The arrival of cloud services upended formal procurement processes, allowing users to purchase technology access via credit cards. The question is, how pervasive are more informal cloud purchases? At last, we have data on this, courtesy of Mike Maney at Linode/Akamai. A survey of 458 development professionals, managers, and senior leaders across 20 industries, commissioned by Linode/Akamai, shows growing interest in alternative cloud payment methods – especially among smaller companies....

The vulnerabilities in IoT devices that use the ThroughTek Kalay network have been disclosed by cybersecurity company Mandiant in coordination with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and ThroughTek. It’s tracked as CVE-2021-28372 and carries a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 9.6 – classifying it as a critical vulnerability. Upgrading to the latest version of the Kalay protocol (3.1.10) is highly recommended to protect devices and networks from attacks....

The Apple AirPods Pro needs no introduction. Take a pause at any urban city and you’ll see these white earpieces resting on pedestrians left and right. With active noise-cancellation, superb audio quality that hits the right notes in the lows, mids, and highs, and seamless integration with iPhones, there’s no surprise that the two-year-old AirPods Pro still sits atop ZDNet’s best wireless earbuds of 2021 list. Still not convinced? How about an $80 discount that brings the original $249 price tag of the AirPods down to a mere $169?...

Love is in the air Seasonally themed online scams are not uncommon. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas are notorious for ramping up cyber criminals’ efforts to lure people with money to spend or romantics with a soft heart into their online traps. Valentine’s Day especially makes people more gullible than usual. Cyber-related Valentine scams range from email phishing attacks, romance scams, malicious malware, to spoofing websites. Last year, an email campaign reportedly spread ransomware around Valentine’s Day....

Steep Increase in Cyberattacks Phishing incidents and ransomware attacks have been on the rise since mid-2019. Sadly, healthcare departments and medical facilities are not being spared. Actually, the opposite is more likely to be true in times of a crisis, like with the coronavirus pandemic. In the event of a ransomware attack, for example, hospitals are more likely to pay a higher ransom due to the crisis. Also, overstretched staff may potentially have their guards down, thus being more likely to, for example, fall victim to phishing attacks....

Surfshark VPN is one of the top VPN options for its protection features and its price. Normally, you can get the 24-month deal for $59.76, or just $2.21 per month, which includes two months free, but right now, you can get three months free, making it an even greater value for the money. You can read our review of Surfshark VPN for more information. Along with these features, Surfshark lets you encrypt your internet activity so no one can track or steal your data, hide your location by changing your IP address, block ads and malware, keep internet searches private to prevent targeted ads, and more....

I understand your frustration. Apple has captured so many American minds that it feels unfair, unjust, and borderline unkind. Elon Musk would love to have that much support. Yet you’re letting your emotions get the better of you, Samsung. You really are. So as 2023 casts its shadow upon us, I wanted to give you a little advice. It’s free, just like the tablets, buds, and watches you’ve been giving away at Verizon....

Today’s deep learning forms of AI are proliferating uses of ordinary words that can be potentially deeply misleading. That includes suggesting that the machine is actually doing something that a person does, such as thinking, reasoning, knowing, seeing, wondering. The latest example is a new program from DeepMind, the AI unit of Google based in London. DeepMind researchers on Thursday unveiled what they call PonderNet, a program that can make a choice about whether to explore possibilities for a problem or to give up....

While the shortage will continue, it will be less severe, Deloitte says in its Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) 2022 Predictions report. The shortage is also driving fresh investment in the industry, as demand continues to grow. Deloitte predicts that venture capital (VC) firms globally will invest more than US$6 billion in semiconductor companies in 2022. That’s more than 3x larger than VC investment in semiconductors every year between 2000 and 2016....

The DoJ said that Bitcoin was seized from James Zhong who pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012 when he unlawfully obtained over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace. Zhong pled guilty on Friday, November 4. The DoJ revealed it had seized 50,676.17851897 Bitcoin from devices at Zhong’s home in November 2021, at which point the cache was valued at $3.36 billion. Today, thanks to falling prices, it’s worth just under $1 billion....

“Technology professionals are now accountable for bringing personalization and automation into their organizations’ customer experience solutions,” says Venu Gooty, senior vice president of digital strategy and transformation at Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS). However, corporate inertia tends to stand in the way. “It isn’t that developers, research and development, or IT managers aren’t interested in and aligned with customer experience,” says Jonathan Moran, head of MarTech solutions marketing at SAS Institute....

But as anyone who works remotely will know, extended periods of working in solitude can carry some undesirable side-effects, including loneliness, productivity hurdles, and a lack of visibility for career development. The impact of remote working on software developers is the subject of a new report of over 1,000 engineers by software platform Terminal. SEE: New year, new job: The tech resignations are coming, so get ready The 2022 State of Remote Engineering Report aimed to capture sentiments of software developers across a range of issues impacting the profession, including remote working, burnout and productivity, compensation and pay equity....

Cybersecurity researchers at Fortinet have spotted what’s described as a “peculiar-looking Excel spreadsheet” that purports to contain information about NFTs – but the real purpose of the file is to aid the delivery of BitRAT malware. BitRAT is a remote access trojan (RAT) that first emerged for sale in underground forums in August 2020. What makes it notable is it can bypass User Account Control (UAC), a Windows feature that helps to prevent unauthorised changes to the operating system....

The committee in 2019 scrutinised a report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) which pointed out a number of security issues concerning the Australian Digital Health Agency’s (ADHA) My Health Record implementation that otherwise widely gave ADHA the tick as “largely effective”. In a response [PDF] to the committee, ADHA provided an update to its ANAO My Health Record Performance Audit Implementation Plan, which was developed in February 2020....

I disentangled my data and passwords out of the browser. I tried a whole bunch of other browsers. I learned and relearned a whole bunch of new muscle memory movements. It was hard. But it was worth it. Bye-bye, Chrome: 10 steps to help you switch to Microsoft’s new Edge browser I knew that Google Chrome was one of the worst browsers I could be running in terms of performance and power/resource consumption, and yet I kept on using it for years....

With Scout, there’s probably an integration available for the proprietary equipment it lacks – and this is by design. According to Daniel Roberts, CEO and founder of Scout, the DIY market is moving from the early-adopter, more tech-savvy population to the masses. And even though major players are technically competing against each other on some level, Roberts says they’re better positioned for the consumer if they work together. “At the end of the day, we want to provide that core security experience, and if there’s anything – whether it be a voice or video product to augment or enhance that – we want to make that available,” said Roberts....

Like most providers, though, the company doesn’t offer service in all areas of the country. Even in the states where service is advertised, not all cities have coverage. And even in the cities that make the service list, some addresses don’t offer service. But if you contact customer support, a technician can run a test to tell you what’s available in your area in a matter of minutes. Overall, EarthLink looks to be a decent ISP option, depending on where you live and what types of speed you’re looking for....

The report sent Elastic shares up 1% in late trading. Elastic’s total revenue in the quarter rose 43%, year over year, to $223.9 million, yielding a net loss of 12 cents a share, excluding some costs. Analysts had been modeling a revenue of $209.71 million and a 20-cent net loss per share. Total cloud revenue was $80.4 million for the quarter, an increase of 79% year-over-year. Total subscription customer count was over 17,900, according to Elastic....

But for those who want to lower the barrier of entry for Arch Linux, there are options, one of which is EndeavorOS. This version of Arch Linux strives to be accessible and usable to anyone, regardless of skill level. And although EndeavorOS isn’t nearly as user-friendly as the likes of Ubuntu and Linux Mint, it is at least considerably easier to install than pure Arch Linux. And the inclusion of a handy Welcome app makes getting up to speed with EndeavorOS a fairly painless process....