Xpertfeed

  Microsoft Australia's CTO told Red Hat Forum his company is committed to open source, and that the fundamental mission driven by Satya Nadella is best achieved through democratisation. Microsoft has copped a lot of flack over comments it has made regarding open source in the past; with one in particular made by its former CEO Steve Ballmer back in 2002 that described Linux and the General Public License as cancers. Highlighting the irony that Microsoft was presenting during Red Hat Forum 2019 in Melbourne on Tuesday, Redmond's Australian CTO Lee Hickin said the company has come a long way since those comments were made. "I recognise the irony of Microsoft here at an open source community event. I'm really proud to do that, and I'm humbled and privileged that we can be on the stage with Red Hat to share our story," Hickin said. Hickin has been with Microsoft on and off since 2005, saying that he's seen three leaders and three very different companies. ...

  The company also unveiled a slew of machine learning-based apps and features during its annual Workday Rising event in Orlando. Workday held its Workday Rising user conference on Tuesday, where co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri and a parade of executives converged in Orlando to showcase the company's vision for the future and  new products in the pipeline . Workday's key goal during the event seemed to center on telling customers that it can support their business during transformation. "We are focused on innovation that adds value to you, our customer," Bhusri said during his keynote, noting the pivotal role machine learning will play in Workday's products and platforms going forward. Bhusri continued to call machine learning "the foundational and disruptive technology of the next five years." As for the key announcements, Workday is introducing a blockchain based system for verifying worker credentials and identity called Workday Credentials. The syste...

  Blockchain has been a buzzword for a few years now, but the reality is that the technology is nowhere near ready for widescale adoption. From finance to fine art, the list of industries that blockchain could be applied is apparently never-ending – but in reality it could be another ten years before the technology actually starts delivering on its promises. Blockchain is currently going through what tech analyst Gartner describes as the 'trough of disillusionment', which occurs when a new technology's implementations fails and interest for it wanes. Gartner predicts that blockchain will only start recovering from its fall from 2021, and that it could take five to ten years before it starts transforming the way businesses operate. Or, as Gartner puts it, before it goes up the "Slope of Enlightenment". Avivah Litan, research vice-president at Gartner, doesn't see this happening before 2028, which is when she expects the technology to be fully scalable.  "T...

  In a leaked internal memo, Docker CEO reveals the troubled company is looking for more money. Docker, the technology, is the poster child for containers. But it appears  Docker , the business, is in trouble. In a leaked memo, Docker CEO Rob Bearden praised workers -- despite the "uncertainty [which] brings with it significant challenges" and " persevering in spite of the lack of clarity  we've had these past few weeks."  Lack of clarity about what? Sources close to the company say it's simple: Docker needs more money.  Indeed, Bearden opened by saying: "We have been engaging with investors to secure more financing to continue to execute on our strategy. I wanted to share a quick update on where we stand. We are currently in active negotiations with two investors and are working through final terms. We should be able to provide you a more complete update within the next couple of weeks." Docker has already raised $272.9 million , but the company h...

  New Nodersok malware installs Node.js to turn systems into proxies, perform click-fraud. Thousands of Windows computers across the world have been infected with a new strain of malware that downloads and installs a copy of the Node.js framework to convert infected systems into proxies and perform click-fraud. The malware, named Nodersok (in a  Microsoft report ) and Divergent (in a  Cisco Talos report ), was first spotted over the summer, distributed via malicious ads that forcibly downloaded HTA (HTML application) files on users' computers. Users who found and ran these HTA files started a multi-stage infection process involving Excel, JavaScript, and PowerShell scripts that eventually downloaded and installed the Nodersok malware. The malware itself has multiple components, each with its own role. There's a PowerShell module that tries to disable Windows Defender and Windows Update, and there's a component for elevating the malware's permissions to SYSTEM level. But...

  Google's search technologies struggle to identify original news stories. Google looks smart and its people behave smart, but that doesn't mean its algorithms are smart. Machine learning works well when it comes to images, not language. Google's dirty little secret is that its algorithms are quite dumb and have trouble understanding what they see and read. Take this example of Google recently saying that its search algorithm will be trained to highlight original news stories such as scoops and investigative pieces... Marc Tracy in  The New York Times  reports : "After weeks of reporting, a journalist breaks a story. Moments after it goes online, another media organization posts an imitative article recycling the scoop that often grabs as much web traffic as the original. Publishers have complained about this dynamic for years…" This has been a problem since Google News launched in September 2002. Finally, the head of Google News,  Richard Gingras , has responded:...

  As more and more devices get connected to the Internet of Things, researchers say compromising pumps has become a hot topic on cyber criminal forums. Cyber criminals are increasingly turning their attention to hacking Internet of Things devices as connected products proliferate – and there's one smart device in particular that is catching hackers' attention. While routers remain the top target for IoT-based cyberattacks, there's a lot of discussion in underground forums about compromising internet-connected gas pumps. This new target was uncovered by by researchers at Trend Micro, which carried out an examination of  dark web marketplaces  in five different languages – Russian, Portuguese, English, Arabic, and Spanish. The  Internet of Things in the Cybercrime Underground   report describes how the Russian market is the most sophisticated of the underground communities and one in which cyber criminals are keen to make money from attacks and exploits....

  Targeting Youtube channels at kids lands Google on wrong side of Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Google and YouTube will pay $170 million to settle a case with the US Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General that alleges the tech giant illegally collected the personal information of children. Under the  Children's Online Privacy Protection Act  (COPPA), owners of online services targeted at children need to gain parental consent before collecting data on persons under 13 years of age, which also includes the use of persistent identifying cookies. The FTC and New York Attorney General put forward the argument in a  complaint [PDF]  that YouTube channels created to target children needed to comply with COPPA. "The complaint notes that the defendants knew that the YouTube platform had numerous child-directed channels," the FTC said. "YouTube marketed itself as a top destination for kids in presentations to the makers of popular chi...

  New Confidential Computing Consortium will promote the use of TEEs (trusted execution environments). Some of the biggest names in the cloud and hardware ecosystem have agreed to join a new industry group focused on promoting safe computing practices. Founding members include Alibaba, Arm, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Swisscom, and Tencent. Named the  Confidential Computing Consortium , this industry group's goals will be to come up with strategies and tools to accelerate the adoption of "confidential computing." By confidential computing, the group is referring to hardware and software-based technical solutions for isolating user data inside a computer's memory while it's being processed, to avoid exposing it to other applications, the operating system, or other cloud server tenants. The easiest way of supporting confidential computing practices is through the use of  trusted execution environments (TEEs) , also known as enclaves. These a...

  The Desktop as a Service offering simplifies the delivery of Windows apps and desktops from Azure to devices. Citrix Managed Desktops  will be generally available on August 26, Citrix said Tuesday. The desktop-as-a-service offering simplifies the delivery of Microsoft Windows apps and desktops from Microsoft Azure to devices.  Compared with  Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops , Citrix Managed Desktop is designed to offer a "turnkey service" for any organization, regardless of their size or IT expertise. Customers can provision Windows-based applications and desktops from the cloud to any device, and the service can be purchased on a monthly or term basis.  It's designed to streamline provisioning for internal or external users, such as a contract or seasonal workers, or to scale virtual desktops to respond to changing demands, like an influx of workers from an acquisition. Users should be able to easily integrate Azure-hosted virtual desktops with on-premises Ac...