The content below is taken from the original ( Microsoft throttles on-prem tech donation scheme for nonprofits), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Big-hearted Microsoft has confirmed pending changes that will make it easier for charities to use its cloud services but will hike prices for anyone daring to use its on-premises wares.…
The content below is taken from the original ( Ofcom to networks: Want this delicious 5G spectrum? You’ll have to improve 4G coverage), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Ofcom has today proposed placing new coverage obligations on mobile operators for 4G services as part of their winning 5G spectrum bids.…
The content below is taken from the original ( Microsoft is selling customized Samsung Galaxy S9 phones), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Remember those Microsoft-customized Samsung Galaxy S8 phones? Well, apparently it's happening again. Microsoft is selling both a Samsung Galaxy S9 ($720) and the S9 Plus ($840) in its online store. Hardware-wise (and price-wise), these phones are ide…
The content below is taken from the original ( Qarnot unveils a cryptocurrency heater for your home), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
French startup Qarnot unveiled a new computing heater specifically made for cryptocurrency mining. You’ve read that right, the QC1 is a heater for your home that features a passive computer inside. And this computer is optimized for mining. While most people use laptops, back in the golden days of computer towers, you could heat a room with a couple of desktop computers. And heat is… Read More
The content below is taken from the original ( Only Half of Ransomware Victims Who Pay Ransoms Recover Their Data, Finds ‘2018 Cyberthreat Defense Report’), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
CyberEdge Group, a premier research and marketing firm serving the security industry’s top vendors, today announced immediate availability of its… Read more at VMblog.com.
The content below is taken from the original ( Alexa can now play that song you heard but can’t remember the name of), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
The content below is taken from the original ( Apple will stop accepting iTunes LP submissions this month), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Back in 2009, iTunes 9 offered a way for artists and labels to pack in extra album material like art, videos and bonus tracks. Earlier on Tuesday morning, Metro found a leaked Apple document that spelled doom for the bundled extras. The Verge later c…
The content below is taken from the original ( Just-in-Time VM Access is generally available), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Azure Security Center provides several threat prevention mechanisms to help you reduce surface areas susceptible to attack. One of those mechanisms is Just-in-Time (JIT) VM Access. Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Just-in-Time VM Access, which reduces your exposure to network volumetric attacks by enabling you to deny persistent access while providing controlled access to VMs when needed.
When you enable JIT for your VMs, you can create a policy that determines the ports to be protected, how long ports remain open, and approved IP addresses from where these ports can be accessed. The policy helps you stay in control of what users can do when they request access. Requests are logged in the Azure Activity Log, so you can easily monitor and audit access. The policy will also help you quickly identify existing virtual machines that have JIT enabled and virtual machines where JIT is recommended.
This feature is available in the standard pricing tier of Security Center, and you can try Security Center for free for the first 60 days.
To learn more about these features in Security Center, visit our public preview blog and documentation.
The content below is taken from the original ( UK kicks off driverless car law review to get tech on the road by 2021), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
In 2021 the UK government intends the country to be well on its way to a driverless future. No, not a cheap joke about Brexit — yesterday it announced a three-year regulatory review to “pave the way for self-driving cars”. Read More
The content below is taken from the original ( British military spends more on computers than weapons and ammo), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
The Ministry of Defence has admitted that it spends more on computer services than it does on weapons and ammunition for the Armed Forces.…
The content below is taken from the original ( Use Smart Devices in Your Dumb Shower With This Curtain), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
There’s just something about being in a shower. Some folks use showers to take advantage of forgiving acoustics. Some folks use showers to have brilliant revelations they just can’t seem to have anywhere […]
The post Use Smart Devices in Your Dumb Shower With This Curtain appeared first on Geek.com.
The content below is taken from the original ( Picard 2.0 beta announcement), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Hello people,
We saw a flurry of updates to Picard these last few months and I am happy to announce that Picard 2.0 is finally in beta. You can find it here – Picard 2.0.0beta1
If you have been following our Picard related blogs, you will know that we switched up our dependencies a bit. What this means is that Picard should look better and in general feel more responsive.
We also decided to release a new stable version of Picard before the beginning of the summer.
To help us, advanced users, translators and developers are encouraged to:
A simplified list of changes made since 1.4 can be read here.
Be aware that downgrading from 2.0 to 1.4 may lead to configuration compatibility issues – ensure that you have saved your Picard configuration before using 2.0 if you intend to go back to 1.4.
The content below is taken from the original ( Customising a $30 IP Camera For Fun), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
WiFi cameras like many other devices these days come equipped with some sort of Linux subsystem. This makes the life of a tinkerer easier and you know what that means. [Tomas C] saw an opportunity to mod his Xiaomi Dafang IP camera which comes configured to work only with proprietary apps and cloud.
The hack involves voiding the warranty by taking the unit apart and installing custom firmware onto it. Photos posted by [Tomas C] show the mainboard powered by an Ingenic T20 which is a popular IP Camera processor featuring some image and video processing sub-cores. Upon successful flashing of the firmware, the IP camera is now capable of a multitude of things such as remote recording and playback which can be configured using the web UI as documented by [Tomas C]
We did a little more digging on the custom firmware and discovered that the original author of the custom firmware, [EliasKotlyar] has done a lot of work on this project. There are loads of images of the teardown of a camera and an excellent set of documentation of how he made the hack. Everything from adding serial headers, getting root access, dumping the firmware and even toolchain links are given on the page. This is extremely handy for a newbie looking to get into the game.
And IP Cameras are not of the only hackable hardware out in the wild. There are other devices that are running Linux based firmware such as the Wifi SD Cards that run OpenWRT. Check out the essential guide to compiling OpenWRT from source if you are looking to get started with your next IP Camera hack.
Thanks for the tip [Orlin82]
The content below is taken from the original ( Black Mirror is Coming Back, Because the Future Still Sucks), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Black Mirror season four dropped not that long ago and honestly we’re still recovering from the hangover of tech-powered existential nightmares. Granted, this was the most optimistic season yet. But for a dystopian […]
The post Black Mirror is Coming Back, Because the Future Still Sucks appeared first on Geek.com.
The content below is taken from the original ( MDB Viewer Plus: View and Edit Microsoft Access Database Files), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Microsoft Database or MDB files are one of the oldest database systems that came into existence with Microsoft Access. MDB files were replaced with similar ACCDB files. These database files can be easily opened, edited and queried using Microsoft Access. […]
This post MDB Viewer Plus: View and Edit Microsoft Access Database Files is from TheWindowsClub.com.
The content below is taken from the original ( How a Free Version of Teams Might Work), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Brad’s scoop about Microsoft preparing a free version of Teams to take on Slack got me thinking about the technical shape of such a product and how it might differ from the enterprise version available to Office 365 tenants.
As Brad explains in his article, Microsoft is aiming at the free version of Slack. I assume that the idea is to block the route companies take from using the limited free version to buying the full paid edition of Slack. Since the introduction of Teams in November 2016, Microsoft has competed head-to-head with Slack, but has lacked an introductory version. Anyone who wants Teams must have an Office 365 tenant and license every user.
Microsoft’s announcement last week that they Teams now supports external access from any account is really important to their ability to deliver a free Teams client.
The free version won’t depend on Azure Active Directory as the authoritative directory or Office 365 Groups to manage team membership. Instead, I could see a scenario where someone with an MSA (Microsoft) account (connected to any email address) signs up to create a team and then nominates other members, each of which is identified by an email address. Teams sends invitations to those addresses and when the addresses are redeemed, connects the addresses to the team. Behind the scenes, the collection of members might be represented by a group in the MSA directory.
Microsoft is likely to limit functionality available to the free version of Teams. For instance, instead of supporting 100 channels in a team, the free version might support five. Instead of being able to create 250 teams, an MSA account might be limited to ten, and so on. I also think it likely that the array of bots, tabs, apps, and connectors available in the Office 365 version will be trimmed for a free version. However, Microsoft might keep apps that appeal to programmers, such as the integration between Visual Studio Team Services and Teams.
Teams draws upon many other Office 365 apps to deliver functionality to users. I could see that a free team might replace the enterprise apps with consumer versions. For instance, the free version of Teams could use an Outlook.com mailbox to host a calendar and a OneDrive site to share files between team members. Outlook.com uses the same physical infrastructure as Exchange Online, so hosting a mailbox on Outlook.com is a quick switch. Some more work is needed to replace SharePoint Online as the basis for file sharing and collaboration, but you could see how the consumer version of OneDrive could be used.
Apart from that, the core Teams services that handle personal and channel conversations and the media (graphics) posted in conversations run on Azure and probably do not need a heap of work to handle the demands of a free version. Indeed, some of the complexity of the enterprise will be removed, as free versions will not be concerned about things like compliance and data governance.
As to meetings, the Office 365 version of Teams uses the consumer Skype infrastructure for its phone and calling functionality, so it’s not a long shot to say that a free version of Teams would do the same thing, dropping enterprise functionality like calling plans and PSTN dial-in. Those who create free Teams might have to sign up to a Skype consumer subscription to pay for calls, if those calls go outside the boundary of the team.
If they introduce a free version of Teams, Microsoft will have to be able to upgrade from freeware to paid-for. The steps involved might be:
Conceptually, moving from free to paid does not seem to pose major technical difficulties. Microsoft has access to all the data, so this should be a straightforward operation. Of course, the devil is in the detail.
The bottom line is that the architecture of Teams lends itself to morphing from the version we see in Office 365 to a free version that competes directly with the free version of Slack. Stranger things have happened, so don’t be surprised if it does.
Follow Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna.
Want to know more about how to manage Office 365? Find what you need to know in “Office 365 for IT Pros”, the most comprehensive eBook covering all aspects of Office 365. Available in PDF and EPUB formats (suitable for iBooks) or for Amazon Kindle.
The post How a Free Version of Teams Might Work appeared first on Petri.
The content below is taken from the original ( Mercedes’ futuristic headlights are no longer just a concept), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
The content below is taken from the original ( Shape is an app to help you learn how to invest the ethical way), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Recently launched out of beta, U.K. startup Shape wants to create a more educational trading experience for a new generation of traders, including those who might be concerned with the ethical standards of the sectors or companies they back. Read More
The content below is taken from the original ( Knock, knock. Whois there? Get ready for anonymized email addresses after domain privacy shake-up), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
You may will no longer be able to see the name, email or house address for whoever owns a specific domain name under new rules proposed by DNS overseer ICANN.…
The content below is taken from the original ( Caped Beagle is FPGA Superhero), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
We miss the days when everything had daughterboards. Now, Arduinos have shields and Raspberry Pis have hats. The BeagleBone has capes. Whatever. However, regardless of the name, the open source BeagleWire cape/shield/hat/daughterboard connects to a BeagleBone and provides a Lattice iCE40HX FPGA, some support hardware, and common I/O connectors like Pmod and Grove. You can see a video about the board below.
In addition to the FPGA, the board contains a EEPROM, RAM, flash memory, an oscillator, and a few buttons, switches and LEDs. The buttons even feature hardware debouncing. The parts list and design files are all available and — depending on a successful crowdfunding campaign — you might be able to buy one for $75 in the future.
The board is configured to communicate over the 100 MHz 16-bit GPMC port. Linux software and example drivers are available so it should be fairly simple to get the FPGA and CPU talking to each other for your own purposes.
If you decide to build your own, there’s a one-click button that will populate a DigiKey cart for you with most of the components. Although the DigiKey site complained about an error, it did seem to order 24 of the 26 components and the total came to just over $50. Of course, you’d still need to source the missing parts and the board.
We’ve talked about the Lattice iCE FPGAs quite a bit in the past. Not only do you have our tutorial videos, but there are plenty of others, too.
Thanks for [Drew Fustini] for pointing this out to us.
The content below is taken from the original ( DIY Text-to-Speech with Raspberry Pi), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
We can almost count on our eyesight to fail with age, maybe even past the point of correction. It’s a pretty big flaw if you ask us. So, how can a person with aging eyes hope to continue reading the printed word?
There are plenty of commercial document readers available that convert text to speech, but they’re expensive. Most require a smart phone and/or an internet connection. That might not be as big of an issue for future generations of failing eyes, but we’re not there yet. In the meantime, we have small, cheap computers and plenty of open source software to turn them into document readers.
[rgrokett] built a RaspPi text reader to help an aging parent maintain their independence. In the process, he made a good soup-to-nuts guide to building one. It couldn’t be easier to use—just place the document under the camera and push the button. A Python script makes the Pi take a picture of the text. Then it uses Tesseract OCR to convert the image to plain text, and runs the text through a speech synthesis engine which reads it aloud. The reader is on as long as it’s plugged in, so it’s ready to work at the push of a button. We can probably all appreciate such a low-hassle design. Be sure to check out the demo after the break.
If you wanted to use this to read books, you’d still have to turn the pages yourself. Here’s a BrickPi reader that solves that one.
The content below is taken from the original ( Cambridge to use XRP for Faster Global Payments), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Cambridge Global Payments — a subsidiary of FLEETCOR Technologies and a leading global provider of commercial payment solutions — is launching a pilot program to use XRP in cross-border payment flows through xRapid.
Cambridge currently has over 13,000 clients around the world and handles $20 billion in international transactions annually. Incorporating XRP in those flows will provide their clients with a cross-border payments experience that is significantly faster, cheaper and more transparent.
Cambridge joins five major financial institutions who have publicly announced that they are piloting xRapid, including Cuallix, MoneyGram, IDT Corporation, Mercury FX and Western Union.
They are also exploring xCurrent, Ripple’s enterprise software for messaging and international transaction settlement currently used by over 100 financial institutions.
Cambridge looks to use xRapid to improve their customer experience
Cambridge works with businesses, large and small, to facilitate critical and secure payments for fuel, toll, lodging, and general payables through its own proprietary payment networks in North America, Latin America, Europe and Australasia.
These international payment flows allow for a streamlined experience for customers who depend on Cambridge to ensure their businesses stay healthy and expand. With xRapid, Cambridge aims to provide an even better experience for those customers.
Mark Frey, chief operating officer for Cambridge Global Payments, is confident that blockchain powered solutions like xRapid can not only help Cambridge improve their customers’ payments journey, but also spur critical innovation in their industry.
“We are excited for the insights this pilot program is expected to deliver, and we will use that information to help both Cambridge and FLEETCOR develop our use cases for blockchain in international payments,” said Frey.
“We strive to deliver best-in-class cross-border payments services, with speed and transparency. We look forward to exploring how Ripple can help us continue to improve the customer experience using new technology.”
Continued adoption of digital assets will revolutionize cross-border payments
As Cambridge and more financial institutions begin to use xRapid to source liquidity, capital locked up around the world required in today’s fractured system for international payments can become available and put to use in new ways.
Ripple’s director of business development, Danny Aranda, believes that partners like Cambridge recognize the revolutionary potential using XRP has for financial institutions.
“We’re focused on working with partners like Cambridge that understand the benefits of digital assets and are serious about using XRP to overcome the inefficiencies in the global payment system,” said Aranda. “We look forward to collaborating with Cambridge during this pilot to enhance the speed and transparency of cross-border payments for their clients.”
The efficiency of cheaper and on-demand international payments using digital assets like XRP together with the release of dormant capital, is an important step forward toward Ripple’s mission of establishing an Internet of Value, where money can move like information.
To learn more, please visit our solutions page.
The post Cambridge to use XRP for Faster Global Payments appeared first on Ripple.
The content below is taken from the original ( Bullitt is turning smartphones into toolboxes), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Given the fact that we already rely on them for pretty much everything else, why not just go all in and turn our smartphones in to literal toolboxes? Bullitt, the UK-based licensed phone manufacturer behind those Kodak handsets was on hand at Mobile World Congress this week, showing off a pair of super rugged handsets. They’re not for everyone, sure, but in a world where most phones… Read More
The content below is taken from the original ( IDG Contributor Network: How to choose the right SD-WAN transport and why it matters), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Businesses and their distributed enterprise locations grow more dependent on connected resources every day. That’s because employee and customer expectations and behaviors are evolving and having quick access to business information or constant connection to personal applications is changing the game for business networks.
Every report I see indicates that our dependence on connected systems will continue to skyrocket. In fact, Cisco recently predicted that global IP traffic is set to nearly triple by 2021.
The content below is taken from the original ( Are You a Bad Enough Dude For Land Rover’s Toughest Phone Ever?), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.
Smartphones are basically super powerful little computers we carry around with us every day. With so much technology packed into such a light and small package, including huge fragile glass screens, we shouldn’t […]
The post Are You a Bad Enough Dude For Land Rover’s Toughest Phone Ever? appeared first on Geek.com.
