Category: News

Backstage setup starts on the TED2013 stage in Long Beach.

A monumental amount of effort goes into setting up for TED. This year’s iteration in Long Beach is no different. Construction of our stage started on Wednesday, and it wasn’t long before the entire Long Beach Performing Arts Center was full of the buzz of technicians, workers and artists getting ready for next week.

Artist and TED2013 speaker Jordy Fu (center, in green jacket) works on the installation of her cut-paper piece “Cloud” (2013) for the lobby of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Above her hangs Gabriel Dawe’s “Plexus C2,” installed for TED2012 and now part of the permanent collection at the LBPAC.

Hanging speaker signs in the lobby at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

Reflections of the TED2013 speakers in the windows of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center

Photos: James Duncan Davidson (photos 1 and 3); Ryan Lash (photos 2 and 4)

We’re now well in to the new year, with the February software offers live through the Downloadcrew Software Store.

You may have picked up a brand new Windows 8 computer during the festive season. If so, the first thing you’ll want to do is pick up a security suite to keep your system secure. The Downloadcrew Software Store is packed full of security offers from Bitdefender, AVG, Kaspersky, Avira and other brands.

Let’s start with Bitdefender. If you’re seeking a lightweight low-cost security application for one PC, we’d like to draw your attention toBitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013, a staggering 83 percent off MSRP. Bitdefender Windows 8 Security is the company’s brand new offering, and can be yours for $19.95, 67 percent off MSRP. There’s a saving of 63 percent off Bitdefender Total Security 2013 [3-PC] which includes a strong antivirus engine, intelligent two-way firewall, capable spam filter – all for just $29.95. If you want to keep your computer safe for even less, look no further than Bitdefender Internet Security 2013 [1-PC] which still packs a punch for just $14.99 saving you 70 percent off the MSRP.

You’ll also find the latest versions of the most popular security tools including AVG Anti-Virus 2013. This industry standard antivirus tool is available for the massively discounted price of $6.95 – that’s a colossal 83 percent off the MSRP. For a more complete security solution, take a look at AVG Internet Security 2013 which includes an added firewall, spam filter and more – all for just $17.99 (or a 67 percent discount). The most complete security package comes in the form of AVG Internet Security 2013 Complete Bundle, which includes FIVE separate AVG applications, worth $307 – yours for only $59.95, a staggering 80 percent off MSRP!

We recently added the Norton 2013 products to the store. Highlights include Norton Internet Security 2013 [1-PC] for $23.99, or 60 percent off MSRP. The more simplistic anti-malware tool Norton AntiVirus 2013 [1-PC] is $19.99 or 50 percent off MSRP. Multi-user editions are also available. Other Symantec products include Norton Anti-Theft at $27.99, or 30 percent off MSRP.

The avast! products were also added to the store through January. Within avast! 8 around the corner, buy avast! 7 products now and you’ll get a free upgrade to avast! 8, on release, in March. avast! Internet Security 7 [3-PC] will safeguard three computers, for $41.99, or 40 percent off MSRP. The more basic avast! Pro 7 [1-PC] is yours for $23.99, again 40 percent off MSRP.

Everyone needs a backup tool, whether this is to store important files in a secure location or to make a 1:1 copy of your hard drive, to safeguard against system failure. There are few better backup tools than True Image 2013 by Acronis (Acronis True Image 2013), available for only $26.99, which is currently 46 percent off MSRP. Through February, you can purchase Genie Timeline Professional 2012 for only $27,95, 53 percent off MSRP, plus you get a free upgrade to the forthcoming Genie Timeline Professional 2013, due for release this March. Finally, an alternative backup tool isBackup4All Professional 4.8, which you can buy for $24.95 or 50 percent off MSRP.

System maintenance and PC optimization tools help keep your brand new system in check while you continue to enjoy using your PC. System maintenance tools enable you to remove unwanted startup items, erase clutter and temporary files, personalize your computer and much more.

Our first recommendation is TuneUp Utilities 2013. You can save 60 percent from TuneUp Utilities 2013 [3-PC], ideal for installing on three home computers. If you have a single PC, save even more with TuneUp Utilities 2013 [1-PC]. There is also TuneUp Utilities 2013 [UPGRADE] for existing users to upgrade, at a significant discount. Another recommended maintenance tool is AVG PC TuneUp 2013, effectively a re-branded TuneUp Utilities, which helps you to eke extra performance from your machine. This great utility costs as mere $12.99, or a saving of 68 percent off the MSRP. Auslogics Boostspeed 5 is also worth considering for $19.95, 60 percent off MSRP, as is IObit Advanced SystemCare Ultmate 6 is another great all-round system maintenance suite, available for only $24.99 or 50 percent off MSRP.

Be sure to check the Downloadcrew Software Store for other software deals and brands. In addition to the above offers, there are further deals from MAGIX, CyberLink, Avira, PC Tools, BullGuard and many others. Hurry though as some of the current offers will end February 28 2013!

Helder Almeida/Shutterstock

There are two type of Range Rover enthusiasts out there. Those who like to be seen in them, and those who actually purchase them for their off-road abilities. Unfortunately the vast majority of owners (like 99%) dump big money on these wonderful machines for the sole purpose of being seen. Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire recently headed to Arizona on Range Rovers dime to sample the new 2013 line of Rovers, so make sure to check it out after the jump.

Source: TheSmokingTire.com

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an important Windows framework that is used by many system components, as well as plenty of third-party applications, so if it’s ever damaged then you could experience all kinds of odd system problems. There’s no single place that you can check to see whether WMI is working, either, as it’s just too complex, and so Microsoft has developed a script called the WMI Diagnostic Utility to provide some in-depth troubleshooting information.

The tool is aimed at system administrators and other IT professionals, so if you’re a Windows novice then it’s probably best to stay away. If you’ve even just a moderate level of PC experience, though — you’ve no problems running the occasional tool at the command line, say – then it could be worth a look.

To run it, extract the contents of the download to somewhere safe, launch an elevated command prompt (right click cmd.exe, select “Run as administrator”), change to your new folder, and enter cscript wmidiag.vbs.

And then wait. WMI really is massive, so the script has a lot to do, and it’ll take some time to gather the necessary information (four to five minutes on our test PC). The command window will update occasionally with details of the current test, though. And when it’s done, Notepad (or whatever else is your default for plain text files) will open to display the finished report.

As you’re scanning the details, you’ll find a lot of very low-level, technical information which isn’t going to mean very much at all. We were told that our test PC had 1848 “WMI static instances”, but no “WMI dynamic instances”, for example. Is this normal, good, bad…? We don’t have the faintest idea.

Amongst all this, though, are plenty of nuggets which you may find useful. So we were told that our system had no WMI system or repository files missing, for instance: just knowing that may be helpful if you’re trying to diagnose some odd Windows problem.

The script also complained that a Registry setting wasn’t what it expected, telling us the precise key and what it’s value should be. Might that also be useful? We don’t know, but again it gives you a starting point. If something similar happened on your system, you could at least enter the key name at Google, see what it’s for, whether the setting might relate to any issues you’re having.

And the script, as well as the documentation which comes with it, also explains how you can fix some problems by running command line tools such as WMIDIAG.

This still isn’t a tool you’ll need to run very often. If your PC is taking an age to boot, say, you’ll be better off following the usual troubleshooting tips first (check your startup programs, your Windows services, clean and defrag your hard drive, and so on).

But, if you’re suffering from major Windows problems, all the regular solutions have failed and you can’t find an answer (or, maybe, you’ve just heard somewhere that your type of problem might be WMI-related), then it may help to run the WMI Diagnosis Utility as a last resort. The tool checks a lot of Windows components, and there’s just a chance that it could uncover something useful.

Photo Credit: Vladru/Shutterstock

The queries we type into Google can be broadly classified into two groups: head queries, or general keyword searches of less than three words; and long tail queries, or specific searches using a phrase or several words. The latter long tail queries account for a significant portion of the searches on Google (with many sources claiming as much as 70 percent).

Google’s search algorithms are excellent at surfacing relevant content for basic keyword style head queries, but when we search for something specific using a long tail query, the answers aren’t consistently relevant. I would submit that this isn’t so much an issue with Google’s search algorithm as it is a content problem; that is, a large number of content sources that attempt to service long tail queries simply do a poor job of it. For Google to improve its search relevance for long tail queries – which it must, as those continue to become a huge chunk of its searches – it should integrate a high-quality QnA service like Quora with its search.

Google’s long tail problem

To better understand the differences between the two types of search, and the dilemma Google now faces, do a quick search using any or all of the following, pretty straightforward long tail queries and check the quality of search results:

“diet plan for diabetics and high blood pressure”
“how to get rid of acne”
“what do turtles eat as pets”
“how to train your parrot to talk”
“important things to consider before purchasing a house”

You will quickly discover that the results are mostly identical or slightly rehashed versions of other articles scraped from multiple sites across the web, many of them originating from content farms like Demand Media and Associated Content. Those sources are among many that specialize in trying to corner the market on servicing long tail queries. However they all suffer from two major problems:

Poor quality The army of low-paid freelancers who manufacture the “content” for these sites get paid essentially by volume. They are almost never experts in a given topic (or even passingly familiar, one could argue). They simply crank out 500-word article as quickly as possible so that these networks can embed three adsense ads in between and then move on to the next topic.

Bias toward popular keywords Despite intending to service long tail queries, in fact many of these services tend to produce content around keywords that are popular enough that they can reliably generate advertising revenue.

A source of reliable long tail query content

Clearly there is a demand for reliable long tail query content queries. Now consider a practical one like “how to get a passport faster,” and how massively helpful it would be to get the answer from a person who has actually gone through the process, rather than the person who designed the process. Wouldn’t it be logical for Google to implement a source of content that is produced by generally passionate, informed people –  a source like Quora?

Unlike Wikipedia, which is best at answering head queries, Quora is all about long tail. So integrating Quora with search would provide Google’s users more reliable and useful results for long tail queries. It would also contribute to a virtuous cycle by allowing users to help produce reliable content, too, as searches prompt further contextual content that may need answering. This will help Google get knowledge from content sources (such as those who contribute to Wikipedia) who do not own a website but have valuable knowledge.

Here’s a rough mockup of a Google search results page for the long tail query “diet plan for hypertension and diabetes” but with Quora integrated:

As another example, for a more task-based query like “how to file taxes,” you might also end up with relevant contextual content in the right pane of the search results:

• How do I calculate taxes?
• What is the last date to file taxes?
• What are the tax changes for 2013?
• What are the important things I should know before I file my taxes?
• What is the best software to file taxes?

Integrating Quora will enable Google to serve far more relevant answers for a much broader range of queries even though a smaller percentage of people will be actively producing the content. And it’s worth noting that in the process, Google will be effectively replacing dollars other networks pay to content churners with upvotes and follows to passionate users instead (talk about virtuous cycles!).

This is social search, where content will be produced in the context of social, but consumed in the context of search.

Narendra Reddy is chief product officer for the educational software developer Wignite. Follow him on Twitter @naren.

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There have been a rash of posts of late from people who have quit Facebook or decided to unfriend everyone they know on the network. I haven’t gone that far, but I recently went through what I like to call “The Great Unfriending,” in which I unfollowed or disconnected from almost 80 percent of the people in my Facebook social graph. Doing so has changed the way I use the network, and I think that change — and the reason why I felt compelled to do so — says a lot about some of the challenges Facebook is facing.

Unlike Julia Angwin, who says she unfriended everyone she was connected to because Facebook “cannot provide me the level of privacy that I need,” I don’t really have any issues with privacy on Facebook. Angwin said that she was troubled by the fact that “when I share information with a certain group or friend on Facebook, I am often surprised by where the data ends up,” and I respect her decision. But that’s not what bothered me about using the social network.

It’s not the privacy, it’s the overload

For better or worse, I made a deliberate decision when I joined the service (and Twitter, and almost every other social network) to be as open as possible, and to share almost everything about myself, within reason. I would never say that everyone should do this, and there are plenty of reasons why people keep certain things off the web — information about their children, for example — but for the most part I agree with Jeff Jarvis that the benefits of “publicness” outweigh the disadvantages.

So if privacy wasn’t the problem, what was it? In a nutshell, information overload. In the same way I’ve had to struggle with my addiction to real-time connectedness on a mobile device (something I wrote about recently that many readers disagreed with), I started to find that Facebook was a painful experience. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that the problem was partly me — and the way I was using it — and partly the way Facebook was changing.

I started to think about how some people I admire, including Union Square Ventures founder Fred Wilson, had pared back their use of Facebook by unfriending a lot of people. And such thoughts don’t seem to be unique: a recent survey by the Pew Center showed that two-thirds of users had taken an extended break, and close to 30 percent were planning to use Facebook less.

Partly Facebook and partly me

The part of this that I think was my fault stems from the way I set up my account when I first joined Facebook in 2006: in keeping with my desire to push the limits of openness, I accepted friend requests from almost everyone who sent them, even if they weren’t actually “friends.” And yes, I knew at the time that doing this carried some risk, but I didn’t fully appreciate what it would be like, or how it would eventually ruin the experience for me.

What I wound up with was almost a thousand “friends,” many of whom were people I had met at conferences, or people who were connected to me through others, or some who were just fans of my writing (who can still use the “subscribe” feature). To these people — all of whom I have since unfriended — I would just like to say that you are all wonderful, but I couldn’t take it any more. My stream became a sea of information I had little or no interest in, with only a few scattered pieces of flotsam and jetsam from the people who I am actually close to.

The part of this that I see as Facebook’s fault has to do with how cluttered my stream became, especially with all of the “sponsored stories” and “liked” pages that began to show up more and more — when a “friend” liked a page about Coca-Cola or Ford, for example. And yes, just like the notifications I complained about on the iPhone, I know that Facebook has knobs and dials that you can tweak so that you don’t see certain things. But who has the time to spend twiddling all those dials all the time? I certainly don’t.

Facebook has just become less relevant

So what happened after The Great Unfriending? Facebook became a whole lot more usable as a particular kind of network — the one that lets me see what actual friends and family are doing, including those who are far away (the kind of “ambient intimacy” that researcher Leisa Reichelt talks about). Except for my teenaged daughters, of course, who don’t even use Facebook any more, preferring to spend all their time on Tumblr and Twitter. That’s just one of the things that should worry Mark Zuckerberg, I think.

What I am left with is a more useful network, but also one that I only use for very specific things, and don’t really spend much time on. If I want to connect with people related to work, I do it through LinkedIn; if I want to connect to people through photos, I do it on Instagram or Flickr (which is why Instagram was such a smart acquisition for Facebook to make); and if I want to connect to people I don’t really know, I use Twitter. If I could get more of my friends to use Path, I might use that for friends and family, in which case I wouldn’t need Facebook at all.

Facebook has a whole series of challenges as it tries to grow and justify its $65 billion market value. But its biggest problem — bigger than the shift to mobile or the need to generate ad revenue — is that it has to not only remain relevant in people’s lives, but offer them more and more things that will keep them engaged. For me at least, and it seems for others as well, they are losing that battle.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / Stuart Jenner and Flickr user Pew Center

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Microsoft’s cloud service, Windows Azure, along with Team Foundation Service, suffered a major outage yesterday that also affected non-enterprise people, as it resulted in problems with the Xbox Live as well. However, according to the Xbox Status page, the Live system, along with Xbox Music and Video, which were also affected, is back up and running.

Now, as of this morning we have some information on the root cause of the much-publicized problem. Brian Harry, Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server, blames the nine-hour outage on “an expired SSL certificate in Windows Azure storage”. Harry goes on to explain that the company stores “source code files, Git repos, work item attachments and more” there and that “the expired certificate prevented access to any of this information, making much of the TFService functionality unavailable”.

Ironically, this is not the first time the company has been plagued by this problem. Several years ago Team Foundation Services was hit by an expired certificate which it blamed on an operational oversight. Harry promises that the company will be investigating what led to this most recent oversight and went on to state “I apologize to all of our affected customers and hope you’ll give us a chance to learn and continue to deliver you a great service”.

Photo Credit: Ralf Juergen Kraft/Shutterstock

A clear cut case

States slap back

A need for Federal measures

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Honor Harger isn’t your typical artist. Or your typical astronomer. At the TEDSalon London Spring 2011, Harger shared how she brings these two seemingly unrelated disciplines together — the study of sound and the study of space — to record the songs of planets, moons and quasars.  Honor Harger: A history of the universe in soundHer talk is called “A history of the universe in sound,” and it is simply a must-see.

Today’s TED Weekends on the Huffington Post explores the soundtrack of our universe, featuring essays from Harger and others. Below, find excerpts from three for your reading pleasure.

Honor Harger: Tuning Into the Universe

Images of space are ubiquitous in our lives. We have been surrounded by stunning portrayals of our own solar system and beyond for generations. But in popular culture, we have no sense of what space sounds like. And indeed, most people associate space with silence.

There are, of course, perfectly valid scientific reasons for assuming so. Space is a vacuum. But through radio, we can listen to the Sun’s fizzling solar flares, the roaring waves and spitting fire of Jupiter’s stormy interactions with its moon Io, pulsars’ metronomic beats, or the eerie melodic shimmer of a whistler in the magnetosphere. Read the full essay »

Mario Livio: What Is the Color of the Universe?

Honor Harger’s TED Talk is on radio astronomy, or, in some sense, the “sound” of the universe (even though radio waves are really electromagnetic radiation, just like light). Can we, however, say what the color of the universe is? To answer this question, we must first establish what we actually mean by the “color of the universe.” A reasonable definition would be to add up all the visible radiation emitted by a very large number of galaxies in a huge cosmic volume, and to determine how all of that light might be perceived by the human eye. This is precisely what astronomers Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry attempted to do in 2002. Using a survey of more than 200,000 galaxies (the “2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey”) and reaching to distances of a few billion light-years, they constructed the distribution of the colors (the spectrum) the eye would see if all that light were to be separated into its components by passing it through a prism.

Since our universe is expanding, light from distant galaxies is stretched to longer (redder) wavelengths (a phenomenon known as redshift). The farther away the galaxy, the greater the amount of stretching that occurs. Glazebrook and Baldry removed this effect before combining all the light to form a smoothed-out average color. Read the full essay »

Seth Shostak: Celestial Sound Effects

Remember the tag line for the 1979 sci-fi flick Alien? It was boldly emblazoned on the film’s advertising posters, and helpfully informed the public that “in space, no one can hear you scream.”

Well, of course that’s true; at least if you’re floating around without your protective helmet and its built-in walkie-talkie. But then again if you’re bare-headed in space, the fact that no one can hear the noises you’re making is scarcely your biggest problem.

Nonetheless, there’s a widespread perception that space — which after all, is mostly air-free — is as silent as the shadows. Read the full essay »

The list of companies that have reported being hacked just keeps growing, with Microsoft and Zendesk making headlines most recently. Although it’s caused plenty of anxiety for IT people and everyday users alike, there might just be an upside: The attacks have demonstrated the need for the kinds of information sharing the federal government wants to do to improve cybersecurity.

Following the demise of one proposal, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), the Obama administration has taken new steps with an executive order and a policy strategy. The executive order draws a roadmap for sharing more of its information with the private sector, and the strategy shows the intent to do more on diplomatic and intelligence fronts.

The Microsoft and Zendesk hacks follow others in recent weeks at Apple, Facebook, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Twitter said people had attempted to hack the site. And the security company Mandiant released a report providing details on a Shanghai-based division of the People’s Liberation Army of China that has stolen “hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations,” almost all of which have headquarters in countries where English is the native language. Hackers even found a way to build a lure for a spear-phishing attack out of one version of the report.

President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address last week, acknowledged that American companies have been hacked and said the country must not “look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy.” Obama’s executive order on cybersecurity, released on the same day as the president gave the speech, directs the government to release more, and more timely, information on cybersecurity threats. It calls for a framework for reducing “cyber risks” to critical infrastructure in the United States, and the framework will have to help owners and operators of that infrastructure manage the risk. In doing so, the government cannot pick one product or service as a cure-all; it claims to value a competitive marketplace. The order also mandates that owners or operators of critical infrastructure that could cause catastrophes if hacked will be confidentially contacted and be given a way to submit information to the federal government.

A week after the executive order, the Obama administration released a policy paper laying out steps for advancing cybersecurity. It says businesses should share best practices, and it states that the FBI and the State Department will do more to try to stop hacks of trade secrets. Elsewhere, it promises that several other federal agencies will continue to do what they have been doing toward that end.

Some people have argued that the executive order doesn’t do enough to improve cybersecurity. Then again, others like it much better than CISPA.

Regardless of what people think about it, the federal government’s efforts to respond to the hacks could prompt more companies to protect their own assets. It takes advantage of the good parts of CISPA but not the bad, which my colleague Derrick Harris has previously identified. And with news of more and more attacks coming to the fore, more companies could be inclined to try sharing information with the federal government for the purpose of the greater good. How bad could that be?

Oh, by the way, as a side effect of all of these attacks and the new federal policies, don’t be surprised to see more enterprises trying out security products that focus on infrastructure, such as Mandiant and Cylance, which I wrote about earlier this month. Look for more stealth-mode security startups jumping out of the shadows, too.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tatiana Popova.

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This week saw the introduction of HTC’s next flagship phone, named the HTC One just like its predecessor. The handset materials and design are a bit of a departure for HTC as the new phone will use an all aluminum enclosure and a pair of front-facing speakers. As a result, the audio experience ought to be a highlight for the One, but visually oriented readers will be happy with the display as well: HTC is packing in 468 pixels per inch on the 4.7-inch, 1080p display.

HTC’s One will include an LTE radio for fast mobile broadband and run on Google’s Android Jelly Bean software. The company is also including several of its own software features: BlinkFeed streams news, social networking updates and other information; Sense TV provides video content guides and uses an infrared sensor turning the One into a remote control; customized home screens are available, similar to prior versions of HTC’s sense software.

The flagship phone doesn’t yet have a price tag as that will come from carriers — likely next month — but will be available in both a 32- and 64 GB option. Other internal specs include a 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset, 2 GB of memory, NFC radio and integrated 2300 mAh battery.

Speaking of Snapdragons, Qualcomm’s chip may power the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. Samsung has yet to introduce the revised Galaxy but online benchmarks and other evidence point to the company opting for a Snapdragon over its own Exynos chip. Reports indicate the same Snapdragon 600 found in the HTC One will be inside the Galaxy S4, due to heat issues when testing the Samsung 8-core Exynos chip.

This wouldn’t be the first time Samsung chose a competitors chip to power its own smartphones however. The US version of the Galaxy S III also used a Snapdragon chip, mainly because at the time of launch, Samsung hadn’t yet integrated LTE support in the Exynos silicon. In some sense, Samsung is lucky that it has a secondary option for chipsets, else its flagship phone could face delays. We’ll get the story for sure within the next few weeks as Samsung is expected to hold a launch event for the new Galaxy smartphone on or around March 14.

We don’t, however, have to wait to see Ubuntu on a smartphone: This week, Canonical released instructions on how to install a preview of the alternative platform on Google’s Nexus line of tablets and phones. You’ll end up wiping out your Android system if you do this, but Canonical provided the handy links to Google’s own factory images for all Nexus devices, making it easy to reinstall Android.

I haven’t taken the Ubuntu plunge on my Galaxy Nexus yet, but expect to next week. From all accounts I’ve read so far, the Ubuntu interface is intuitive, but the software is still rough around the edges. There are still quite a few features and functions not ready yet although the Nexus phones will still be able to make calls and connect to both Wi-Fi and mobile broadband networks.

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The 1951 Ford Custom Club Coupe is the quintessential old school business coupe. It’s got great lines, a simplistic interior and when maintained properly, will literally run forever. Owner Eric Ralle has been the caretaker of this all original example for the past 27 years and is very proud of the fact that – “it’s just the way Henry Ford built in back in 1950.”

Yes Eric, it most certainly is.

Source: HemmingsMedia.com

President Obama urges Congress to stop the sequester — the harmful automatic cuts that threaten thousands of jobs and affect our national security from taking effect on March 1.

Transcript | Download mp4 | Download mp3

Continue reading…

How’s this for a helluva endorsement for Windows security over OS X? Today, Microsoft acknowledged falling prey to “similar security intrusion” as Apple and Facebook. They got nabbed by a Java exploit affecting Apple’s OS.

“We found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit that, were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations”, says Microsoft security chief Matt Thomlinson.

Apple made similar admission on February 19 and Facebook a week ago. Apple issued an OS X fix removing Java, while Facebook disabled the tech. Microsoft disclosed no such action for its users. Party line: No data was taken.

Facebook offers the most details on what happened: “After analyzing the compromised website where the attack originated, we found it was using a ‘zero-day’ (previously unseen) exploit to bypass the Java sandbox (built-in protections) to install the malware. We immediately reported the exploit to Oracle, and they confirmed our findings and provided a patch on February 1, 2013, that addresses this vulnerability”.

My question: Who among the big companies discloses next? Surely these three aren’t the only ones running Macs and Java.

Microsoft’s full statement:

As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we also recently experienced a similar security intrusion.

Consistent with our security response practices, we chose not to make a statement during the initial information gathering process. During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.

This type of cyberattack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries (see our prior analysis of emerging threat trends). We continually re-evaluate our security posture and deploy additional people, processes, and technologies as necessary to help prevent future unauthorized access to our networks.

Matt Thomlinson
General Manager
Trustworthy Computing Security

Photo Credit: Jirsak/Shutterstock

What’s the end of February without some scare tactics? Gartner warns that one-quarter of distributed denial of service attacks this year will be against applications. Really? That low? I’m surprised the number isn’t higher. After all, as enterprises shore up the network perimeter, HTTP remains open wide enough to drive a freight train through and for that long duration.

The attacks seek to overtax CPUs, disrupt applications and, ultimately, distract IT and security personnel. While they look over there, the bad boys are work over here. Gartner sees DDoS attacks as part of a larger trend singling out financial institutions.

“A new class of damaging DDoS attacks and devious criminal social-engineering ploys were launched against U.S. banks in the second half of 2012, and this will continue in 2013 as well-organized criminal activity takes advantage of weaknesses in people, processes and systems”, Avivah Litan, Gartner vice president, says. He emphasizes there is a “new level of sophistication in organized attacks against enterprises” and that “they will grow in sophistication and effectiveness” this year.

These attacks increase in intensity — blasting some financial institutions with up to 70 Gbps of “noisy network traffic”, via ye old Internet pipes. 5 Gbps are more typical.

“To combat this risk, enterprises need to revisit their network configurations, and rearchitect them to minimize the damage that can be done”, Litan says. “Organizations that have a critical Web presence and cannot afford relatively lengthy disruptions in online service should employ a layered approach that combines multiple DoS defenses”.

I guess unplugging the Internet isn’t the answer. How will we do online banking?

Photo Credit: Seleznev Oleg/Shutterstock

For those of us who remember AMD as the alternative to Intel in our desktops, or as the also-ran to Intel in servers, it’s time to think of the new AMD. Like a Beyonce dumping Destiny’s Child, the chipmaker is ditching its sole reliance on x86 and embracing new architectures such as graphics processors and ARM-based cores. And scoring the processor inside the latest generation PlayStation console is the perfect example of the new AMD.

AMD has built a custom chip for the PS4 that combines a graphics processor with a CPU core creating what AMD calls an APU, or accelerated processing unit. AMD calls these APUs, and it has been working toward a win in this area since it purchased GPU firm ATI all the way back in 2006. The PlayStation 4 is quite a win, with a few hundred million of the consoles sold in its history.

The PS4 chip is also the first public design win out of a new group inside AMD, the Embedded and Custom Semi group, which AMD estimates will generate a fifth of its sales in 2013. That group will be responsible for building out custom chips for clients that will sell at massive volumes.

In the case of the PS4, AMD combined its next generation 8-core Jaguar CPU with its next generation GPU. Another way to look at this is to realize that Sony’s PS4 isn’t just limiting the graphics processor to graphics. That chip is likely handling elements of the compute as well.

The PS4 chip is the first chip for the Embedded and Custom Semi group, but not the first custom effort for AMD. It also made custom versions of graphics processors for the WiiU and the Xbox consoles. But AMD hopes the business will continue to grow, especially as AMD looks beyond its traditional PC market. Not only has it put more focus on graphics and its APU strategy, but it also last year took a license for the ARM architecture and said it plans to use the upcoming 64-bit ARM architecture to build chips for servers.

John Taylor, the VP of product marketing with AMD, said he can’t share the exact volumes that would entice AMD to design a custom chip, and upon further questioning it appears that the number of chips may not be the sole deciding factor.

When asked about combining GPUs or even ARM cores in the server business for example, he said, “Well you know that in the server market the chips generally have higher average selling prices than those in the consumer space, so it may not necessarily be that we will demand a 1 million unit run to build these chips. It will be a business decision.”

Yet Taylor’s hypothetical example of a good customer for the custom semi business was a smart TV manufacturer, one that had already designed portions of a chip that it wanted to combine with computing and/or graphics processors from AMD. However, he acknowledged that AMD now has several architectural options and plans to build a business combining those options for customers outside of AMD’s traditional lines of business.

Such a commitment isn’t for the faint of heart. The development of a core can take years of forethought, while the combination of cores onto a single system on chip, such as the one offered in the PS4, can take up to a year. As the web and application side of the technology world speeds up, chip firms are still stuck planning for a future that is years out and hoping they can get it right.

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