need more time before release, and we’ll now be shipping Touch in the second half of 2016.

   Update on Oculus Touch Ship Date
   https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/update-on-oculus-touch-ship-date/

   Reply
8. January 1, 2016 at 7:10 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All
   http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/in-silicon-valley-now-its-almost-always-winner-takes-all

   Reply
9. January 4, 2016 at 1:04 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Brett Howse / AnandTech:
   Lenovo unveils keyboard, pico projector, and 3D imaging attachments for new modular $899 ThinkPad X1 tablet — Lenovo Launches The Modular ThinkPad X1 Tablet at CES — The convertible tablet segment has certainly gained a foothold over the last year or two, and now we are seeing a lot of great designs in this space.

   Lenovo Launches The Modular ThinkPad X1 Tablet at CES
   by Brett Howse on January 3, 2016 10:31 PM EST
   http://www.anandtech.com/show/9888/lenovo-launches-the-modular-thinkpad-x1-tablet-at-ces

   Reply
10. January 4, 2016 at 1:06 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Biz Carson / Business Insider:
    Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge in 2016 is to build an AI butler like in ‘Iron Man’ — For the past year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been reading two books a month. He’s spent other years learning Mandarin or only eating meat that he killed. — This year, Zuckerberg is clearly envious of Iron Man Tony Stark’s futuristic life.

    Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge in 2016 is to build an AI butler like in ‘Iron Man’
    http://uk.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-2016-new-years-resolution-2016-1?op=1?r=US&IR=T

    This year, Zuckerberg is clearly envious of Iron Man Tony Stark’s futuristic life. He’s challenged himself to code his own version of JARVIS from “Iron Man,” the digital butler who controlled Stark’s life and home.

    Zuckerberg says he’ll start with understanding some basic smart-home technology that’s out there — he’s a fan of Amazon’s Echo — but then he wants to build something that’s custom to his own home.

    Reply
11. January 4, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Ian King / Bloomberg Business:
    Nvidia estimates that just 13M PCs in 2016 will have the graphics capabilities needed to run VR — Few Computers Are Powerful Enough to Support Virtual Reality — VR headsets are almost ready

    Few Computers Are Powerful Enough to Support Virtual Reality
    VR headsets are almost ready to hit stores, but less than 1 percent of PCs will be capable of running them
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-30/few-computers-are-powerful-enough-to-support-virtual-reality

    Virtual reality has a very real problem. With several technology giants preparing splashy introductions for the first VR headsets in 2016, few people own hardware capable of fully supporting Facebook’s Oculus Rift or other systems.

    Just 13 million PCs worldwide next year will have the graphics capabilities needed to run VR, according to an estimate by Nvidia, the largest maker of computer graphics chips. Those ultra-high-end machines account for less than 1 percent of the 1.43 billion PCs expected to be in use globally in 2016, according to research firm Gartner.

    VR headsets, which create immersive 3D environments the wearer can interact with and explore, are poised to be a star of CES 2016.

    Reply
12. January 4, 2016 at 1:11 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Bloomberg Business:
    As private funding cools, more tech firms may IPO in 2016, but will need to show more for higher valuations — With Startup Pileup, 2016 Tech IPOs Will Face Tough Investors — Less private funding may mean more startups turn to IPOs — Better balance sheets will be needed for higher valuations

    With Startup Pileup, 2016 Tech IPOs Will Face Tough Investors
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-31/with-startup-pile-up-2016-tech-ipos-will-face-tough-investors

    Reply
13. January 5, 2016 at 7:15 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    CES 2016: Deep learning proliferation
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4440979/CES-2016–Deep-learning-proliferation?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160104&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160104&elq=a5bc84a887dd459fa8d2655dbca76cf6&elqCampaignId=26331&elqaid=30091&elqat=1&elqTrackId=202cd92358234e979902424d51594e68

    Neural networks, which have been academic exercises (but little more) for decades, are increasingly becoming mainstream success stories. Heavy (and growing) investment in the technology, which enables the identification of objects in still and video images, words in audio streams, and the like after an initial training phase, comes from the formidable likes of Amazon, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others. So-called “deep learning” has been enabled by the combination of the evolution of traditional neural network techniques, with one latest-incarnation example known as a CNN (convolutional neural network), the steadily increasing processing “muscle” of CPUs (aided by algorithm acceleration via FPGAs, GPUs, and, more recently, dedicated co-processors), and the steadily decreasing cost of system memory and storage. And, while CNNs’ identification skills are increasingly (if not exceedingly) human-like in their speed and accuracy, they’re also human-reminiscent in at least one other respect … they enable computers to “dream” fanciful and fascinating visual conceptions.

    What’s behind CNNs’ burgeoning popularity? It’s that “initial training phase” phrase in the prior paragraph.

    Artificial neural networks come in various forms.

    For purposes of this writeup, specifically involving the ability to accelerate the training and subsequent identification algorithms on a massively parallel processor such as a FPGA or GPU, let’s look more closely at the feedforward neural network

    And now here’s a bit on convolutional neural networks, which as you’ll see are particularly well suited for computer vision functions:

    In machine learning, a convolutional neural network (CNN, or ConvNet) is a type of feed-forward artificial neural network where the individual neurons are tiled in such a way that they respond to overlapping regions in the visual field. Convolutional networks were inspired by biological processes and are variations of multilayer perceptrons which are designed to use minimal amounts of preprocessing. They are widely used models for image and video recognition.

    Reply
14. January 5, 2016 at 8:42 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Paul Thurrott / Thurrott.com:
    Windows 10 is Now Active on 200 Million Devices Worldwide — Share Tweet Pin it Reddit Share Share — Microsoft announced this morning that Windows 10 is now “active” on over 200 million devices worldwide. This figure presumably includes PCs, phones, Xbox Ones, and other devices …

    Windows 10 is Now Active on 200 Million Devices Worldwide
    Posted on January 4, 2016 by Paul Thurrott
    https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/63517/windows-10-is-now-active-on-200-million-devices-worldwide

    Reply
15. January 5, 2016 at 9:40 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Firefox Will Support Non-Standard CSS For WebKit Compatibility
    http://news.slashdot.org/story/16/01/04/2043206/firefox-will-support-non-standard-css-for-webkit-compatibility

    Mozilla developers have discussed a plan to implement support for a subset of non-standard CSS prefixes used in WebKit. Mozilla developer Daniel Holbert says: “A good chunk of the web today (and particularly the mobile web) effectively relies on -webkit prefixed CSS properties & features. We wish we lived in a world where web content always included standards-based fallback

    Firefox will support non-standard CSS for WebKit compatibility
    Apple and Google are dictating the languages of the mobile and ‘legacy’ web
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/04/firefox_webkit_css_support/

    Reply
16. January 5, 2016 at 9:53 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Desktop Top Browser Share Trend
    https://netmarketshare.com/

    Reply
17. January 5, 2016 at 10:08 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    PC building seems to decrease

    Every self-respecting PC player used to build the machines themselves from components.
    However, this action seems to be a clear decline. This development is reflected, for example, for sale motherboards – Motherboards targeted at builders whom sales fell last year by as much as 21.7 per cent. Only total, 54 million PC builder targeted motherboards were sold globally.
    Two largest producers, namely, motherboards Asustek and Gigabyte have sold last year, nearly 10 percent fewer cards than a year earlier (17.1 to 17.5 million). ASRock and MSI tell each sold about five million system board.

    Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3798:pc-rakentelu-nayttaa-vahenevan&catid=13&Itemid=101

    Reply
18. January 5, 2016 at 11:14 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    AMD to nibble the ankles of Nvidia this summer with 14nm FinFET GPUs
    Look at me, we’re still here, we’re still going, still making chips, still relevant
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/04/amd_polaris_14nm/

    AMD says it will ship graphics chips using its next-generation “Polaris” architecture from mid-2016. Crucially, these processors will use 14nm FinFETs, which means they should have better performance-per-watt figures than today’s 28nm GPUs.

    Let’s be clear: today’s announcement is timed to catch the hype building around the CES 2016 conference – the annual tech circle-jerk held in Las Vegas – so don’t expect a whole lot of actual detail right now.

    What we do know is that Polaris is AMD’s 4th generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, and it will apparently support HDMI 2.0a, DisplayPort 1.3, and 4K H.265 encoding and decoding at 60 frames per second. We assume AMD is going to use GlobalFoundries as its fab. The tech will appear in Radeon products that PC makers are testing out right now, we’re told.

    A goal of the Polaris design is to fit “console caliber” graphics into thin notebooks and displays

    Reply
19. January 5, 2016 at 11:33 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Register guide to software-defined infrastructure
    Our very own Trevor Pott does his best to cut through the marketing fluff
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/04/software_defined_infrastructure_explainer/

    Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI) has, in a very short time, become a completely overused term.

    As the individual components of SDI have started to become automated the marketing usage of the term has approached “cloud” or “X as a Service” levels of abstracted pointlessness.

    Understanding what different groups mean when they use the term “software-defined” means cutting through a lot of fluff to find it. Ultimately, this is why I chose to eventually use the term Infrastructure Endgame Machine to describe what I see as the ultimate evolution of SDI: the marketing bullshit has run so far ahead of the technical realities that describing theoretical concepts can only be done using ridiculous absolutist terminology like “endgame machine”.

    I don’t think even tech marketers are willing to go there quite yet.

    SDI wars: WTF is software defined infrastructure?
    This time we play for ALL the marbles
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/17/sdi_wars_what_is_software_defined_infrastructure

    In order to understand the problem with “software-defined” anything, let’s start the discussion with the most overused subterm of all: Software-Defined Storage (SDS).

    All storage is software-defined.

    SDS vendors want you to become locked into their software instead of being locked in to EMC’s combination of software and hardware. Pure and simple.

    Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is another often confused term. It comes in two flavours: virtual and physical, and is often lumped together with Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) which also comes in two flavours: telco and everyone else.

    The two flavours of SDN are not mutually incompatible. Indeed, a hybrid between the two is starting to emerge as the most likely candidate, once everyone is done stabbing Cisco to death with the shiv of cutthroat margins.

    Software-defined really means developer-controlled

    But the thing to notice here is the bit about the “API-fiddling developer”. When you strip all of the blither, marketing speak, infighting, politics, lies, damned lies and the pestilent reek of desperation away what you have is Amazon envy. “Software-defined” means nothing more than “be as good as – or better than – Amazon at making the lives of developers easy”.

    That’s it, right there, ladies and gentlemen. The holy grail of modern tech CxO thinking. It’s been nearly 10 years since AWS launched and the movers and shakers in our industry still can’t come up with anything better. Software-defined X, the Docker/containerisation love affair, the “rise of the API”, keynotes about the irrelevance of open source and the replacement of it with “open standards” … all of it is nothing more than the perpetual, frenetic and frenzied attempt to be like Amazon.

    Developers are not engineers

    Where it all goes wrong – and it has – is that while many engineers are developers, not all developers are engineers. In the “bad old days”, we had a separation of powers. In a well-balanced IT department no one idiot could ruin everything for everyone one else.

    A virtual admin with a burning idea would need to get the network, storage, OS, application and security guys to all sign off on it.

    The new way is to dispense with all of that and let the devs run the asylum. Hell, most software teams have almost entirely done away with testing and quality assurance. It’s common practice for even the mightiest software houses to throw beta software out as “release” and let the customers beat through the bugs in production.

    It’s a rare company that – like Netflix – invests in building a chaos monkey. Rarer still are those still building software using proper engineering principles.

    Software-defined change management

    With the exception of a handful of Israeli startups run by terrifying ex-Mossad InfoSec types, these are the sorts of questions and discussions that make software-defined X startups very, very angry. They really don’t want to talk about things like rate limiting change requests from a given authentication key, how one might implement mitigation via segmentation or automated incident response.

    There’s money to be made and any concerns about privacy, security or data sovereignty are to be viciously stamped out. The hell of it is … they’re not wrong.

    Change management is seen as a problematic impediment by pretty much anyone who isn’t a traditional infrastructure nerd or a security specialist. Developers, sales, marketing and most executives want what they want and they want it now. If IT can’t deliver, they’ll go do their thing in Amazon. Every time that happens that is money those startups – or even the staid old guard – aren’t getting.

    Eventually, the software-defined crew will realise that if they are going to be around for more than a single refresh cycle they need to put a truly unholy amount of time and effort into idiot-proofing their offerings. Those that don’t won’t be around long.

    When someone talks about “software-defined”, that’s what they’re trying to be. Or, at least, they’re trying to be some small piece of that puzzle. If they do talk about “software-defined”, however, take the time to ask them hard questions about security, privacy and data sovereignty. After all, in a “software-defined” world, those sorts of considerations are now automated. Welcome to the future.

    Reply
20. January 5, 2016 at 12:02 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    “Code reuse, libraries, sharing, and open-source are very important to software engineering, but we should be careful to not enable the belief that programming should be as easy as gluing things together.”

    Source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/01/04/1637257/overcoming-intuition-in-programming

    Reply
21. January 5, 2016 at 2:16 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Etsy’s DevOps supremo to take the stage at Continuous Lifecycle
    Katherine Daniels on nodes, clusters, beer and hot sauce
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/05/etsys_devops_supremo_to_take_the_stage_at_continuous_lifecycle/

    Katherine is a senior operations engineer with Etsy, overseeing systems that support 54 million members, 1.4 million active sellers, and 19.8 million active buyers.

    To keep this humming along, Katherine has used Chef to manage over 2,000 nodes, has juggled Hadoop clusters, and designed and implemented a host of improvements to Etsy’s provisioning tools.

    When not running DevOps at Etsy, or speaking about running DevOps at Etsy, Katherine makes both beer and hot sauce, which we all know are two of the most important food groups.

    Reply
22. January 5, 2016 at 2:17 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Cisco starts 2016 with a spring in its step, pours cash into Springpath
    Hyperconverged infrastructure OEM deal in pipeline. Be still, our beating hearts!
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/05/cisco_invests_springpath/

    Cisco sources tell us the company has invested in hyper-converged infrastructure software startup Springpath and is preparing an OEM deal.

    It is now in a position to acquire Springpath if it wishes to do so.

    Clearly Cisco is preparing to launch a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance (HCIA) using its own UCS servers and Springpath software.

    Reply
23. January 6, 2016 at 5:32 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Facebook’s Secret Chat SDK Lets Developers Build Messenger Bots
    http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/facebook-messenger-bots/

    M won’t be the only artificial intelligence on Facebook Messenger. Facebook has given some developers access to an unannounced Chat SDK that allows them to build interactive experiences and “bots” in Messenger for shopping, booking travel, and more, sources with direct knowledge of the SDK confirm.

    The Chat SDK allows developers to create bots that users can send text messages to directly and that automatically respond with information, images, location services, product prices, Buy buttons, and more. The Chat SDK can also tap into Messenger built-in payments system to let users make purchases via bots.

    Facebook hasn’t publicized any of the documentation for the Chat SDK, which is currently being shared with developers through PDF documents. The project is in part led by Facebook Messenger’s head of strategic partnerships Bryan Hurren. Facebook declined to comment.

    Reply
24. January 7, 2016 at 12:59 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Web developers rejoice; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
    http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/01/05/web-developers-rejoice-internet-explorer-8-9-and-10-die-on-tuesday/

    Internet Explorer has long been the bane of many Web developers’ existence, but here’s some news to brighten your day: Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 are reaching ‘end of life’ on Tuesday, meaning they’re no longer supported by Microsoft.

    A patch, which goes live on January 12, will nag Internet Explorer users on launch to upgrade to a modern browser.

    It’s great news for developers who still need to target older browsers — not needing to worry about whether or not modern CSS works in these browsers is a dream, and it’s much closer with this move.

    End of life means the browsers will no longer receive security updates or any other kind of patches, leaving those running them wide open to new vulnerabilities in the future.

    Reply
25. January 7, 2016 at 1:10 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
    Pre-orders open for Oculus Rift consumer edition, on sale for $599, shipping in March; orders already backlogged until May — Virtually a reality: Oculus Rift goes on sale for $599 — Pre-orders are open ahead of March ship date for consumer version — After dozens of trade-show demos …

    Virtually a reality: Oculus Rift goes on sale for $599 [Updated]
    Pre-orders are open ahead of March ship date for consumer version
    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/virtually-a-reality-oculus-rift-goes-on-sale/

    Reply
26. January 7, 2016 at 1:11 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Casey Newton / The Verge:
    Entrepreneurs and investors turn to bots in messaging platforms to disrupt web services, apps, and search — The search for the killer bot — The first bot I ever befriended went by the name of GooglyMinotaur. The Minotaur appeared in 2001 to promote Amnesiac, the latest album from Radiohead …

    The search for the killer bot
    Bots are here, they’re learning — and in 2016, they might eat the web
    http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10718282/internet-bots-messaging-slack-facebook-m

    Reply
27. January 7, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Panasonic To Commercialize Facebook’s Blu-Ray Cold Storage Systems
    http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/01/07/025226/panasonic-to-commercialize-facebooks-blu-ray-cold-storage-systems

    A couple of years ago, Facebook revealed it was using Blu-ray disks as a cost-efficient way to archive the billions of images that users uploaded to its service. When Facebook users upload photos, they’re often viewed frequently in the first week, so Facebook stores them on solid state drives or spinning hard disks. But as time goes on the images get viewed less and less. At a certain point, Facebook dumps them onto high-capacity Blu ray discs, where they might sit for years without being looked at.

    Panasonic to commercialize Facebook’s Blu-ray cold storage systems
    http://www.cio.com/article/3019250/panasonic-to-commercialize-facebooks-blu-ray-cold-storage-systems.html

    Facebook has said Blu-ray can cut costs significantly for long term data storage

    Blu-ray discs were at risk of dying out as streaming services like Netflix took over, but the interest from Facebook and other vendors has kept the technology alive and is now driving down costs. Facebook has said its Blu-ray system is 50 percent cheaper than using hard disk drives for cold storage, and 80 percent more energy efficient.

    At a press conference at CES Tuesday, Panasonic didn’t give many details about its plans, including release dates or prices, but Yasu Enokido, president of its B2B division, said the company hopes to make Blu-ray an “industry standard” for cold storage. He praised Blu-ray for its “longevity, immutability, backward compatibility, low power consumption and tolerance to environmental changes.”

    Facebook’s first generation of systems used 100GB disks. Later this year it expects to deploy 300GB disks, Panasonic said, and the companies are working on 500GB and 1TB disks. Hundreds or even thousands of disks can go in a single system, giving petabytes of archival storage.

    Reply
28. January 8, 2016 at 10:36 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Modernize your engineer’s notebook
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4441142/Modernize-your-engineer-s-notebook?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160107&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160107&elq=12f7a3e53a614a4eb2d1c192fff96c7e&elqCampaignId=26384&elqaid=30159&elqat=1&elqTrackId=39f9f6373c934014870cb8dcd3e44a7e

    Engineers and scientists have always relied upon notebooks to document their ideas, inventions, progress, and even their missteps. Some of the most notable engineers and scientists who used notebooks include Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, mankind would know very little of da Vinci’s discoveries had he not written them down in a notebook. One problem facing engineers today is that the paper-bound notebook is an inefficient means for recording information in a society driven by computer technology. It’s time to upgrade the engineering notebook for the 21st century.

    So what does a modern engineering notebook look like?

    A modern engineering notebook, whether for an individual or a team, must be capable of synchronization through the cloud. Engineers today don’t just use PCs; they rely on mobile devices such as tablets or cell phones to document their work. An engineer must be able to track and record notes on any of these devices and have the notes seamlessly synchronize with one another. The notebook medium must also be capable of potentially having multiple engineers working within the same notebook simultaneously in order to prevent synchronization issues.

    Paper- bound notebooks are great for writing in but whenever an image or graph needs to be recorded, engineers need to pull out the scissors, tape, and glue to meticulously insert the image into the notebook. Not only is inserting images into a paper notebook time consuming, it can potentially be dangerous for a software engineer working in dimly lit conditions (scissors are sharp and pointy). The use of a modern electronic notebook to add images or graphs is trivial!

    So far an electronic engineering notebook sounds promising, but what happens when an engineer needs to insert a hand drawing? In a paperbound notebook an engineer would simply draw out the diagram, and many software packages designed to work as a notebook include manual drawing tools, but drawing on a PC can seem uncomfortable and inefficient. The use of a tablet and stylus can give an engineer the same efficiency and feel of a paper notebook while taking advantage of the digital tools available to modern engineers. The main caveat in hand drawing on a tablet is to make sure the stylus being used has a narrow tip. Otherwise, drawing feels awkward.

    Given all these capabilities of an electronic engineering notebook, one might expect that they are already being used and wonder what software packages are available. A first thought might be to use something similar to Microsoft Word. The problem with Word, while it is very capable, is that it lacks many of the synchronization and multi-user capabilities that are required for a truly modern engineering notebook. So what else is available?

    There are three different software packages that immediately come to mind that would make great first attempts for an electronic notebook; Evernote, OneNote, and Wikis.

    One thing is certain, engineers and scientists need notebooks to keep their thoughts straight, monitor progress, collect relevant information about a project, and to share ideas. Paper notebooks no longer fit many of these needs efficiently. But an electronic notebook can prove to be exactly what engineers need to effectively track their thoughts in a digital age.

    How do you manage your modern-day engineering notebook?

    Reply
29. January 8, 2016 at 12:04 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Ben Woods / The Next Web:
    Jide announces Remix OS 2.0, a fork of Android Lollipop that is designed to run on x86 PCs, alpha build will be available as a free download on January 12

    The excellent Remix OS is bringing Android to every old x86 PC (and Mac) for free
    http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/01/06/the-excellent-remix-os-is-bringing-android-to-every-old-x86-pc-and-mac-for-free/

    When I first tested the Remix Mini at the end of last year, I was blown away. Sure, the hardware is interesting and portable, but it’s the fork of Android adapted to make the Remix Mini into something resembling a desktop system that really took me by surprise.

    It’s what Chrome OS should be, in some ways: productivity-focused and instantly familiar, with full support for Android apps from the Google Play store.

    Now, Jide, the company behind Remix OS has announced that it’ll be releasing an x86 version of Remix OS as a free global download.

    The company says that it will be a major help for users in emerging markets, freeing them from the need to own their own devices, as it can be stored on something as small as a USB stick and then just plugged in to any old hardware.

    Minimum requirements for the OS are a USB 3.0 flash drive that supports FAT32 format with a minimum capacity of 8GB (and a recommended writing speed of 20MB/s) and a PC that supports booting from a USB.

    http://www.jide.com/en/remixos-for-pc

    Reply
30. January 8, 2016 at 12:05 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Android-x86 Project – Run Android on Your PC
    http://www.android-x86.org/

    This is a project to port Android open source project to x86 platform, formerly known as “patch hosting for android x86 support”. The original plan is to host different patches for android x86 support from open source community. A few months after we created the project, we found out that we could do much more than just hosting patches. So we decide to create our code base to provide support on different x86 platforms, and set up a git server to host it.

    Reply
31. January 8, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    10 outsourcing trends to watch in 2016
    http://www.cio.com/article/3018638/outsourcing/10-outsourcing-trends-to-watch-in-2016.html?page=2

    Experts expect a number of shifts in the IT outsourcing industry in 2016. Some of these shifts include a focus on hyper-speed deal making, new multi-sourcing headaches, more man-machine collaboration and more.

    Reply
32. January 8, 2016 at 3:11 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Five Reasons to Ditch the Spreadsheet in Favor of an Accounting App
    https://www.getapp.com/blog/accounting-app/?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=blog&utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=blog

    If the term ” accounting software” doesn’t immediately excite you, it’s perfectly understandable. Luckily, cloud-based accounting apps are breathing new life into doing business in the digital space.

    Reply
33. January 8, 2016 at 3:38 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mozilla: 40 Percent of Firefox Users Don’t Have Add-Ons Installed
    http://news.softpedia.com/news/mozilla-40-percent-of-firefox-users-don-t-have-add-ons-installed-498566.shtml

    According to an internal analysis, Mozilla staff estimates, based on anonymous telemetry data, that around 40% of its userbase does not have add-ons installed on their browser.

    When you install any version of Firefox, the browser asks you if it can anonymously submit usage data to Mozilla server, for the purpose of optimizing future releases.

    Three in five Firefox users might have issues with their add-ons in the future

    Interpreting this data, we see that 60% of Firefox users will be impacted by the company’s upcoming changes to the add-ons platform.

    This is not a small number, as many initially thought, and we now see why there were so many add-on developers against these changes.

    With the introduction of a new add-ons API called WebExtensions, which is more compatible with Chrome’s extensions API, with the addition of multi-process support via the Electrolysis (e10s) project, and with mandatory add-on signing, Firefox’s upcoming updates are going to alienate many, many users. 60%, to be more exact.

    Seeing that many of the Firefox loyal supporters stuck around the aging browser because of its versatile customization options provided by vast add-ons repository, Mozilla might be making a mistake they’re about to regret.

    Reply
34. January 8, 2016 at 3:41 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    The FBI’s ‘Unprecedented’ Hacking Campaign Targeted Over a Thousand Computers
    https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers

    In the summer of 2015, two men from New York were charged with online child pornography crimes. The site the men allegedly visited was a Tor hidden service, which supposedly would protect the identity of its users and server location. What made the case stand out was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had used a hacking tool to identify the IP addresses of the individuals.

    The case received some media attention, and snippets of information about other, related arrests started to spring up as the year went on. But only now is the true extent of the FBI’s bulk hacking campaign coming to light.

    In order to fight what it has called one of the largest child pornography sites on the dark web, the FBI hacked over a thousand computers, according to court documents reviewed by Motherboard and interviews with legal parties involved.

    “This kind of operation is simply unprecedented,” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in a phone interview.

    A new bulletin board site on the dark web was launched in August 2014, on which users could sign up and then upload whatever images they wanted. According to court documents, the site’s primary purpose was “the advertisement and distribution of child pornography.”

    An FBI complaint described the site as “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world.”

    A month before this peak, in February 2015, the computer server running Playpen was seized by law enforcement from a web host in Lenoir, North Carolina, according to a complaint filed against Peter Ferrell, one of the accused in New York.

    But after Playpen was seized, it wasn’t immediately closed down, unlike previous dark web sites that have been shuttered by law enforcement. Instead, the FBI ran Playpen from its own servers in Newington, Virginia, from February 20 to March 4, reads a complaint filed against a defendant in Utah. During this time, the FBI deployed what is known as a network investigative technique (NIT), the agency’s term for a hacking tool.

    “There will probably be an escalating stream of these [cases] in the next six months or so,” Fieman added. “There is going to be a lot in the pipeline.”

    It’s not totally clear exactly how it was deployed, but the warrant allowed for anyone who logged into the site to be hacked.

    Reply
35. January 8, 2016 at 3:45 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Wall Street Journal:
    Apple says it has acquired Emotient, an AI startup that reads emotions by analyzing facial expressions, and was recently seeking a new round of financing — Apple Buys Artificial-Intelligence Startup Emotient — Emotient technology is used to assess emotions by reading facial expressions

    Apple Buys Artificial-Intelligence Startup Emotient
    Emotient technology is used to assess emotions by reading facial expressions
    http://www.wsj.com/article_email/apple-buys-artificial-intelligence-startup-emotient-1452188715-lMyQjAxMTE2ODA0NzkwODc2Wj

    Reply
36. January 10, 2016 at 7:31 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tom’s Hardware:
    Dell offers $200 off the Oculus Rift when purchased with an Oculus Ready PC; bundles start at $1600

    Alienware And Dell Announce Oculus Ready PC Bundles For $1,600
    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/alienware-dell-oculus-rift-pc-bundle,30944.html#xtor=RSS-181

    At CES 2016, Alienware and Dell announced Oculus Ready PC bundles that will start at $1,600. The companies also said that there is a chance that your Rift will arrive sooner if you take advantage of one.

    Reply
37. January 11, 2016 at 8:56 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    2016 Google Tracker: Everything Google is working on for the new year
    Android N, a big VR program, Google Glass, and lots more are in store for Alphabet.
    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/2016-google-tracker-everything-google-is-working-on-for-the-new-year/

    Reply
38. January 11, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
    Thunderbolt 3, with increased speed and USB Type-C ports, now found in high end offerings from major PC OEMs — Five years later, Thunderbolt is finally gaining some traction in PCs — Increasing speed and adopting USB Type-C ports seems to be paying off for Intel.

    Five years later, Thunderbolt is finally gaining some traction in PCs
    Increasing speed and adopting USB Type-C ports seems to be paying off for Intel.
    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/five-years-later-thunderbolt-is-finally-gaining-some-traction-in-pcs/

    For many years, it looked like Thunderbolt was destined to be a modern version of FireWire: faster and smarter than contemporary USB interfaces, but so rare outside of Macs that there isn’t a very wide range of accessories beyond adapters and external hard drives. Thunderbolt versions 1 and 2 are available in most Macs sold between 2011 and now, but it has been included in just a handful of PC laptops and high-end motherboards.

    Thunderbolt 3 is turning that around. The port is suddenly beginning to show up in high-end offerings from just about every major PC OEM, starting with some Lenovo workstation laptops and Dell’s new XPS lineup and continuing in laptops and convertibles from HP, Acer, Intel, and others.

    Reply
39. January 11, 2016 at 12:05 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Now came Windows that is not Windows

    Do you want to use Windows applications, but you do not like the direction in which Microsoft Windows is heading? No worries. Has become available in an open source operating system, which is based on the good old Windows NT platform (used in Windows XP and 7).

    Meet ReactOS that is binary compatible with Windows. Despite the openness it has nothing to do with linux, which is in itself an achievement. ReactOS can not share any common ground with the UNIX architecture.

    Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3817:nyt-tuli-windows-joka-ei-ole-windows&catid=13&Itemid=101

    More: http://www.reactos.org/

    Reply
40. January 11, 2016 at 2:20 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Rejoice, Penguinistas, Linux 4.4 is upon us
    New bits mean it really might be the year of Linux on the (virtual) desktop
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/11/linux_four_point_four_released/

    Version 4.4 of the Linux kernel has been finalised and released into the wild.

    Emperor Penguin Linus Torvalds announced the release on Sunday evening, US time.

    What’s new this time around? Support for GPUs seem the headline item, with plenty of new drivers and hooks for AMD kit. Perhaps most notable is the adoption of the Virgil 3D project which makes it possible to parcel up virtual GPUs. With virtual Linux desktops now on offer from Citrix and VMware, those who want to deliver virtual desktops with workstation-esque graphics capabilities have their on-ramp to Penguin heaven.

    Raspberry Pi owners also have better graphics to look forward to, thanks to a new Pi KMS driver that will be updated with acceleration code in future releases.

    There’s also better 64-bit ARM support and fixes for memory leaks on Intel’s Skylake CPUs.

    Reply
41. January 11, 2016 at 2:21 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Windows 10 makes big gains at home, lags at work
    US government data shows weekends are when Win 10 shines
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/11/windows_10_makes_big_gains_at_home_lags_at_work/

    Our monthly look at desktop operating system market share has turned up something interesting: Windows 10 looks to be a hit at home but a laggard at work.

    Reply
42. January 11, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Switzerland, Spain and France are beating UK at DevOps – survey
    Only 11% of Brit orgs in advanced stage of deployment
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/11/uk_struggling_devops_goals_survey/

    UK companies are failing to adopt key requisites for DevOps success, according to a new survey.

    The study says the Brits’ shortcomings were seen in three main areas, namely business-led approaches to development, skilled and collaborative IT resources, and key control risks.

    According to Assembling the DevOps Jigsaw, a survey conducted by IT industry analyst firm Freeform Dynamics and sponsored by systems management firm CA Technologies, over two-thirds (67 per cent) of UK organisations claim they have broadly implemented DevOps, or have at least done so in selected areas of the business.

    However, only 11 per cent of UK organisations are in an advanced stage of deployment, defined as firms that have implemented DevOps across at least six different business areas.

    Although DevOps (which promotes collaboration between software developers and other IT teams as well as automating software delivery and infrastructure changes) is not a new concept, with Gartner stating that it will become a mainstream strategy in 2016, UK organisations are seemingly struggling to get it right.

    Reply
43. January 11, 2016 at 2:45 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    EMC Confirms Layoffs As Cost-Cutting Measures Begin Ahead Of Dell Acquisition
    http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/emc-confirms-layoffs-as-cost-cutting-measures-begin-ahead-of-dell-sale/

    Some EMC employees got some harsh news this week as anticipated layoffs have begun at the Massachusetts company. A company spokesperson confirmed the news, but declined to offer a specific number of affected employees. CRN first reported the news.

    At the end of last month EMC telegraphed the move when it filed paperwork with The SEC. At the time, the company indicated that it would be implementing an $850 million cost-cutting measure that would include layoffs.

    True to its word, those layoffs started this week, and are expected to be mostly completed by the end of the first quarter. EMC currently has 50,000 employees. The company would not say how many of these would be laid off in this action.

    The move comes against the backdrop of the $67 billion Dell-EMC deal announced in October, and expected to go through some time later this year. Even as the two companies plan to combine, EMC has been making moves of its own including this cost-cutting measure.

    Reply
44. January 11, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Vindu Goel / New York Times:
    Sources: more than 30% of Yahoo’s workforce has left in the last year, but company says it is still hiring, and application numbers are strong — Yahoo’s Brain Drain Shows a Loss of Faith Inside the Company — SAN FRANCISCO — Marissa Mayer, the glamorous, geeky Google executive hired …

    Yahoo’s Brain Drain Shows a Loss of Faith Inside the Company
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/technology/yahoos-brain-drain-shows-a-loss-of-faith-inside-the-company.html?_r=0

    Reply
45. January 11, 2016 at 5:02 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    PostgreSQL 9.5 Does UPSERT Right
    http://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/01/11/0351259/postgresql-95-does-upsert-right

    For years, PostgreSQL users would ask when their favorite open source database system would get the UPSERT operator, which can either insert an entry or update it if a previous version already existed. Other RDMS have long offered this feature. Bruce Momjian, one of the chief contributors to PostgreSQL, admits to being embarrassed that it wasn’t supported. Well, PostgreSQL 9.5, now generally available, finally offers a version of UPSERT and users may be glad the dev team took their time with it. Implementations of UPSERT on other database systems were “handled very badly,” sometimes leading to unexpected error messages Momjian said. Turns out it is very difficult to implement on multi-user systems.

    PostgreSQL 9.5 Geared to Liberate Enterprises from the Data Warehouse
    http://thenewstack.io/postgresql-9-5-geared-liberate-enterprises-data-warehouse/

    Now, the PostgreSQL open source database management system, with the help of large-core count servers coming out, wants to take that analysis workload back, saving users money and administrative hassles of setting up secondary data warehouse systems, and giving them the ability to interrogate live data.

    The new release gets the system closer to”using PostgreSQL as a pure analytics platform. Historically, PostgreSQL was an OLTP,” or online transaction processing database, said Bruce Momjian, one of the chief maintainers of the PostgreSQL core team, and a senior database architect at EnterpriseDB, which offers a commercial distribution of PostgreSQL.

    “People are tired of dumping all their OLTP into an analytics database. This data is old, stale and there is a lot of overhead. There is a whole bunch of things you can’t do on a copy of the data that you can do on the live data,” Momjian said. “We’ve seen a lot of requests for live data analytics, and this [release] gets us closer to that.”

    “We’ve done a lot of work focusing on performance and scalability,”

    New Analytic Features

    The database system comes with a number of new analytic features typically found in data warehouses, including grouping sets, cubes and roll-up. They all offer functionality that can be executed through a series of standard SQL operators such as UNION ALL, though they make it much easier to carry out this work, speeding the execution times of complex queries and offer the way to craft more nuanced commands. Think of the need to summarize information like employee headcount across different departments, locations and job roles.

    “This [approach] has the efficiency of going through the data only once,” Momjian said. “Telling people to use UNION ALL gets awkward after a while.”

    Another new feature that should help in analytics is a new indexing type called BRIN (Block Range Index). BRIN can generate very small indexes to describe a range of information, such as minimum and maximum values, that allow queries to skip over vast numbers of rows when looking for data within a certain range. With BRIN, 100GB of data can be summarized within 100KB or so.

    “The BRIN creates a filter index,”

    Reply
46. January 11, 2016 at 5:05 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Top 5 actions CIOs should take in 2016
    http://www.cio.com/article/3020488/cio-role/top-5-actions-cios-should-take-in-2016.html

    As 2016 begins, it’s a great time for CIOs to think about their opportunity to wield greater influence across their organization.

    The beginning of the New Year is a time to reflect on the past, consider opportunities and plan for the future. As CIOs begin 2016, there is much to think about regarding their role and reach. CIOs increasingly have the opportunity to wield greater influence across their organization.

    Now, more than ever, the time is right to seize opportunities and solidify the CIO’s rightful spot as a strategic leader within the organization’s C-suite. The five actions below are critical to helping CIOs and their IT organizations become nimble, effective and drive business value in a digital world.

    1. Get strategy in shape

    The CIO’s digital strategy must be about what’s next for digital. How can digital enable an organization to drive revenue and create results through innovation or new products, processes and experiences? “Going digital” has transcended being a lever for IT efficacy. Digital is a growth enabler, and CIOs are in charge of figuring out how to unleash digital power to fuel that growth.

    2. Collapse internal and external boundaries

    The divisions within a company are no longer rigid, thanks to the fluidity that IT enables. CIOs must continue to increase effective collaboration across the business and IT

    3. Advance the operating model

    The ever-changing competitive environment and evolving customer expectations are rapidly reshaping the way companies deliver value. The operating model can foster the necessary agility to enable a company to adapt to changing circumstances, invest in innovation and fuel sustainable growth.

    4. Redesign the IT workforce

    To maximize IT talent and meet digital needs of the future, changes to roles and responsibilities must be considered. IT work is evolving beyond managing programs and developing software to integrate hybrid IT capabilities (legacy and cloud) into business-relevant services. At the same time, the lines between the business and IT are merging, and blended roles are emerging to meet new digital priorities.

    5. Become the ‘conductor’ of innovation

    CIOs need to remain relevant by orchestrating and participating in innovation across the business. According to the 2015 Accenture Technology Vision, only 34 percent of the executives surveyed expect the IT organization to be the main generator of innovation.

    Preparing for the future

    These five actions are not the only priorities for CIOs in the New Year. But for many, getting these areas right will make the difference between sitting in the pilot’s seat or, figuratively speaking, being left behind in the cockpit as the enterprises in which they work carve out their approach to digital disruption.

    Reply
47. January 12, 2016 at 12:44 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
    iOS 9.3 beta adds multi-user support, only for schools, adds Apple School Manager service, updated Classroom app, Night Shift mode that emits less blue light — iOS 9.3 brings multi-user mode to iPads, along with more features and fixes — Multi-user mode is targeted toward schools, first beta is out today.

    iOS 9.3 brings multi-user mode to iPads, along with more features and fixes
    Multi-user mode is targeted toward schools, first beta is out today.
    http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/01/ios-9-3-brings-multi-user-mode-to-ipads-along-with-more-features-and-fixes/

    The first and most significant is a multi-user mode for iPads, aimed primarily at schools where buying a single iPad for each student is too expensive or otherwise undesirable. From Apple’s description, it sounds as though each student will have a roaming user profile that follows them from iPad to iPad so they can access the same apps and data no matter which iPad they use to log in. User content can be cached so that students who regularly use the same iPad won’t have to wait for data to download each time they log in.

    All of these new education features are aimed squarely at Google’s Chromebooks, which despite (or because of) their limitations have seen a lot of adoption in schools. Many of the things that iOS 9.3 will add to the iPad (easy account and device management, roaming profiles and content, and so on) are features that Google pushes hard in schools. As Chromebooks have risen in the educational market, the iPad has suffered several high-profile setbacks—it makes sense for Apple to follow Google’s example here.

    Reply
48. January 13, 2016 at 9:49 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Intel admits to Skylake bug that freezes Windows and Linux systems
    Could affect industries that rely on complex computational workloads
    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2441458/intel-admits-to-skylake-bug-that-freezes-windows-and-linux-systems

    INTEL HAS ADMITTED that its latest 6th-generation Core Skylake processors are suffering from a bug that can cause computer systems to freeze.

    The bug, which doesn’t yet have a name, was uncovered by German computing community Hardwareluxx.de, and is said to occur in Windows and Linux when the system needs to perform complex workloads.

    It was later confirmed by software project group the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), which conducted more tests before presenting its findings to the big boys at Intel.

    Nevertheless, Intel has already developed a fix for the problem and is apparently working with hardware partners to distribute it via a BIOS update. Even so, it is likely to be a bit of a headache for the firm, as its client computing group posted Q3 2015 revenue of $8.5bn, down seven percent year over year.

    Reply
49. January 13, 2016 at 10:01 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Microsoft Ends Support For Internet Explorer 8-10 and Windows 8
    http://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/01/12/238231/microsoft-ends-support-for-internet-explorer-8-10-and-windows-8

    Microsoft today ended support for old versions of Internet Explorer, including IE8, IE9, and IE10, as well as Windows 8. For the browsers, the company has also released a final patch (KB3123303) that includes the latest cumulative security updates and an “End of Life” upgrade notification. In short, the final patch will nag Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users to upgrade to Internet Explorer: A new tab will automatically open the download IE page.

    Reply
50. January 13, 2016 at 11:52 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Major Health Organization Stops Forcing Doctors To Adopt New Technology
    http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/01/12/1931219/major-health-organization-stops-forcing-doctors-to-adopt-new-technology?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29

    The administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told an investors’ conference that they will be backing off the unpopular requirement that doctors show “meaningful use” of their new computer systems. Andy Slavitt, acting administrator, admitted that “physician burden and frustration levels are real. Programs that are designed to improve often distract. Done poorly, measures are divorced from how physicians practice and add to the cynicism that the people who build these programs just don’t get it.”

    Dr. James L. Madara, CEO of the American Medical Association, agreed that EHRs were having a negative impact on physicians’ practices.

    CMS’s Slavitt: End of meaningful use imminent in 2016
    http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/practice-economics/health-reform/single-article/cmss-slavitt-end-of-meaningful-use-imminent-in-2016/94653f2ba164a8131ca214d5325c0d74.html

    Meaningful use is on its way out.

    Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told investors attending the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that CMS is pulling back from the health care IT incentive program in the coming months.

    “The meaningful use program as it has existed will now be effectively over and replaced with something better,” Mr. Slavitt said. Without providing full details, he said that March 25 would be an important date as concerns the rollout of the new health IT initiatives.

    “We have to get the hearts and minds of physicians back. I think we’ve lost them,” Mr. Slavitt said. He noted that, when the meaningful use incentive program began, few physicians and practices used electronic health records and concerns were that many would not willingly embrace information technology. Now that “virtually everywhere care is delivered has a computer,” it’s time to make health care technology serve beneficiaries and the physicians who serve them, Mr. Slavitt said.

    The cost, however, was too high, Mr. Slavitt said. “As any physician will tell you, physician burden and frustration levels are real. Programs that are designed to improve often distract. Done poorly, measures are divorced from how physicians practice and add to the cynicism that the people who build these programs just don’t get it.”

    Soon, CMS will no longer reward health care providers for using technology, but will instead focus on patient outcomes through the merit-based incentive pay systems created by last year’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) legislation.

    Anyone seeking to block data transfer will find CMS is not their friend. Mr. Slavitt said. “We’re deadly serious about interoperability. Technology companies that look for ways to practice data blocking in opposition to new regulations will find that it will not be tolerated.”

    Reply