TechEye |  |
- Acer rules out takeover
- Wearable market sees Apple soar
- Block Tor says Big Blue
- Panasonic stops making lithium ion batteries
- Emails are going nowhere says Adobe
- UK hacker killed in drone strike
- Microsoft boasts of Windows 10 installs
- Symantec will save us from the internet of things
- Scientists create fish to swim in your blood stream
- Tablet shipments down again
| Posted: 27 Aug 2015 05:40 AM PDT
Acer has turned in indifferent financial results and just squeaked into profit in its last financial quarter. But, speaking to Taiwanese news service Digitimes, CEO Jason Chen said that while demand was weaker this year because of high stock levels and currency fluctuations, Acer is in a healthier position than the four other biggest PC players. Chen also told the wire that the strength of the US dollar was causing particular concern in markets including Latin America, Canada and South East Asia. The founder of Acer, Stan Shih, said that if the company was the target of a hostile takeover, the would be buyer would have to pay a high price and would only buy a shell of a company because senior executives would just walk out.        |
| Wearable market sees Apple soar Posted: 27 Aug 2015 05:24 AM PDT
The leader in the market is Fitbit, but that company shipped 4.4 million units in Q2 while Apple managed to ship 3.6 million units. Volumes for the second quarter amounted to 18.1 million units, up 223.2 percent from the same quarter last year. Analyst Ramon Llamas at IDC said that Apple's arrival in the market drove total volumes higher and its rise from nowhere will cause other vendors to look again at their products. "Fairly or not, Apple will become the stick against which other wearables are measured, and competing vendors need to stay current or ahead of Apple," he said. He also predicts Apple may well launch smart glasses or even "hearables". The top five vendors are now Fitbit, Apple, Xiaomi, Garmin and Samsung with market shares of 24.3%, 19.9%, 17.1%, 3.9%, 3.3% respectively. "Others" have 31.5 percent of the total market.     |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2015 01:24 AM PDT
The Tor anonymisation network is increasingly used as the point of origin of attacks on public- and private-sector organisations, the report said. The Threat Intelligence report noted increases in SQL injection and distributed denial-of-service attacks and of "ransomware" incidents that encrypt data belonging to an individual or an organisation, and then charge a fee to decrypt it. The network is used for criminal purposes, such as operating contraband websites, and it is increasingly being used by attackers to hide their identities as they scan for vulnerabilities or carry out attacks, IBM said. "The design of routing obfuscation in the Tor network provides illicit actors with additional protection for their anonymity. It can also obscure the physical location from which attacks originate, and it allows attackers to make the attack appear to originate from a specific geography." IBM said there had been a "steady increase" over the past few years in attacks originating from Tor exit nodes, with attackers increasingly using Tor to disguise botnet traffic. "Spikes in Tor traffic can be directly tied to the activities of malicious botnets that either reside within the Tor network or use the Tor network as transport for their traffic," IBM said in the report. The US was the top geography of origin for Tor-based attacks, followed by the Netherlands and Romania, but this spread reflects the prevalence of Tor exit nodes rather than the actual location of attackers, according to the study. Companies have "little choice" but to block Tor-based communications, IBM said. IBM added that SQL injection attacks were increasing due to the growing use of simplified attack tools such as Havij, which was originally developed for security researchers. The report also found a speedy development in ransomware, including the appearance of "ransomware as a service" and highly specialised attacks, such as those that target the local files of popular online games. "We are observing the start of a prolonged battle with ransomware, as ransomware attacks diversify from simple scams to more elaborate ones that target high-value communities or businesses," IBM stated. A single ransomware tool, CryptoWall, has made attackers about $18 million (£11 million), according to FBI figures cited in the report.     |
| Panasonic stops making lithium ion batteries Posted: 27 Aug 2015 01:23 AM PDT
The 15-year-old plant produces batteries for not-so-smart mobile phones and digital cameras, both of which have been out evolved by smartphones. Panasonic spokeswoman Yayoi Watanabe said the global market for these products has been shrinking. Employees were informed of the closure in late July and the move has nothing to do with the Chinese stock market crash. Finland’s Nokia, which sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014, was the main customer of the plant. Panasonic took over the plant from Sanyo Electric, a leading maker of lithium ion batteries and solar panels which it acquired in 2010. The deal didn't bring in much growth due to the emergence of South Korean manufacturers, analysts say, and the Japanese firm has since sold off a lot of former Sanyo operations. In June, it said the company said it would invest $499.83 million in the fiscal year through March in its automotive business, including making lithium ion batteries for Tesla. Panasonic is due to shoulder 30 to 40 percent of the cost of Tesla’s $5 billion Gigafactory plant in Nevada, a key facility in the automaker’s plans to increase sales.     |
| Emails are going nowhere says Adobe Posted: 27 Aug 2015 01:22 AM PDT
The Adobe poll showed that email is the top communications tool at work and will grow in importance over the next five years. In the online survey, comprising 400 US white collar, adult workers, nearly half of the respondents said they think their use of emails for work will increase in coming years. Nineteen percent said it will go up substantially. More than 90 percent of the workers admitted they checked personal emails at work and 87 percent looked at business emails outside of working hours. Adobe's Kristin Naragon said that email is and will remain a cornerstone of the workplace culture and lots of companies are trying to break into the market with productivity tools. Those polled estimated they spend 6.3 hours a day checking emails, with 3.2 hours devoted to work emails and 3.1 hours to personal messages. Naragon people monitor emails around the clock, in socially unacceptable settings and during potentially dangerous times. Nearly 80 percent said they look at emails before going into the office and 30 percent said they checked their inbox while still in bed in the morning. Half of the respondents also monitored emails during their vacations. The numbers were even higher for 18-34 year olds, with 45 percent opening emails upon waking up. More than a quarter of millennials also admitted checking emails while driving. But she added that people are aware of their addiction and have tried to regain a better life balance. Forty percent said they had tried a self-imposed email detox, of which 87 percent lasted an average of five days. More than 40 percent of workers also said they would prefer to get fewer emails.     |
| UK hacker killed in drone strike Posted: 27 Aug 2015 01:21 AM PDT
Junaid Hussain from Birmingham was a key operator for the Islamic death cult and had targeted new recruits for the organisation. The 21-year-old was said last month to have been number three on the Pentagon’s “kill list” of IS targets and is thought to have fled Britain to travel to Syria in 2013. A strike specifically targeted Hussain while he was travelling in a vehicle in Syria, sources were said to have told CNN. Sky News contacted Hussain and his jihadi wife using anonymous online messaging services. The pair sent detailed guidebooks, and suggested that the reporters form gangs and to create a British Islamic State over a long period. He allegedly told the hack: “It will be big. We will hit the kuffar (unbelievers) hard InshAllah. Hit their soldiers in their own land. InshAllah. Soldiers that served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be present. Jump in the crowd and detonate the bomb. “They think they can kill Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan then come back to the UK and be safe. We’ll hit them hard InshAllah.” He had some form on the British hacker scene and was a member of TeaMpOisoN, a group which claimed responsibility for 1,400 hacks. In 2012 he was jailed for six months after making hoax calls to a counter-terror hotline. He also admitted publishing Tony Blair’s address book a year earlier.     |
| Microsoft boasts of Windows 10 installs Posted: 26 Aug 2015 08:39 AM PDT
In his blog, he said that Windows 10 is running in 192 countries across the world. Even ancient devices from remote times – 2007 – have been upgraded to Windows 10, he said. We don't know what Windows 10's personal assistant Cortana is like, but Mehdi claims it's told over half a million jokes since launch. Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen six times more app downloads per device than Windows 8 – we have no problem believing that. Microsoft introduced a free upgrade for people with Windows 8 and Windows 7 machines. Windows 10 is yet unproved, and most pundits agree Windows 8 was a shocker. Windows 7 is regarded as stable but there's no doubt large enterprises will take a long hard look at Windows 10 before going the whole hog.     |
| Symantec will save us from the internet of things Posted: 26 Aug 2015 06:58 AM PDT
Symantec believes it has the answer to these problems. It estimates that IoT deviees will number 25 billion by 2020 and has now introduced embedded critical system protection. This, it said, protects IoT devices from zero day attacks and will protect your TVs, your cars, your lights and your washing machines from being hacked. The company said it has set up links with vendors in the automotive, industrial control and semiconductor industries in a bid to get agreement about the risks. Symantec signed a deal with Wincor Nixdorf to protect banks – ATMs – and the retail industry, and will work with semi companies including Texas Instruments to protect hardware things. But while Symantec may propose, it may not have the power to dispose because the whole world+dog of vendors wants a share in the internet of things and currently there is a grievous lack of standardisation.     |
| Scientists create fish to swim in your blood stream Posted: 26 Aug 2015 06:43 AM PDT
The researchers believe that the "microfish" will open the way to smart microrobots that can be used for detoxification, sensing and drug delivery. The fish are powered by hydrogen peroxide and magnetism and so far existing microfish are limited by their designs. The team built microfish that include functional nanoparticles into the bodies of the robots which react with hydrogen peroxide to propel them forwards, while in their heads are iron oxide nanoparticles, which can be steered by magnets. Wei Zhu, a nanoengineering PhD student at UC San Diego, said the microfish are smaller than the width of a human hair. "With this method, we can easily integrate different functions inside these tiny robotic swimmers for a broad spectrum of applications," Zhu said. The researchers believe that medicines could be encapsulated inside the robots to deliver drugs directly to regions of the body. The researchers use a fast high res 3D printing technology which allows them to print arrays of hundreds of microfish 120 microns long and 30 microns thick in seconds.     |
| Posted: 26 Aug 2015 06:26 AM PDT
But the bright news for vendors is that so-called 2-in-1 devices will grow by 85.5 percent this year. 2-in-1 devices are essentially notebooks with detachable screens that can be used as tablets. IDC said the expected decline of eight percent is notable because earlier data it released suggested the market would only fall by 3.8 percent. The latest figures estimate 212 million regular tablets will ship. Barriers to 2-in-1 machines were that they were pricey, the designs weren't very nice, and no one wanted Windows 8, which was installed on most of the machines available. But now there are more vendors in the game including vendors using Android. It's also anticipated that the introduction a machine by Apple later this year will increase demand. IDC analyst Philippe Bouchard believes that IT departments are now evaluating Windows 10 and will migrate their notebook and tablet installed base towards 2-in-1s.     |
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