Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

August 27, 2016

What is Bitshares?

With BitShares it is possible to trade many different types of assets in addition to the native cryptocoin. In particular, there are what are called Smartcoins and User-Issued Assets. Smartcoins are coins like bitUSD, bitGOLD, and bitCNY that track the value of their counterparts, so that 1 bitUSD today will be worth 1 USD a week, month or year from now. With Smartcoins, people can enjoy the benefits of the blockchain payment network without being exposed to the volatility associated with its disruptive yet nascent stage of development. User-Issued Assets are, as the name suggests, assets issued by the user – meaning anyone can issue their own asset. The issuer of the asset can set various levels of control that they have of the asset, including having no control at all.

FinTech in Canada Explained

Robo-advisors are no joke, they’re completely changing the industry. Now you can get a professionally managed portfolio at a fraction of the price of mutual funds. It’s not like it’s actual robots running your portfolios, there are real people behind the scenes that have designed portfolios based around ETFs. The general idea is that you answer a series of questions and then a portfolio will be recommended to you. The portfolios are passive and change only happens when certain preset conditions are met. It’s still cheaper to be a DIY investor, but there’s no denying that robo-advisors are a good alternative. Your investments are also protected under the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. Don’t worry if you have lots invested, many robo-advisors have additional insurance available that is free.

Will Blockchain Technology Revolutionize the Banking Industry?

Given the unique capabilities of blockchain, it is no surprise that financial organizations are actively exploring its use in a variety of potential applications. They can, for example, use it to enable faster processing time, gain greater insight into market moves, increase transparency and compliance, and substantially lower costs. According to a report co-authored by Santander, it’s estimated that blockchain technology could reduce banks' infrastructure costs alone by up to $20 billion a year. There are broader applications of blockchain across other industries, as evidenced by the fact that investments and funding of blockchain-related start-ups had grown from US$298 million in 2014 to almost US$460 million. The potential exists to transform any transaction where speed, trusted and reconciled data, and secure handling of payments.

Public blockchains gaining acceptance at Bank of Japan’s Payment and Settlement Forum

“When digital currencies become to be widely used, people will not have to have bank accounts for payment purposes.” Commercial banks could become “unable to provide ‘finality’ to payments,” Hoki states. In this scenario, non-bank financial intermediation “might become more pronounced,” he claimed, and the possibility of using public-type DLTs for fund settlements will subsequently be undeniable. A discussion about financial blockchain applications followed Koji's presentation. Ryu Takaki, an Associate Partner at IBM Japan, Ltd, raised various issues including anonymity, transparency, delayed finality, and maintaining mining incentives.

How the ‘third unbundling’ is disrupting traditional business

The third unbundling is reshaping entire industries, as businesses break down enormous operating structures into smaller, more agile and innovative units. As with most transformational trends, this idea is heavily rooted in Silicon Valley thinking – where companies think big and think disruptive, asking the question, ‘How can we challenge the big institutions that are forcing us to do things in a certain way?’ The ‘Silicon Valley’ mind-set takes the view that by using the right people, processes, tools and technologies, it is possible to remake whole industries for the better. The services and suppliers that are causing unnecessary hassle in people’s lives are disassembled and then remade as ‘customer first’ businesses.

Why Compliance is a Key Element in Fintech

Consider a case where a client’s fraudulent scheme placate a financial institution. If they willfully defects to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), then by default it will be flagged as the co-conspirator and becomes liable to litigation. This renders a clear message for fintech companies to possess higher accountability for actions which it may have otherwise neglected. CCOs (Chief Compliance Officers) will be under the constant burden to substantiate that their ventures are on track and compliant with the rules. Hence, nowadays they primarily come up with sandbox protocols for testing required compliance issues. To augment it, they are creating internal control processes to analyze Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) and SARs. Regular audits are invoked to rejuvenate the regulatory updates to the concerned officials.

How to prevent your IoT devices from being forced into botnet bondage

Some of the problem stems from inherent limitations characterizing IoTdevices. “Device constraints preventagents such as antimalware, antivirus and firewall to be run on the device to protect itself, thus, traditional IT security practices are difficult to deploy on IoT devices,” says Preetham Naik, business development expert at Subex. These constraints include computation and storage limitations, as well as the use of stripped-down versions of known operating systems such as Linux. As Zeifman points out, the combination of advanced computing capabilities, high connectivity and lackluster security makes IoT devices “perfect candidates for botnetrecruiters.” Also relevant is the mostly autonomous nature of IoT devices.

Debunking the most common big data backup and recovery myths

Big data has become a priority for most organizations, which are increasingly aware of the central role data can play in their success. But firms continue to struggle with how to best protect, manage and analyze data within today's modern architectures. Not doing so can result in extended downtime and potential data loss costing the organization millions of dollars. Unlike traditional data platforms (Oracle, SQL*Server, etc.), which are managed by IT professionals, big data platforms (Hadoop, Cassandra, Couchbase, HPE Vertica, etc.) are often managed by engineers or DevOps groups and there are some common misconceptions around big data backup and recovery that need to be cleared up.

So your company’s been hacked: How to handle the aftermath

"Companies are getting hacked left and right. When you get to the point where every day you read about another major company getting hacked and your reaction is, like, 'OK,' then that's a really, really big problem. People are apathetic about cyber security. We have a serious problem. "It's not like we use devices only as a tool. They have become part of daily life and we rely on them. We have shifted to where have so many different types of systems -- from banking to healthcare to transit and the power grid." Cohen Wood believes companies need to educate workers about cyber threats and that IT shops need to assiduously stay on top of cyber threats with a shed of tools. She's also concerned that the major university computer science programs in the U.S. are failing to do nearly enough to prepare IT workers and coders with cyber security courses.

The 3 Biggest Mistakes In Cybersecurity

Cyber security is not an IT problem. It is a risk management problem. This is easier to understand in you work in a regulated industry. There, the concept, language, even governance of risk management is part of the daily lexicon. Not so with small and mid-market business less familiar with the risk management function. It doesn’t help that the very nature of the threat and the way the “payload” of the attack is delivered is via information technologies. It almost makes sense to have IT deal with cyber security. But the victims are not the computers. The victims are the businesses and their people. More importantly: A company’s Information Technology generates Value. It does so a myriad different ways depending on the business you are in, from the actual delivery of goods to clients to complementing, enhancing, and realizing the mission and vision of the company

Quote for the day:

"If Columbus had turned back, no one would have blamed him. Of course, no one would have remembered him either." -- Unknown

August 26, 2016

Financial Networking Company Prepares for ‘Post-Quantum’ World

Traditional computers process information encoded in a binary format — represented by either 0 or 1. Quantum computers, by contrast, work on quantum mechanical principles, including the concept of “superposition” — the idea that a particle can be in two different states, representing both a 0 and 1, simultaneously. This is what potentially gives quantum computers their incredible processing power, theoretically carrying out trillions of calculations per second. And that is what has cybersecurity experts worried. Most digital encryption systems rely on numerical keys that are tens or hundreds of digits long. To break one by trying every possible combination, or by searching for numerical patterns that would allow the encryption algorithm to be reverse-engineered, is beyond the capability of conventional computers — at least in reasonable timescales.

Data lakes security could use a life preserver

The most important security functions with regard to data lakes are authorization and access. Research firm Gartner has warned companies not to overlook the inherent weaknesses of lakes. Data can be placed into a data lake with no oversight of the contents, Gartner analyst Nick Heudecker noted at the firm’s Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit last year. Many data lakes are being used by organizations for data whose privacy and regulatory requirements are likely to represent risk exposure, Heudecker said. The security capabilities of central data lake technologies are still emerging, and the issues of data protection will not be addressed if they’re left to non-IT personnel, he said. Many of the current data lake technologies on the market “don’t have fine-grained security controls that allow for multi-faceted control at the object level,” Hockenberry says.

The AI revolution is coming fast. But without a revolution in trust, it will fail

Deploying AI will require a kind of reboot in the way companies think about privacy and security. AI is fueled by data. The more the machine learns about you, the better it can predict your needs and act on your behalf. But as data becomes the currency of our digital lives, companies must ensure the privacy and security of customer information. And, there is no trust without transparency – companies must give customers clarity on how their personal data is used. It turns out that the capability of AI to detect and remedy security breaches plays a critical role in protecting user privacy and building trust. AI is going to unleash a whole new level of productivity and augment our lives in many ways.

The Most Practical Big Data Use Cases Of 2016

Timely analysis of real-time data is seen as key to driving business performance – as Walmart Senior Statistical Analyst Naveen Peddamail runs Wal Mart’s Data Cafe and tells me: “If you can’t get insights until you’ve analysed your sales for a week or a month, then you’ve lost sales within that time. Our goal is always to get information to our business partners as fast as we can, so they can take action and cut down the turnaround time. It is proactive and reactive analytics.” Peddamail gives an example of a grocery team struggling to understand why sales of a particular produce were unexpectedly declining. Once their data was in the hands of the Cafe analysts, it was established very quickly that the decline was directly attributable to a pricing error. The error was immediately rectified and sales recovered within days.

SD-WAN, NFV deployment leads software-defined networking charge

SD-WAN products combine the power of big data analytics and traditional networking. They monitor traffic flows and network latency and jitter, making real-time decisions on traffic management. A common comparison to SD-WAN is voice traffic management. A PBR approach may dictate leveraging aMultiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connection for all voice traffic and a lower-quality Internet VPN for non-latency sensitive traffic. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule; if an MPLS connection is congested on the far side, the Internet VPN is the more viable option. Trying to create a routing policy for this type of dynamic traffic routing wasn't feasible -- at least not until SD-WAN vendors combined the power of general compute with inexpensive network links. Using real-time traffic analysis, middleboxes direct traffic over the best available link.

Threats on Every Side

Some of VMware's liveliest competition is coming from open source communities and suppliers that have based their offerings on open source projects. This includes competitors such as Red Hat Inc., SUSE, Canonical Ltd. and others. The open source communities have addressed all seven layers of the Kusnetzky Group model. The technology coming out of these efforts often are well-tested and quite sound; but they do require some IT background and flexibility. The suppliers in these communities typically ask, "Why pay the xtax on your business?" (where "x" is whatever commercial supplier they're competing with at the moment) when speaking about any commercial vendor. Red Hat, for example, is known to speak about the "Red Hat discount" that other vendors would offer when they learned that Red Hat was one of the competitors.

Mozilla launches free website security scanning service

The tool doesn’t only check for the presence of these technologies, but also whether they’re implemented correctly. What the tool doesn’t do is scan for vulnerabilities in the actual website code, something that already exists in a large number of free and commercial tools. In some respects, achieving a secure website configuration—using all the available technologies developed in recent years by browser makers—is even harder than finding and patching code vulnerabilities. “These technologies are spread over dozens of standard documents, and while individual articles may talk about them, there wasn’t one place to go for site operators to learn what each of the technologies do, how to implement them, and how important they were,” King said in a blog post.

Apple May Be Too Late To Make A Big Social Impact

"Apple is behind in social media," said Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. "This does not mean they will ever be a significant player in social media, but I'm sure that's a target they would like to achieve... If they can marry a successful social media app with their technology, it will help them grow further and faster." Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, said it might be easier for the company to buy its way into the social networking world. "It would be interesting to see if Apple will buy a company like Twitter," she told Computerworld in an email. "Starting from scratch may be difficult." However, Hurwitz also noted it might make sense for Apple to focus on a social network based on photos since that would tie into the use of the iPhone's camera.

Blockchain: It's not just for finance anymore

Use of blockchain in financial systems continues to expand and will be an increasingly important technology going forward. But blockchain capability may actually be as or more important to enabling a growing number of high value IoT functions that must also be effectively protected. In the important field of the Enterprise of Things (EoT), having proof of unaltered data is often mission critical and can make the difference in a life or death situation, in hazardous response requirements, or in many other high value interactions/operations. For example, imagine health related data from some monitors that could control life or death situations, being sent to the cloud for processing. How do you know that data is legitimate and unaltered?

Person-to-object interface: Next gen bionics for amputees

In practice CBAS’s aim is to replace the cup and socket system that usually connects prosthetics to the body. This socket is customised to the patient – so expensive – but still doesn’t work very well. People experience pain, their limbs lack functionality and it is hard to track gradual everyday wear and tear. CBAS wants to “standardise the interface” explains Hewage. And using advanced bioengineering and monitoring technologies it aims to create the “USB connector” of prosthetics. This is the next wave of integrated bionics and allows complex interactions between a range of different devices and a number of the body’s organs and systems. The benefit of this standardisation is clear. There is an immediate decrease in the cost of amputee care.

Quote for the day:

"It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." -- Steve Jobs

August 25, 2016

Reprogram Your Culture

There is power in story as they inform, persuade and educate. Using the power of story, you can tap into foundational beliefs that shape culture. ... Although that’s unlikely, the reinforcing power of the story is that it communicates the value of customer service. It’s far more impactful to share that story than to say, “a Nordstrom core value is customer service.” ... There are four types of stories that shape culture. Identity stories are about who we are and where we came from. They capture what’s unique and special in the DNA. Success and Failure stories are about what is rewarded versus punished. Finally, future stories are about where the organization is going. ISFF (Identity, Success, Failure and Future) are the core stories that you can tell or will be defined by your culture. Change the story to change the culture.

European law enforcement seeking smart ways to fight cyber crime

Manufacturers need to wake up to the risks they face in the connected world and realise that most cyber security vulnerabilities are not solvable using bolt-on systems, but instead relying on sound engineering, software development practices and cyber security best practices. “The most effective cyber security work occurs during the planning, design and early implementation phases of the products, with the difficulty and cost of remediation increasing in correlation with product age and complexity,” said Thuen. Failing to address security at the early development stages could be very costly in the long-run, he said, leading to loss of consumer confidence or even product recalls, which some vehicle manufacturers would find difficult to recover from.

Are You Agile Enough for Polyglot Programming?

An interesting case study in Polyglot Programming is the Obama re-election campaign. The entire project was conceived of, designed, deployed, and dismantled in 583 days. It was spread across 3 data centers and 2000 nodes; it consumed 180 TB of data and supported 10,000 requests per second. Luc Perkins (@lucperkins) says in his blog that the Obama campaign was unbelievably agile. It was 100% cloud based and polyglot. Poly-language, poly-framework, and poly-db. Harper Reed, the CTO for the Obama re-election campaign, knew from the beginning he was resource constrained, so he bet big on the cloud. Without millions of dollars for servers, Harper chose Amazon Web services to host everything.

Trying to make sense of Google's messaging mess

Google's overall approach to development is a problem that impacts strategy and branding throughout the company, according to Dawson. "Teams within Google seem to be empowered to go and create stuff without coordinating with other teams — that can lead to great innovations, but more often than not it appears to lead to this kind of fragmented, disjointed approach to a space," he says. ... Google's seemingly unfocused approach to messaging is also related to the company's failure to create or acquire a wildly popular app. None of its messaging apps have ever reached the scale of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Line or others. "The best case scenario for Google is that they hit it big with one of their messaging and communication platforms, and then can start from a base of success before consolidating," says Patrick Moorhead

Apps for Work vs. Office 365 debate as much about culture as tech

Companies are increasingly looking to outsource their email and other productivity software like calendaring and word processing. They're enticed by lower costs, better disaster recovery and scalability offered by vendors, but the market is still nascent. A 2016 study by market research outfit Gartner shows 13% of publicly traded companies are using cloud offerings from either Microsoft or Google. Office 365 claims nearly 9% of the email market; Apps for Work grabs just under 5%. The remaining 87% has email in-house, in data centers or private clouds, or use hosted email services. The two vendors' software packages have the same basic lineup: web-based email, word processing, calendar, messaging, spreadsheets and slideshow generator.

Phishing for Insurance Coverage

Frequently, insurers assert that there is no coverage because the loss did not proximately result from the fraudulent hack, but rather from the intervening actions of duped individuals. Last year, in Apache Corp. v. Great American Insurance Co., a federal court in Texas ruled on an insurer’s challenge that the requirement in the Computer Fraud clause of a Crime policy that the loss result “directly” from the use of a computer was not met. An Apache employee received a call, and then an email attaching a letter, from a person claiming to be an employee of one of Apache’s vendors, requesting a change of the account information to which payment was to be sent for the vendor’s services. The change was made, and $2.4 million was directed to the fraudulent account.

Advocates Want FCC to Address Car Hacking Threat

The PSA noted that a vehicle’s susceptibilities may lie in its wireless communications functions, for example in a mobile device connected to the car through Bluetooth, a USB or Wi-Fi. Third-party devices connected to the car can also cause vulnerabilities, the agencies said. “In these cases, it may be possible for an attacker to remotely exploit these vulnerabilities and gain access to the vehicle’s controller network or to data stored on the vehicle,” the announcement said. In July 2015, two hackers showed WIRED how they could remotely access a Jeep Cherokee’s systems to manipulate the air conditioning and radio settings, as well as cut the transmission entirely while the reporter was on the highway. Later that month, Fiat-Chrysler formally recalled 1.4 million of their cars that could have been affected by the vulnerability.

How Bloomberg is advancing C++ at scale

Large projects differ in complexity and difficulty in multiple dimensions, which kick in at different magnitudes. For example, as software size crosses the threshold where frequently recompiling the entire system becomes infeasible, you need to be taking insulation techniques seriously.There are three global techniques available in C++, two of which are architectural and one of which is not. The procedural interface, the first of the two architectural techniques, is very specific to C APIs; the second is the pure abstract interface, or protocol, which we use routinely throughout BDE and in system integration in general. The non-architectural technique uses a concrete class, also called PIMPL, or “pointer to implementation”. But, all three are totally insulating, meaning that with them you can insulate the entire implementation.

CISCO Starts Patching Firewall Devices Against NSA-Linked Exploit

ExtraBacon was released earlier this month together with other exploits by one or more individuals who use the name Shadow Brokers. The files were provided as a sample of a larger Equation group toolset the Shadow Brokers outfit has put up for auction. ... Even though the ExtraBacon exploit was designed to work for versions 8.4(4) and earlier of the ASA software, other researchers demonstrated that it can be modified to also work on newer versions. Cisco confirmed in an advisory that all versions of SNMP in Cisco ASA software contain the flaw. On Wednesday, the company updated its advisory to announce the availability of patched versions for different Cisco ASA branches, namely 9.1.7(9), 9.5(3), and 9.6.1(11).

How CISOs can adopt a proper risk management approach

A better approach would be to have a flight detector approach on individual endpoints. When you're on the plane you hope you never need it but in case you have a crash it is a critical feature. Likewise, if you see any unusual network activity you can activate this endpoint and do a real-time analysis. Enterprises should analyse the network traffic in real- time and look for anomalies. This process will give them an early warning. It's called breach detection system and it is very effective on the network layer. But trying to record change at every end point in real-time is cost prohibitive and not very meaningful. Installing an intelligent smart endpoint sensor and a flight recorder at end points will be more beneficial for the enterprises.

Quote for the day:

"If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade." -- @tom_peters

August 24, 2016

A Portable Hard Drive Made For Mobile Streaming

Unlike its very thick predecessor, the My Passport Wireless Pro could easily be mistaken for a portable optical drive (you remember those, right?). Except that this enclosure sports a micro-USB 3.0 connector, a USB 2.0 Type A port (for charging other devices from the drive’s battery), and an SD memory-card slot (for transferring files—automatically on insert, if you so choose. You can push a button if you don’t.) The new model weighs in at nearly a pound--that's four ounces heavier than the original--and we're pretty sure it's attributable to the 6400 mAh battery. ... Streaming was a mixed bag of easy and not so easy. This wasn’t the Wireless Pro’s fault, but the uneven implementation of streaming protocols across platforms.

Android 7.0, Nougat: The complete FAQ

The way split-screen mode works in Nougat is pretty simple, though the function is a bit hidden: While using an app, you press and hold the Overview key (the typically-square-shaped button next to Back and Home). That splits the screen in two, with your current app on top (or left) and a list of your most recently opened apps on bottom (or right). ... Updated appearances aside, notifications in Nougat are bundled by app -- so if you have, say, three new email alerts from Gmail, they'll all appear within a single card in your notification panel. ... Android's Quick Settings gets far more useful with Nougat, thanks to a new set of always-present toggles on top of the regular notification panel (illustrated above) and a newly customizable set of tiles when you swipe down from that view.

Google's Cloud Bigtable Database Handles Petebyte-Scale Workloads

Google this week alsoannounced general availability of its Cloud Datastore managed NoSQL database service and talked up its existing and forthcoming support for applications built in Microsoft's ASP.Net environment. Cloud Bigtable is a technology that Google has used internally for several years. It powers many of Google's most heavily used services, such as Gmail, Search, Maps and Analytics. It is designed to handle very large data sets at high speeds. According to Google, that makes it well-suited for analytical and operational applications, such as financial data analysis, internet of things and user analytics. Google has previously described Bigtable as delivering more than double the performance of other NoSQL technologies, such as Cassandra and Hbase, while running faster and delivering a lower total cost of ownership.

IT Investment Uptick Triggered By Productivity Goals

"In the long-run, productivity gains are mostly generated through innovations in technology and in the way that businesses manage people and technology," Ira Kalish, chief global economist for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, wrote in the report. "One problem is that new innovations, while always exciting, don't necessarily lead to productivity gains immediately. Rather, it can take years before innovations are absorbed into the way businesses operate, only then causing gains in productivity that lead to faster economic growth." Looking ahead, those companies surveyed noted that the greatest opportunity is in internet of things-powered technology that tracks business processes, with the ability to track customer behavior and the possibility of tracking employee productivity high on the list of capabilities businesses said they were pursuing in this area.

34 Most Disruptive Technologies of the Next Decade

For those who associate the term "hype" with failure, realize that that's what this report is bringing into focus. Instead, it highlights "the set of technologies that is showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years," Mike J. Walker, research director at Gartner, said in a statement. The phases of the hype cycle, as outlined in a graph created by Gartner, are as follows: Innovation Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and finally, Plateau of Productivity. Basically: There's a breakthrough, a flurry of press coverage touting successes, a bunch of failures that ultimately contribute to disillusionment, then people start to understand the technology more, and it goes mainstream.

Deconstructing the development mindset

A development mindset is a pattern of thinking and a way of looking at the world that invites ongoing opportunities for continuous individual and organizational transformation. It’s an abundant perspective that recognizes significance that others might overlook. Those with a development mindset appreciate that development is a state of mind, not a series of discrete activities or classes. ... Given the environmental impediments to promoting a development mindset, it would be easy to simply throw our hands up and declare defeat. But savvy leaders who understand the long-term benefits to individuals and the organization can choose to take steps to create more hospitable and supportive conditions for their employees.

Cisco well positioned to dominate cybersecurity market

The “big data” approach is the foundation of Cisco’s “Network as a Sensor” and “Network as an Enforcer” strategy. Because of its dominant share in networking, the company has more devices in more places than any other vendor. Also, it has a wealth of information available to it, including log files, NetFlow, DNS information, identity, IP address records and other network-related data that can help it quickly find anomalies and breaches. Industry-wide, the average time taken to find a breach today is 100 days. Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of networking and security, David Goeckeler, told me Cisco could find breaches in 17 hours. I challenged him on this point and said 17 hours is still far too slow.

How to get your network and security teams working together

So, for a team focused on speed and availability, security can often be seen as a roadblock in reaching those goals -- and vice versa. "This becomes a problem when network professionals feel that security measures are red tape getting in the way of their processes, and security professionals feel that network team's expansion and development of complex architectures are opening up the system to potential attacks," says Vigna. It's not that security isn't important to networking professionals, it's just that it isn't necessarily their focus. And the same goes for security pros. They don't want things to run slower or to create more steps for people, but it is their job to keep things as secure as possible. And as it becomes increasingly important for businesses to avoid any security breaches -- both teams will need to shift their priorities.

An iPhone feature has exposed a biometrics security flaw

The vulnerability is unlikely to present a serious threat to security, for now. Banks that employ facial recognition technology generally use it alongside other security measures — like requiring users to have a lock on their phone or only allowing a customer's account to be accessed from a single registered device. Exploiting the weakness would also require a hacker to have both the victim's phone and a Live Photo of them, which is an unlikely scenario. But this development suggests that banks should think carefully about how they use biometrics. Only 9% of UK consumers are happy to use facial recognition as a means of identification, according to Experian, and stories like this are likely to further dent consumer confidence. This implies that banks should continue to use biometrics as an additional or optional security measure, rather than a replacement for existing methods.

New report confirms you need NoSQL, and probably in the cloud

NoSQL is not an option—it has become a necessity to support next-generation applications. And increasingly, enterprises of all types and sizes are embracing NoSQL to support their business technology (BT) agenda. A key strength for NoSQL is the ability to support scale-out architecture leveraging low-cost compute servers that are clustered to deliver performance of large, high-end SMP servers. In addition, its flexible schemaless model offers the ability to store, process and access any type of customer and business data. ... NoSQL delivers one side of the business agility equation, allowing for disparate data types at high velocity and volume. Public cloud takes care of the infrastructure side of the equation, enabling enterprises to grow or shrink resources according to data demands.

Quote for the day:

"A vision needs to be shared in a consumable way and integrated into business plans, each decision, each procedure and each employees' tasks." -- @RichMcCourt

August 23, 2016

Tiny $35 computer gets major new release of HypriotOS

The stripped back Debian-based OS comes pre-installed with a number of Docker tools for Raspberry Pi versions 1, 2, and 3, as well as the Pi Zero and the compute module. HypriotOS utilizes the pre-installed Docker Engine 1.12.1, and Docker's Swarm Mode helps spread containers between a multi-node Pi cluster, which could be helpful for developers looking to build a network of Internet of Things devices. To get up and running, users will need to install the HypriotOS flash tool on an SD card, which is then inserted into a Raspberry Pi. Booting up takes less than five minutes, according to Hypriot. HypriotOS developers have optimized the toolset to only require 600MB of disk space and have reduced the size of the download packages to 232MB. They're also promising security out of the box by, for example, removing the 'root' user by default.

Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development

Although world-wide Continuous Integration is resoundingly popular, we have run into some problems. Communication pipes aren't as wide and reliable as we'd like, so many source control operations can get awkward from a remote site. In general we keep the build servers in the same site as the majority of developers, but remote sites can find it takes an annoyingly long time to get a fresh update from the mainline. The longer the communication lines are, the more they are prone to anything from glitches to lines being down for a while. Having the repository accessible 24 hours makes it annoying to take it down to do backups. All of these issues would mitigated by a clustered code repository, but we haven't experimented with anything like that yet.

How Bitcoin Makes Each Of Us As Powerful As A Bank

“Bitcoin and the concept of the internet of money that it creates are this new model for a payment network that spans the globe, that has no borders, very much like the internet, that allows you to run financial applications that are controlled by software and, rather than political rules, are controlled by mathematical rules.” He says the fact that the network can process payments as small as hundredths of a penny or as large as billions of dollars will enable all kinds of applications that are impossible with the traditional financial system. Tune in to our fun and chock-filled conversation to hear why he says, “Bitcoin doesn’t care if you’re a person, a piece of software or an automatic dog-feeding bowl,” and for his far-out descriptions of how taxis and disaster relief could operate in the future.

Disrupting beliefs: A new approach to business-model innovation

Every industry is built around long-standing, often implicit, beliefs about how to make money. In retail, for example, it’s believed that purchasing power and format determine the bottom line. In telecommunications, customer retention and average revenue per user are seen as fundamental. Success in pharmaceuticals is believed to depend on the time needed to obtain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. Assets and regulations define returns in oil and gas. In the media industry, hits drive profitability. And so on. These governing beliefs reflect widely shared notions about customer preferences, the role of technology, regulation, cost drivers, and the basis of competition and differentiation. They are often considered inviolable—until someone comes along to violate them. Almost always, it’s an attacker from outside the industry.

How to Mitigate the Top 3 Risks of Cloud Migration

Operational excellence is a key success factor for enterprise IT. However, building operations to support growth and business innovation, while maintaining day-to-day operations can be challenging. Clearly, the public cloud offers compelling agility to support rapid change and growth. But successfully moving existing applications to the cloud requires good process, along with good technology that can bridge the gap between heterogeneous cloud environments. As enterprise IT departments attempt to match data center supply with growing and often fluctuating demand from users, balancing between a situation of under-utilized resources and that of over-commitment, becomes essential. The cost-effective, pay-as-you-go nature of the public cloud can complement existing private cloud computing resources.

Across the pond: the EU-US Privacy Shield

For most companies, these requirements will mean updated privacy policies in dealings with customers and employees. Another key principle – the ‘choice’ principle – requires companies to offer individuals the opportunity to choose whether their personal data will be disclosed to a third party or used for a purpose that is different from the purpose for which such personal data was originally collected or subsequently authorised. Companies must respect individual choices and implement technical mechanisms so that data subjects may be informed, and be given the opportunity to opt out, of uses of their personal data. In addition, contracts with third party data processors will need to be reviewed to ensure that personal data will only be processed in a manner consistent with the basis on which the data was collected in the first place and with the level of protection required by the Privacy Shield.

Distributed Ledger Technology: What We Can Learn from Recent Blockchain Attacks

The security around private keys is a particularly relevant topic now given the recent hacking of the Bitfinex exchange in which bitcoins worth about $70 million were stolen. Although the exact details of the attack are not yet available, it is clear that the hackers were somehow able to access the private keys that secured customers’ accounts and steal the bitcoin. Private keys can be thought of as secret codes or passwords that prove ownership of digital assets. Technology companies developing permissioned blockchains for financial services will need to completely rethink the multi-sig/cold storage approach currently employed by digital currency exchanges.

Security Soars As a Priority, But Many Struggle to Use Tech for Protection

“With tens of thousands of malware variants being generated each day, this lack of defense may leave an organization wide open to compromise,” the report notes. Hospital data security professionals continue to fight for adequate budgets and resources, Kim notes. On the non-acute side, which includes physician practices and other providers such as long-term care facilities, the data suggests they are paying more attention and money to address security, but there is not yet a trend of small providers fortifying their cyber defenses. These providers are aware of looming threats, “but may not yet be aware of the pervasiveness of cyberattacks,” Kim says. Further, only 42 percent of surveyed non-acute providers have intrusion detection technology, so they may not even be aware that an attack has occurred.

Third-party vendors -- your weakest link?

Corporate leadership must make third-party risk management a priority for it to be successful. Such a program requires resources, and often involves delays in the purchase of products and services while the related risk is assessed. Without strong support from the C-Suite, managers will simply ignore third-party risk, and just buy whatever they want whenever they get in a hurry. Third-party oversight should begin with a structured program, with proper documentation and procedures. The program must be an ongoing effort, rather than a one-time review. This should include complete analysis of each vendor BEFORE a contract is signed. For ideas on how to structure such a system, I would suggest that you review "Third-party risk management -- not just papering the file."

C Programming Language's Tiobe Rating Drops To Lowest Level

One of the main reasons for this drop is that C is hardly suitable for the booming fields of web and mobile app development. Moreover the C programming language doesn't evolve like the other big languages such as Java, C++ and C#. There is a "new" C11 standard available but this contains only minor changes. The constraint that C object code should remain small and fast doesn't help here. Moreover, adding C++ like features is also out of the picture because that's what C++ is for already. So C is a bit stuck. Yet another reason why C is getting into trouble is that there is no big company promoting the language. Oracle supports Java, Microsoft supports C++, C# and TypeScript, Google supports Java, Python, Go, Dart and JavaScript, Apple promotes Swift and Objective-C, etc. but none of them supports C publicly.

Quote for the day:

"Gratitude is absolutely the way to bring more into your life." – Joe Vitale

August 22, 2016

Why I should own enterprise mobile application development

The stand-alone apps can exist and operate without connecting to back-end data and services. My calculator app is an example of a stand-alone, as is my camera app. The enterprise mobile apps get data from and send data to my complex back-end applications for transaction processing. A mobile banking app does not store transaction histories or process payments on a mobile device. Instead, it connects to the heavy-weight, back-end transactional systems and acts as a mobile interface to those systems. Since my life revolves around enterprise applications, I spend the bulk of my time and attention on enterprise mobile apps. This makes me the right person -- perhaps the perfect person -- to take on enterprise mobile application development.

The NSA hack proves Apple was right to fight the FBI

While the company's legal team fought the order, Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter arguing against being forced to build a so-called "backdoor" that would subvert the encryption that not only kept the shooter's phone secure, but millions of other users of Apple's smart phones. Most in the technology community rallied around Apple at the time, arguing that weakened encryption might help government investigators, but it would also make customers vulnerable to hackers. Now, with a massive top-secret archive of some of the NSA's own exploits having been leaked online, it appears they were right.

Mobile payments get Isaca’s security approval

The report points out that if a mobile device containing a mobile wallet is lost, the mobile device can be erased remotely. In addition, as the consumer’s payment card information is not on the mobile device, the payment cards do not need to be replaced. However, the report notes that users should have strong authentication for their mobile wallet applications, preferably a complex password and a biometric. The mobile wallet should use tokenisation and the number of transactions that can be processed with the phone should be limited to a small number of tokens stored in the phone. Mobile device owners should also set up or turn on the device locator/remote erase feature, so that they can remotely erase their device if it is lost or stolen.

ITSM: The 'what' and 'how' of digital transformation

When it comes to digital transformation, mobility is key. While most organisations have implemented an enterprise mobility strategy, risk, and security concerns are still preventing organisations from realising value from it. Having the right tools to manage risk and ensure security has never been more important. Over half of respondents said mobile ITSM is somewhat important to their digital transformation plans while just over a quarter said it’s 'highly important'. In the middle, just 12 percent said mobile ITSM was 'neither important or not important' while the naysayers who said it was 'not very important' or 'not relevant' were 7 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. Some of the key reasons why ITSM is changing the workplace of the future include the fact that service quality and customer satisfaction have become the biggest technology priorities for organisations.

The Most Critical Skills Gap: Cybersecurity

A new study released today by Intel Security with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) takes a closer look at the cybersecurity workforce shortage across eight countries including Australia, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S. Overall, it confirmed that the talent shortage was very real and widespread. The CSIS study revealed that 82% of participants report a shortage of cybersecurity skills in their organizations. One in four confirmed that their organizations were victims of cyber thefts of proprietary data due to this lack of qualified workers. The researchers reviewed open-source data, targeted interviews with experts, and a survey of 775 IT decision makers in both public and private sector organizations in eight countries.

Windows 10 browser beatdown: Who’s got the edge?

Not all web browsers are created equal. In fact, it might startle you a little to realize how diverse the range of top-end browser software has become, if you came of age in the era of “Internet Explorer or go home.” With about a third of all Windows traffic on the web coming from Windows 10 installs, according to figures from U.K.-based analytics firm GoSquared, and with Microsoft distancing itself from Internet Explorer in favor of the Edge just as fast as it can, it seems like as good a time as any to survey a few of the best browsing options for Windows 10 users. A word on methodology – I ran each contestant here through three benchmarks (higher scores are better in all of them – see graphic below) to give a broad sense of overall performance, and put each of them through their paces by using them for both work and play.

Why Online Retailers Should Be On High Alert For Cyber Attack

When we delve into the actual types of attacks seen by IT and security professionals in retail, we see some trends that on the surface may seem positive, but could point towards more troubling longer-term impacts. At Radware, we tend to consider attacks across three parameters: frequency, duration and complexity (generally measured by number of vectors). The retail space reports one of the lowest rates of frequency across the industries we survey. Only 17% say they see daily or weekly attacks, versus on average about 25% for other industries. Almost 40% say they only get attacked once or twice a year. These numbers could represent an over-reliance on certain attack detection technologies, or simply that many of the leaders in this space have effectively made themselves an expensive target for attackers.

Airbus to complete a self-driving, flying-car prototype next year

"We need to prepare for the greater use of unmanned aircraft in our urban environment to help address the new and future needs of our society," Kevin Shum, director-general of CAAS, said at the time. "We want to facilitate their use by industry and the public sector, and also hobbyists, but we must at the same time ensure that the regulatory regime keeps apace with these changes to enable such uses, whilst ensuring public and aviation safety and security." Up until recently, Airbus's autonomous flying vehicle project has been kept on the down low. Developers in several countries have taken on various aspects of the flying vehicle project. For example, in France and Germany, Airbus engineers are developing a bus-like flying vehicle under the project name CityAirbus.

ARM Has A New Weapon In Race To Build World's Fastest Computers

The new ARM processor design will be based on the 64-bit ARM-v8A architecture and have vector processing extensions called Scalable Vector Extension. Vector processors drove early supercomputers, which then shifted over to less expensive IBM RISC chips in the early 1990s, and on to general-purpose x86 processors, which are in most high-performance servers today. In 2013, researchers said less expensive smartphone chips, like the ones from ARM, would ultimately replace x86 processors in supercomputers. But history has turned, and the growing reliance on vector processing is seeing a resurgence with ARM's new chip design and Intel's Xeon Phi supercomputing chip. The power-efficient chip design from ARM could crank up performance while reducing power consumption.

Software Safety Ratings Could Help Cyber Insurers on Pricing

The initiative, if it catches on, could lead to major changes in the business practices of some of the world’s largest software companies. It could also, he says, help deliver something that decades of the free market, the open-source movement, government commissions and well-paid lawyers have not: software that is consistently secure, or at least very expensive to compromise. On Wednesday at the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, the duo were to xplain how their system works and point out some of the early winners and losers in their analysis. Among the preliminary findings: on Apple’s Macintosh computers, Google’s Chrome web browser is significantly harder to attack than Apple’s Safari, which in turn is much more secure than Firefox. Many Microsoft products have scored quite well so far, but its Office suite for Mac did terribly.

Quote for the day:

"To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." -- Buddha

August 21, 2016

The risky side of project management

Not all risks can or should be completely avoided. There will be times where this simply can't be done and other strategies should be considered. Getting to the point of knowing the best strategy can be dependant on many things such as priority, company policies, management outlook, external factors, stakeholder preference etc. ... Again, there really aren't any lone wolves in risk management, project outcomes impact everyone involved, and this makes each person accountable for playing a role in the execution of the risk management plan. That said, the project manager serves a pivotal role in identifying, documenting, communicating, preparing for, and managing the project risks.

Beyond bitcoin: the legacy of blockchain

Aside from currency, blockchain technology could be used to create secure exchanges of other high value assets or information in a peer-to-peer or business-to-business environment. For example, smart contracts could allow parties to enter into binding agreements, the terms of which are transparent to the anonymous parties, and property transactions could be carried out in online marketplaces with the removal of the estate agent intermediary. Banks are actively looking at blockchain technologies because of their ability to streamline processes and increase efficiency (particularly in areas like remittance, transfers, shareholder management and trading), and investors are increasingly backing start-ups developing blockchain applications or software.

Agencies face cyber concerns as apps rely on aging systems — report

“Cybersecurity, from a discussion perspective, has reached such a tenor that it’s a mainstream discussion across the entire United States,” Chehreh said. “The normal American… recognizes the value and importance of cybersecurity.” He added: “We must now operate in a very different manner to assure the privacy information that the civil agencies have is protected with the utmost that we can offer, and the most modern techniques and technologies.” Both Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 8 have passed their "end of life," the release notes, but many respondents reported still using one of the two systems. “We’re at a point and time within agencies' histories that we can no longer look at delaying modernization strategies,” Chehreh said.

Developing a global financial architecture

The lack of trust architecture is the defining stumbling block that keeps money from moving more easily to the developing world. In their Insights article A World Awash in Money, Bain & Company define trust architecture as strong property rights protections, reliable legal systems and institutional depth. What this really boils down to is safety and transparency: People want to see that the money they send across borders is going where it is supposed to. ... Much of the developing world has a ledger problem. Unsurprisingly, checking account penetration is significantly lower in developing countries, where only 41 percent of the population have accounts, than in the developed world, where 89 percent do. The differences are even more stark when you look at adults with only primary education (10 percent) or credit card holders (7 percent) in the developing world.

Blockchain Real Use Case: Land Inventory in Africa and Beyond

“As a decentralized exchange, OpenLedger allows digital currencies to be exchanged with each other as well as with fiat currencies. CCEDK is a partner who help with marketing and PR. They have a team of specialists who make B2B and B2C contacts, as well as produce literature and content related to the projects using OpenLedger. Kottackal is a company in India that helps tech companies enter the market and get prepared to scale with the global market. We are hoping that having them as auditing partners will help Bitland move into markets outside of the African continent with ease.” Bates also hints to Cointelegraph that his company will be meeting with government officials in another country next month, and while the name of the country cannot be disclosed at the moment, Bates says that it is a Western country not in Africa.

Data without Context is No Data At All

Information analysts and scientists are well aware of the importance of reference data. Every year, the Association of American Medical Colleges holds a conference focused on information technology in medical education and research. The event brings together leading academics and practitioners from medical centers across North America, and it’s always interesting and inspiring to see their forays into the frontiers of medical IT. This year, I had the opportunity, along with a wonderful colleague, to present on reference data management and ontologies, but it turns out that we were hardly the only ones thinking about reference data. Several presenters spoke of the necessity to corral enterprise taxonomies, ontologies, and controlled vocabularies to facilitate data integration, analytics and – above all – data governance.

Will the Internet of Things be bigger than the Industrial Revolution?

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been labeled as "the next Industrial Revolution" because of the way it will change the way people live, work, entertain, and travel, as well as how governments and businesses interact with the world. In fact, the revolution is already starting. That brand new car that comes preloaded with a bunch of apps? Internet of Things. Those smart home devices that let you control the thermostat and play music with a few words? Internet of Things. That fitness tracker on your wrist that lets you tell your friends and family how your exercise is going? You get the point. But this is just the beginning. BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has tracked the growth of the IoT for more than two years, specifically how consumers, businesses, and governments are using the IoT ecosystem.

Machine Learning Becomes Mainstream: How to Increase Your Competitive Advantage

You already know that machine learning is essentially a form of data analytics, but where did it come from and how has it evolved to become what it is today? In the past couple of decades, we have seen a rapid expansion and evolution of information technology. In 1995, data storage cost around $1000/GB; by 2014 that cost had plummeted to $0.03/GB (2). With access to larger and larger data sets, data scientists have made major advances in neural networks, which have led to better accuracy in modeling and analytics. As we mentioned earlier, the combination of data and analytics opens up unique opportunities for businesses. Now that machine learning is entering the mainstream, the next step along the path is predictive analytics, which goes above and beyond previous analytics capabilities.

Cyber espionage: A new cold war?

According to three cyber security companies that declined to be identified, the Shadow Brokers is mostly likely run by Russian intelligence. “There is no digital smoking gun,” said one analyst. But the circumstantial evidence is compelling, analysts say. And the list of other potential nation-state actors with the capability, wherewithal and motive is short. “The fact that the Shadow Brokers did not exist before, appeared at this time and are using intelligence that has been saved up until now suggests this is all part of some deliberate, targeted operation, put together for a particular purpose,” says Ewan Lawson, a former cyber warfare officer in the UK’s Joint Forces Command and now senior research fellow at RUSI, the think-tank. “That purpose looks like it is to highlight perceived US hypocrisy.” Russia, he says, is the obvious perpetrator.

Is blockchain revolutionary, or just another infrastructure support technology?

Stefan Thomas, one of the moving forces behind Bitcoin, is having second thoughts on the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency. In a recent piece posted on Medium, he stated that "as a blockchain grows, the larger and highly vested user base becomes more and more difficult to shepard." Thomas' doubts have grown since watching the progress of Ethereum, the blockchain-based smart contract and cryptocurrency platform open for all to use. Achieving "shared state" across a massive developer and user base is proving problematic, he opines. "In any protocol, everyone has to act the same. But in a blockchain like Ethereum, everyone has to think the same. Everyone's memory has to be exactly the same and evolve according to the same rules.

Quote for the day:

"The easiest way to lose power is to cling to it too tightly." -- Gordon Tredgold

August 20, 2016

Respect Your Organisational Monoliths

DevOps and agile initiatives (like Scrum) are being more widely adopted in our organisations. However, to successfully enable these methodologies and way of working, it is important to engage the teams and departments in the company that are responsible for "protection". Like your partner, these are the teams where you need to show the love. Without engaging these teams you are working against your own group and run the risk of creating an “us vs. us” environment. To enable DevOps to be successful in my organisation I had to engage with many such groups. I will specifically mention the security group. Most (financial) organizations have a dedicated security group. I went to my security group with a DevSecOps story. ... To get engagement from group security we had to examine and explain our product testing and test driven development strategy more closely.

The 3 Scariest Infosec Threats

“The high-profile hacks are usually pretty sophisticated, but the reality is far more of the threats to information come from human beings doing dumb things,” Tuma said. “Failure of the basics of blocking and tackling of infosec, not the ultra-sophisticated stuff, is where we see the most incidents. Yet companies spend more time and resources focusing on addressing the sexy stuff instead of the basics.” ... Another looming threat comes from the Internet of Things “and the lack of standards that exists as we start to connect these devices, sensors, mobile computers (and more) to our existing major networks and enterprise technology stacks,” said Adrian Bridgwater (@ABridgwater), a software technology journalist.

Report finds health, fitness apps lag in privacy polices

“While consumers might reasonably expect that any app that collects health and fitness information would be more than likely than general purpose apps to describe its privacy policies and practices, that is not always the case,” the authors write. “Given that some health and fitness apps can access sensitive, physiological data collected by sensors on a mobile phone, wearable, or other device, their below-average performance is both unexpected and troubling.” Top paid health apps trail behind general apps, the report found, with free apps marginally better at offering privacy polices. When the researchers examined sleep-tracking apps, only 66 percent had any privacy policy, and only a little more than half of those apps linked to their privacy policy from the app store.

How the internet of energy will herald in the hybrid home

That vital combination of digital intelligence and analysis will enhance the performance of energy systems and improve energy efficiency. It’s why the Government is putting so much effort behind the smart metering scheme – with everyone in the country equipped, householders will get information about how much they are spending on energy in real-time. That way, they can do something about it, save money and reduce their emissions into the bargain. Instead of energy being under someone else’s control, we are entering an era where householders have a choice. But while meters have been hailed as one of the key smart solutions that will transform the energy industry, there’s so much more that smart technology can do, which brings us to the hybrid home.

Riding on the Internet of Things to become a smart nation

The adoption of IoT technologies will be a key component for smart nation services and enable the exploitation of technology and innovation to address challenges, such as the increased strain on healthcare facilities and resources, traffic planning and congestion prevention, with the aim of enhancing residents' quality of life. As business cases are refined, you can scale technology solutions to the enterprise. There is no need to reinvent the wheel for IoT initiatives. Activating and connecting existing infrastructure could also leapfrog some implementation steps. Establishing appropriate protocols to ensure connectivity, public safety, cybersecurity and fairness will be a complex undertaking, but essential for future success. In line with this, our government must also transform how it regulates industries, develops new policies and undertakes procurement.

AI is booming, but can the benefits live up to the hype?

"This is not hype; it's real and sustained progress, which accelerates research," he said. He's also not convinced that funding will be impacted. "Funding is currently diversified between government agencies and industry, so it is unlikely to dry up," he said. "The market has a huge appetite for new AI capabilities and government is very interested in military and security applications. If anything, the funding will become even greater." "Plus," Yampolskiy added, "now it is possible to crowdfund good ideas." Aside from potential concerns about funding, some believe that conflating machine learning with AI is a problem. "There's likely a lot more involved in building intelligent systems than deep learning," said Toby Walsh, professor of AI at the University of New South Wales. "Unlike humans, deep learning needs lots of data."

Cybersecurity Is Broken And The Hacks Are Going To Just Keep Coming

If any evidence was needed for cybersecurity’s growing importance as an industry, you wouldn’t need to look much farther than the overcrowded booths on the stage floor at Black Hat and the VIP parties thrown by various corporations, ranging from Nike to Microsoft, that surround the event. The annual conference began as the more formal, industry-focused, sister to the unruly DefCon, or as it is sometimes called, hackers’ summer camp. If it seems weird that a conference for security professionals would be held back-to-back with the world’s largest hackers conference, then you don’t understand just how symbiotic the two groups are. Cybersecurity companies need hackers like defense companies need former army generals.

JUnit 5 - An Early Test Drive - Part 2

In the olden days test methods were not allowed to have parameters. That made sense then, because after all, what could JUnit possible pass for them? For version 5 the team answered this question with “Whatever you want!”. So now test methods can have parameters. For each parameter, JUnit will search for an extension to provide a value. Two such extensions are built in, and they can be used to inject aTestInfo or a TestReporter, but neither is terribly useful for everyday test writing. More interesting is the MockitoExtension, which will inject a mock into each parameter that is annotated with @InjectMock. It demonstrates how the extension API, although still a work in progress, can already be put to good use.

SurFlow: Data at 6Gbps across your table, walls or the wings of a spaceship

By creating a fast networking technology that works on the fabric of a construction, the owner of the patent, TWI could make a fortune. Being a UK company, the technology won’t be ruthlessly exploited in the country of origin, but the benefits will be enjoyed in many other industrial nations, if past experience is anything to go by. British companies have a habit of inventing things and allowing others to exploit their commercial benefits to the full. For example Graphene, an extraordinary allotrope of carbon that is 100 times stronger than steel and conducts electricity highly efficiently, was isolated and characterised in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester, but today the majority of patents are held by non-UK companies.

How your contact lenses could talk to your phone

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation and Google Faculty Research Awards. Google has shown particular interest in the technology and was conducting its own research into smart contact lenses that can test diabetics' blood glucose levels two years ago. Using wireless chips and miniaturized glucose sensors embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material, the smart lenses were being designed to test blood sugar levels in the user's tears. When it announced the research in 2014, Google said its scientists were experimenting with using LED lights in the lenses to alert users if their glucose levels were off. The UW research could solve the communications problem for many devices, including sensors and credit card, as well as contact lenses.

Quote for the day:

"Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises" -- Demosthenes