Archive for January 9, 2017

VW Exec Busted Over #DieselGate

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

According to CNET, the FBI has arrested Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt this past weekend on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. relating to Dieselgate. From the report:

Schmidt headed VW’s regulatory compliance office in the U.S. from 2014 to March 2015. The FBI’s official Criminal Complaint states that during that time VW employees — Schmidt included — knowingly installed secret “defeat device” software in 475,000 diesel cars in the U.S., hiding during emissions testing the fact that those cars emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels when on the road. The complaint asserts that by knowingly installing this secret cheat software, Schmidt and VW conspired to defraud the U.S. by impairing and impeding the Environmental Protection Agency and violating the Clean Air Act, leading to the arrest on Saturday. Schmidt is due to appear before a Federal Court in Miami on Monday.

Sucks to be him. And the timing couldn’t be worse. Today VW announced a new electric minibus concept at the International Auto Show in Detroit that was supposed to help to change the channel from Dieselgate. Now people won’t be focused on that. Too bad for VW.

1 Comment »

Yahoo Sold To Verizon… Will Change Name… Mayer Is Out

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

Well, the gong show that is the sale of Yahoo to Verizon seems to be over. Here’s what’s going to happen now according to the Wall Street Journal:

  • The Yahoo board will eventually cease to exist.
  • Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and co-founder David Filo are gone from their posts. The former will remain with Verizon after the deal is done.
  • Yahoo will change its name to Altaba.

  • Eric Brandt will become chairman of Altaba

  • Verizon will pony up $4.8 billion

What’s left of Yahoo after the sale will just be an investment holding company. Changing it’s name to Altbaba gets rid of the fact that the Yahoo brand is tainted. But the thing is that I can’t believe that Verizon paid $4.8 billion. Not only that, Who came up with Altbaba as the name for this dead horse? 

Verizon may regret this purchase. But I am naturally a cynic. Still, this is a watch and see thing.

Leave a comment »

Rentus.com Is the New Wave In An Uber, Airbnb World

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

Tech start-up Rentus.com has launched a website and mobile app that helps individuals make money by renting out things they already own. Founded by marketing and tech guru Elias Chavando, the new website makes it easy to rent just about anything. Owners of tools and equipment, party supplies, photo and video gear, medical equipment and sporting goods, can list items to rent out. Those in need of these things, can quickly rent and use them. 

Rentus allows users to list an unlimited number of items for free and takes care of processing security deposits and rental and delivery fees. As soon as the renter returns the item, payment is transferred to the owner. Rentus earns a success fee to cover credit card costs and other expenses.  

Prior to starting the online and mobile rental marketplace Rentus.com, Chavando served as director of the largest automotive marketplace and consulted for several multi-national classified marketplaces and companies, sports teams and associations. He also created a system that matches business partners based on a tested number of identifying factors. This system is used in matching Owners with Renters in Rentus’ person-to-person renting. 

Rentus is available in Southern California and will be expanding to other markets in the United States and Europe.  

Leave a comment »

Citrix Made Several Key Announcements On Monday

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

Citrix has officially kicked off Citrix Summit 2017 in Anaheim, California with several new announcements:

  • New transition/trade-up offers will be available for those who want to transition to Citrix Cloud as-a-service
  • XenDesktop Essentials was released to help with simplified deployment of Windows 10 Desktops on Microsoft Azure cloud
  • XenApp Essentials was also released to enable customers to deploy business apps directly from Azure
  • The Citrix Ready HCI Workspace Appliance Program is Citrix’s newest Citrix Ready Program and combines the advantages of Citrix Cloud with hyperconverged infrastructure.
  • The Smart Tools family expands with the introduction of Smart Check, Smart Scale and other pre-configured packages that simplify cloud deployments
  • Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway has been integrated with Microsoft Intune to enable greater security and flexibility for customers

You can find out more about these announcements here. On top of those announcements, Citrix announced the acquisition of Unidesk – the inventor of the Windows application packaging and management technology known as layering.

 Application layering has emerged as the best way to separate apps from the underlying operating system, so they can be managed once and delivered from any end user computing solution to any device.

Unidesk is a privately-held company that makes it possible for IT organizations to manage applications once across virtual desktops, shared hosted desktops, and published applications with unequaled packaging simplicity and full application compatibility. You can find out more about this announcement here. 

Leave a comment »

WMG Appoints First Cyberpsychologist

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

WMG at the University of Warwick is delighted to announce the appointment of cyberpsychologist Professor Monica Whitty, who joins the Cyber Security research team from the University of Leicester, as Professor of Human Factors in Cyber Security.

As WMG’s first cyberpsychologist, Professor Whitty will work alongside colleagues in WMG’s Cyber Security Centre concentrating on the human element focusing on behaviour online to identify cyber criminals and in turn protect people from becoming victims.

Professor Whitty’s research spans 15 years focusing on the way individuals behave in cyberspace examining identities created in cyberspace, online security risks as well as detecting and preventing cybercrimes (e.g., mass-marketing fraud, insider threats).

Professor Whitty previously held a Chair at the University of Leicester (2010-2016). Prior to working at Leicester she held full-time academic posts at Nottingham Trent University (2007-2010); Queen’s University Belfast (2003-2007), University of Western Sydney (1998-2003) and Macquarie University (1995-1996).

Professor Whitty is first author of ‘Cyberpsychology: The study of individuals, society and digital technologies’ (Wiley, 2017) with Garry Young and ‘Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet’ (2009, Routledge) with Adam Joinson. She is the author of over 100 publications, given over 25 invited and keynote lectures and has supervised over 50 Masters and doctoral students.

She leads an EPSRC funded project working with colleagues at a number of other universities on entitled “Detecting and Preventing Mass-Marketing Fraud.”

One of the first new research projects she will lead at WMG – UNDERWARE (UNDERstanding West African culture to pRevent cybercrimEs) – is funded by the National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) in collaboration with Research Institute in Science of Cyber Security.

The project aims to gain a greater understanding of West African culture in order to: scientifically evaluate current methods employed to prevent and deter cybercrimes that emanate from West Africa; as well as to develop and test new methods to prevent and deter cybercrimes that emanate from this region.

Findings of the project will be shared with cyber security researchers, cyber security practitioners dealing with these issues.

Leave a comment »

Review: 2016 15″ MacBook Pro

Posted in Products with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

I don’t think that Apple has put out a product that has attracted so much negative press as the 2016 MacBook Pro. It’s ports force you to live what has become known as “the dongle life”, it is apparently short on battery life, and it’s more expensive. So I managed to get my hands on one for a week to see if all of this is true or not. 

The model that I got was the 15″ MacBook Pro. It came out of the box with these specs:

  • 15.4-inch LED-backlit display with IPS technology and 2880-by-1800 resolution

  • 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz

  • 16GB of RAM (which is not upgradable)
  • 256GB SSD (which is not upgradable)

  • Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB of memory and Intel HD Graphics 530

  • Four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports
  • 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2

All of this sounds pretty decent. And it comes in a package that is thinner and lighter than the 2015 MacBook Pro that I currently own. But in my week with the 2016 MacBook Pro, I find that I have to give up a lot or seriously make changes to my workflow if ever wanted to use it as my daily driver. For example, there’s no SD card slot. That’s an epic fail as this is a “pro” machine, and many pro users need an SD card slot to transfer video and/or pictures to their MacBook Pros for editing purposes. So to do that here, I’d need a SD card adapter. Now I know that Apple really wanted to make this laptop thin. But seriously, adding an SD card slot doesn’t add bulk.

Pro users also typically use external monitors to do editing. This despite the fact that the built in display that comes with the 2016 MacBook Pro is absolutely outstanding. Thus you need another dongle for that. In fact you need a lot of dongles that are of the USB-C variety as you will not be able to use any Thunderbolt 2 dongles that you might own. You’ll grumble and complain. But you’ll buy them and get over it. Plus, in a couple of years, USB-C will likely be the standard and this will not be an issue. But today is not that day which will be frustrating for users of this MacBook Pro.

Another thing that was really puzzling was the lack of a MagSafe adapter. The fact is that MagSafe adapters are designed to disconnect if the cables are tugged, saving your expensive Mac from flying across the room. It’s omission and replacement with USB-C while understandable on one hand, is something that is going to cost users money in the long run in the form of broken laptops that could have been saved by a MagSafe adapter.

Now there are some things that are cool. Touch ID is one thing that is included with this MacBook Pro and I loved having it. You can use it to unlock your Mac if it is already booted, or to purchase things using Apple Pay. Then there’s the touch bar which I was skeptical of at first, but I loved having. It replaced the function keys and it also gives you a dedicated Siri button too. I suspect that as developers exploit the capabilities of the touch bar, it will become even more useful. The rest of the keyboard feels very comfortable. In fact it was more comfortable than the keyboard on my 2015 MacBook Pro.

Performance was mixed. While I found that I could edit 4K video with ease, opening 15 browser tabs in Safari could make it stumble. That was very odd to me. The other thing was the battery life. When I set up the MacBook Pro, I let it sit for a couple of days as per this Apple support document and then used it as my daily driver. I used it to answer e-mail, use Microsoft Office and write blog posts which are the typical things that I did while on battery on my 2015 MacBook Pro. I never got more than 6 hours of battery life. Apple promises 10 hours which is one hell of a difference that previous MacBook Pro users will notice immediately. In my case, If this was my 2015 MacBook Pro I would get around 7 to 8 hours which is close to the 9 hours that Apple promised on that notebook doing exactly the same things that I tried on the 2o16 model. And that is the biggest reason that I didn’t plunk down my credit card to get one and decided instead to hold on to my 2015 MacBook Pro.

So, what’s my bottom line? It’s thinner, lighter, and has an outstanding display. You’ll get over having to live “the dongle life.” But it’s mixed performance from a power perspective, the lack of an SD card slot, and it’s rather disappointing battery life make it difficult to recommend. I’d say that you should skip this iteration of the MacBook Pro until Apple gets these issues sorted so that it deserves you spending your hard earned money on it.

 

2 Comments »

Nokia Is Back With An Android Smartphone

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 9, 2017 by itnerd

Once upon a time, as in the late 90’s to the early 2000’s, Nokia was the number one phone company on planet Earth. Then they had a serious turn of bad fortune. Bottoming out by being ditched by Microsoft recently. But now they’re back. At least in China with a new phone:

To little fanfare, the Finnish technology company HMD Global (HMD) Sunday unveiled the Nokia 6, a mid-range Android smartphone for the Chinese market. HMD owns the rights to use Nokia’s brand on mobile phones. 

The Nokia 6, which runs the newest version of Google’s mobile operating system, Android Nougat, sports a 5.5-inch full HD (1920×1080 pixels) display. With metal on the sides and a rounded rectangular fingerprint scanner housed on the front, the Nokia 6 seems reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S7. 

The new Nokia smartphone is powered by a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor and will compete with the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy A series models and other mid-end smartphones. The smartphone is manufactured by Foxconn.

Hmmm…. A smartphone not named the iPhone made by Foxconn. I wonder how Apple feels about that?

I digress.

This should be interesting to watch as they’re starting with the hyper competitive Chinese phone market. I imagine that if they get any sort of traction there, they’ll start to branch out. Then maybe we will see some sort of resurgence of the Nokia brand? Or maybe that’s wishful thinking?

We’ll have to watch and see.

Leave a comment »