Новости за 22.12.2015

For years now, I've been getting pitches from companies that promised to make application development as easy as finger painting. Instead of lines of code that mean very little to anyone other than a few pointy heads, these platforms all take some kind of stab at a drag-and-click, point-and-shoot tool to create web applications.

Acacia Communications, an optical networking company that boosts bandwidth for cloud and other service providers, Monday filed for an initial public offering -- a rarity during a year in which the number of tech companies going public is at its lowest since 2009, the year Acacia launched.

Security researchers and crypto experts have spent the last few days trying to figure out the details of a recently announced backdoor in Juniper NetScreen firewalls that could allow attackers to decrypt VPN (Virtual Private Network) traffic. They believe that they found the answer: A combination of likely malicious third-party modifications and Juniper's own crypto failures.

It’s hard being a parent sometimes as even well-meaning actions such as buying kids toys can take a nasty turn caused by breaches and end up leaving the children exposed and vulnerable. In the last month, kids have been put at risk by hacks and database leaks related to Hello Kitty, Hello Barbie and VTech.

Google and Ford plan to announce at CES that they will partner to create an independent company to build autonomous vehicles, according to a report from Yahoo! Autos.

We all like to talk about security, but sometimes words can't tell the whole the story. That's especially true in the case of cyber-threats, identify theft and fraud. It's a numbers game. And as you'll see, users weren't the winners in 2015.

A short collection of useful tips

Fast conversions

Immediate unit conversions are easy in Spotlight. Just tap the amount and unit you want converted and it will do the rest, as this conversion shows. More Spotlight tips.

Ninja Menu bars

Launch System Preferences>General and choose ‘Automatically hide and show the menu bar’. In future you won’t see a menu bar until you glide your cursor to the top of the screen.

Split view

Split view is really useful for working on documents... Читать дальше...

With the holiday season and strains of Auld Lang Syne approaching, it is a great time to review and recharge your career's progress.

The tech space is flooded with vendors and thought leaders touting the need for two modes of IT delivery — one fast, one slow — often called “bi-modal.”

Rumors are circulating that Ford may build the Google autonomous car.

As Automotive News reported today, the official announcement could come in two weeks at CES in Las Vegas. An unnamed source said the negotiations are almost finalized.

Just a few weeks ago, Tesla made headlines when they released a software patch that lets you go hands-free and feet-free in a Model S sedan. While it’s a milestone in engineering and the first time a car has been able to drive at highway speeds for long periods of time unassisted... Читать дальше...

NetApp wants to be at the intersection of two hot trends in a rapidly changing storage industry with its planned $870 million acquisition of startup SolidFire.

The Surface Pro 4 is a tablet that at minimum roars, and if you go the max, screams. All models have a 12.3-inch brilliant display featuring 10-point touch sensing. There’s an accelerometer for motion detection along with a gyroscope. It senses ambient light, although we found that dim light can cause it to flicker.

Microsoft buys Talko, Ray Ozzie’s latest failed startup. Nobody’s really saying why Redmond bought it, but it’s not for the microscopic installed base.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says IT jobs will grow 12% over the next decade, except for programmers. That occupation will shrink as more work is shifted to lower wage countries, according to the government.

An experiment by a cybersecurity research center shows attackers are trying to find Juniper firewalls that haven't been patched to remove unauthorized spying code.

Cisco Systems has launched an internal code review following Juniper's disclosure last week of unauthorized spying code found in its enterprise firewall products.

Make your performance review meaningful

Image by Thinkstock

There's a prevailing opinion that performance reviews aren't the best way to evaluate employee performance and that they might do more harm than good. In fact, plenty of high-profile companies have ditched performance reviews all together, including major corporations like Microsoft and Dell. And research supports this move, suggesting that performance reviews can actually hinder or halt progress in the workplace, by demoralizing and discouraging employees. Читать дальше...

Flashback to the late 1990s, when this IT pilot fish is a civilian working for the U.S. Army -- and he's responsible for a very specific user.

Apple’s Siri, Google Now and other virtual digital assistants (VDA) are becoming increasingly useful as they move beyond mere dictation to undertake administrative tasks. Some can do things like book hotel rooms that meet the user’s parameters for price, proximity to a specific location and amenities. Some can monitor a user’s calendar, calculate the travel time (including traffic) to get to a meeting, and then prod the user to depart. Others can schedule meetings with participants who use different calendaring systems. Читать дальше...

A few months ago Salesforce committed to a goal of eventually powering its global operations entirely with renewable energy, and on Monday it took a key step in that direction by signing a 12-year agreement to back a brand-new wind farm in West Virginia.

NetApp is acquiring startup SolidFire for $870 million in cash for a foothold in the fast-growing market for scale-out flash storage.

The fight over LTE networks using the same frequencies as Wi-Fi may be headed toward a peaceful resolution at last.

The FAA's new drone registration system went live on Monday, and it's ridiculously easy to use. Shortly after it went live at 3pm ET, I signed up and the whole process only took a few minutes.

Security issues have long bedeviled users of Oracle's Java SE, and on Monday the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to address the problem finally came to fruition.

Cortana for Android users are expressing their frustration after Microsoft turned off the app's "Hey Cortana" voice activation feature on Sunday.