Xpertfeed

Summary: Google's focus on core features puts Nougat ahead of iOS 10 as Apple fumbles about trying to freshen up the user interface and revitalize stale apps. Android 7.0 Nougat is now out, and while only owners of recent Nexus device such as the Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Pixel C, or Nexus 9 tablet currently get the benefit of this release, it's clear that Google is moving in the right direction. All this while iOS 10 -- still in the beta stage -- feels like it's in the doldrums. Nougat seems to have been a smooth release for Google, with no reports of any widespread issues, which you'd expect from the fact that Google keeps a tight grip over the Nexus hardware ecosystem. However, given that Apple has an equally tight control over its hardware ecosystem, and yet still manages to fumble, I think a problem-free release is noteworthy. Nougat also contains some rather nice features that I'm sure iOS users would like to see come to the iPhone and iPa...

Summary:  AMD wants to get into high-end desktop CPUs once again. "Our focus is on high-performance CPUs and GPUs." This is what AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su told journalists gathered at an event on 18th August night in the San Francisco, a stone's throw away from the Intel Developer Forum gathering.And AMD has been putting the time and effort into powerful silicon lately. AMD makes the processors for both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, including the One S and the upcoming Project Scorpio, and it also released a very capable $200 graphics card in the form of the Radeon RX480. Now AMD is once again setting its sights on the desktop PC. At the event, the company officially delayed new CPUs based on its Zen architecture until "early 2017." But AMD was keen to fire a shot of Intel's bow at the event by showing a rendering demo where an 8-core/16-thread engineering sample Zen CPU outperformed an Intel 8-core/16-thread Broadwell-E CPU - Intel's $1,100 hi...

Summar y: Seagate has taken the wraps off its whopping 60TB solid-state drive for the enterprise. Seagate says its SSD has twice the density and four times the capacity of Samsung's 15TB PM1633a. Image: Seagate/Twitter Seagate has been showing off its monster 60TB solid-state drive (SSD) this week, which breezes past the 15TB SSD that Samsung launched in March. But don't expect to see Seagate's SSD in a consumer device any time soon, with the new drive set to join the high-performance end of its datacenter portfolio. Samsung's   PM1633a has a 2.5-inch form factor   and holds 15.36TB of data. For now, it remains the largest commercially available SSD and   reportedly costs $10,000 per unit . Seagate's 60TB Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD on the other hand opts for the familiar HDD 3.5-inch form factor. The company says that its drive has "twice the density and four times the capacity" of Samsung's PM1633a, and is capable of holding up to...

Summary: Microsoft has acknowledged officially that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will be its only feature upgrade to Windows 10 this year. Two new feature refreshes are coming in 2017, however.   While a number of us Microsoft watchers have been saying for a while that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update would be Microsoft's only feature update to Windows 10 in 2016, now Microsoft officials are acknowledging the same. In a recent   TechNet article itemizing new IT pro features for the Anniversary Update   (codenamed "Redstone 1"), Microsoft officials included this line: "Windows 10, version 1607 is our third Windows 10 feature update released. Based on feedback from organizations moving to Windows 10, this will be our last feature update for 2016, with two additional feature updates expected in 2017." (I saw the line above in   a post by The Verge's Tom Warren , who saw it on   Windows Central .) The first Windows 10 feature release by Mi...

Summary: Oracle CEO Mark Hurd called Oracle and Netsuite 'complementary' cloud applications. Oracle has announced it is acquiring cloud-based ERP provider Netsuite for $9.3bn in cash, or $109 per share."Oracle and NetSuite cloud applications are complementary, and will coexist in the marketplace forever," said Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd. "We intend to invest heavily in both products -- engineering and distribution." Oracle's ties to Netsuite go back to the 1990s, when Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson served as Oracle's marketing chief. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is Netsuite's largest investor, and both companies have had a keen focus on the enterprise resource planning space. But while Netsuite has lived and breathed in the cloud since its inception, Oracle has struggled to transition to an all-cloud business model. Adding Netsuite to the fray, with its subscription-based, on-demand co...

Summary: Artem Vaulin was charged with operating the illegal file-sharing site, which has allegedly allowed people to copy and distribute more than $1 billion worth of media. Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested the alleged owner of the world's most popular illegal file-sharing site, Kickass Torrents (KAT).  Thirty-year-old Artem Vaulin of Kharkiv, Ukraine, was arrested in Poland, and the United States will seek to extradite him, the US Justice Department announced . He was charged in the US District Court of Chicago with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. "Vaulin is charged with running today's most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," US Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said in a statement. ...

Summary: A portion of the 70 million phones shipped by Xiaomi last year are affected by the vulnerability. Millions of Xiaomi phones are vulnerable to a flaw that could allow an attacker to remotely install malware.The vulnerability, now fixed, was found in the analytics package in Xiaomi's custom-built Android-based operating system. Security researchers at IBM, who found the flaw , discovered a number of apps in the package that were vulnerable to a remote code execution flaw through a man-in-the-middle attack -- one of which would allow an attacker to run arbitrary code at the system-level. In other words, an attacker could inject a link to a malicious Android app package, which is extracted and executed at the system level. Xiaomi, the world's third-largest smartphone maker with more than 70 million devices shipped last year, fixed the flaw in a recent update. Users should update their devices as soon as possible -- though, updates...

Summary: The ConnectedDrive portal and BMW domains are vulnerable to attack through unpatched flaws. Researchers have disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities affecting the BMW web domain and ConnectedDrive portal which remain unpatched and open to attack. According to researchers from Vulnerability Labs, there are two main bugs both related to the BMW online service web app for ConnectedDrive , the connected car hub for new, internet-connected vehicles produced by the automaker. The first flaw , found in the ConnectedDrive portal, is a VIN session vulnerability. The VIN, or vehicle identification number, is used to identify individual models connected to the service. The bug is found within the session management of VIN usage, and remote attackers can bypass validation procedures using a live session.The session validation flaw can be exploited with a low-privilege user account, leading to manipulation of VIN numbers and configuration settings -...

Summary: The change "may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages," the company warned Facebook announced Wednesday it is once again tweaking its News Feed rankings to prioritize posts from friends and family.This may come as good news for the average user looking for family photos or other personal updates from their social network, but it could be bad news for companies relying on their Facebook Pages to draw in business. "Overall, we anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages. The specific impact on your Page's distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience," Facebook Engineering Director Lars Backstrom wrote in a blog post . "For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic ...

Summary: IT is moving to the cloud. And, what powers the cloud? Linux. When even Microsoft's Azure has embraced Linux, you know things have changed. Like it or lump it, the cloud is taking over IT. We've seen the rise of the cloud over in-house IT for years now. And, what powers the cloud? Linux.  A recent survey by the Uptime Institute of 1,000 IT executives found that 50 percent of senior enterprise IT executives expect the majority of IT workloads to reside off-premise in cloud or colocation sites in the future. Of those surveyed, 23 percent expect the shift to happen next year, and 70 percent expect that shift to occur within the next four years. This comes as no surprise. Much as many of us still love our physical servers and racks, it often doesn't make financial sense to run your own data center. It's really very simple. Just compare your capital expense (CAPEX) of running your own hardware versus the operational expenses (OPEX) of using a clou...