Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Is “Do the right thing” the same as “Don’t be evil?” I’m not sure!

Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Becomes Alphabet’s ‘Do the Right Thing’

Wall Street Journal Tech – By: Alistair Barr – “‘Don’t be evil’ is so 2004.

Alphabet Inc. posted a new code of conduct for its employees Friday, after Google completed its transformation into a holding company. There were few substantive changes in more than 20 documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Alphabet code of conduct, posted on its website, is among them.

Google’s code of conduct, of course, is best-known for its first line, which was also included in Google’s 2004 filing for its initial public offering: ‘Don’t be evil.’

Alphabet’s code doesn’t include that phrase. Instead, it says employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries ‘should do the right thing – follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.’

‘Don’t be evil’ marked Google’s aspiration to be a different company. But the phrase also has been held up by critics who say Google has not always lived up to it.

Google’s code of conduct is much longer than Alphabet’s. It includes idiosyncracies about drinking alcohol at work (OK but not too much) and taking pets to the office (dogs are cool but cats are discouraged).

The Alphabet code sticks to the basics: avoid conflicts of interest, maintain integrity and obey the law.

To be sure, the vast majority of Alphabet employees will still be Google employees, part of the core search-and-advertising unit that is the new holding company’s biggest division. Those workers are still covered by Google’s code of conduct and the ‘Don’t be evil’ motto.

However, the change does show how the re-organization could let new businesses develop their own cultures, separate from Google.

Who knows, maybe Nest employees prefer cats?

‘Individual Alphabet companies may of course have their own codes to ensure they continue to promote compliance and great values,’ a Google spokesman said. ‘But if they start bringing cats to work, there’s gonna be trouble with a capital T.’

Let’s just hope the self-driving car group doesn’t stray too far from the ‘Don’t be evil’ creed.”

And, since we are talking about Zulip in our earlier post… here you go! Zulip for you!

Zulip – Open Source Texting

“This year’s Dropbox Hack Week saw some incredible projects take shape – from the talented team that visited Baltimore to research food deserts, to a project to recreate the fictional Pied Piper algorithm from HBO’s Silicon Valley. One of the most special elements of Hack Week, though, is that often times we’re able to share these exciting projects openly with our users and our community.

At Dropbox, we love and depend on numerous excellent open source projects, and we consider contributing back to the open source community to be vitally important. Popular open source projects that Dropbox has released include the zxcvbn password strength estimator, the Djinni cross-language bridging library, the Hackpad codebase, and the Pyston JIT for Python.

During this year’s Hack Week, we reassembled the original team from Zulip (a group chat application optimized for software development teams that was acquired by Dropbox in 2014) to tackle open sourcing Zulip on an ambitious timeline. Today, on behalf of the Zulip team, I’m very excited to announce that we have released Zulip as open source software!

We took on this project during Hack Week in order to enable Zulip’s users to enjoy and improve a product they love. Zulip’s users are passionate about the product, and are eager to make their own improvements, and we’re excited to be able to offer them that opportunity. In particular, the Recurse Center has announced plans to work on the Zulip open source project.

To make Zulip maximally useful to the world, we have released it under the Apache license, and we’ve released everything, including the server, Android and iOS mobile apps, desktop apps for Mac, Linux and Windows, and the complete Puppet configuration needed to run the Zulip server in production.

The world of open source chat has for a long been dominated by IRC and XMPP, both of which are very old and haven’t advanced materially in the last decade. In comparison, Zulip starts with many useful features and integrations expected by software development teams today and has a well-engineered, maintainable codebase for those that are missing. We’re very excited to see what people build on top of Zulip.”

Gotta love them supporting Open Source.

Dropbox releases its chat app Zulip under an open-source license

TNW News – By: Jackie Dove – “Dropbox has released its recently acquired chat app, Zulip under an open-source Apache license.

According to a blog post by Zulip co-founder Tim Abbott announcing the move, Dropbox has released everything, including the server, Android and iOS mobile apps, desktop apps for Mac, Linux and Windows, and the Puppet configuration necessary for running the Zulip server in production.

Abbott had this to say about the overall genre:

The world of open source chat has for a long been dominated by IRC and XMPP, both of which are very old and haven’t advanced materially in the last decade. In comparison, Zulip starts with many useful features and integrations expected by software development teams today and has a well-engineered, maintainable codebase for those that are missing. We’re very excited to see what people build on top of Zulip.

The threaded chat app’s client and server code is now available on GitHub, and you can download clients for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android on Zulip’s site. The Zulip site also contains various hints on how to get started with building integrations and other enhancements for the app.

Dropbox has released the zxcvbn password strength estimator, the Djinni cross-language bridging library, the Hackpad codebase, and the Pyston JIT for Python as open source, as well.”

And yet, nobody needs it like they do!

Sprint Drops Out of Spectrum Auction

PC Magazine – By: Chloe Albanesius – “Sprint has decided not to participate in the FCC’s big spectrum auction next year.

‘Sprint’s focus and overarching imperative must be on improving its network and market position in the immediate term so we can remain a powerful force in fostering competition, consumer benefits and innovation in the wireless broadband world,” Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement. “Sprint has the spectrum it needs to deploy its network architecture of the future.”

The auction will allow broadcasters to sell their unused spectrum to mobile carriers, and get a cut of the purchase price. Already moved from 2014 to 2015, a legal challenge last fall pushed the event into 2016.

Spectrum allocation might seem like a boring topic, but with more and more people picking up bandwidth-intensive gadgets, carriers need spectrum to support them. Without it, you could see a lot of buffering and dropped connections.

One of the big concerns from smaller carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile going into this auction, though, was whether their larger rivals, Verizon and AT&T, would use their sizable war chests to snap up all the desirable spectrum. Last year, there were reports that Sprint and T-Mobile would pool their assets and jointly bid on spectrum (but only if their now-failed merger bid was still in play). The FCC put the smackdown on that, and T-Mobile independently pushed for auction limits. The agency agreed to some restrictions—it set aside 30 megahertz of spectrum per market for smaller companies—but did not give T-Mobile everything it wanted.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted yesterday that Sprint is ‘crazy to sit out this historic auction.” T-Mobile ‘is going to go hard in this low-band spectrum auction and put that spectrum to good use for our customers.”

The last major spectrum auction of this nature was in 2008, when AT&T and Verizon were the big winners. Verizon has said it does not need any more huge blocks of spectrum, though recent reports suggest the company is weighing a lease of spectrum held by Dish.”

It does sound like a cool feature.

3D Touch Is Apple’s New Secret Weapon

Techcrunch – By: John Biggs – “I’m here to praise Apple again. Sorry. I have to do it. It’s not in my contract nor am I paid to do it – imagine if we were! We’d be rich! – but after manhandling the iPhone 6S Plus it’s abundantly clear that Apple has discovered another breakthrough. And they are surprisingly nonchalant about it.

Apple’s first interface breakthrough happened when it unleashed real multitouch on the world. Until the original iPhone, screens reacted to one single point and often required a stylus to operate. There were exceptions, but even after the iPhone launched competitors couldn’t keep up and had to release capacitive screen phones until they could join in the multi-touch game.

This next interface trick is far more subtle. By sensing pressure applied on the surface of the Apple Watch, the new MacBook trackpad, and the new iPhones, Apple has added a new layer to the touchscreen experience. In short, they have gone deep, allowing us to move past surfaces and into more dynamic menu systems and even UI tactics. As it stands 3D touch is pretty boring right now but imagine 3D touching into an MRI scan or anatomy textbook. Imagine 3D touching through the cosmos. Imagine 3D touching in games where you focus with a little pressure. There is a clear reason Apple abandoned the moniker of ‘Force Touch:’ what their experience offers has less to do with force and a lot more to do with a three dimensional experience.

3D Touch isn’t an incremental update. It is a real tool and you can be sure that, by CES time, manufacturers from Samsung to Xaomi will be offering stuff called Push Touch, Deep Finger, and Insert UI for their phones. It is inevitable. And Apple had it first.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate what competitors have brought to the table. Samsung’s Edge series is one of the most compelling and amazing screen technologies to reach the market in a long time and many manufacturers are doing things with materials and design that is to be commended. But non of them have released anything that intrinsically changes how we, as humans, interact with the slabs of glass and metal we hold in our pockets at all times. That’s a unique thing.

I’m not saying Force Touch has changed the world. What it has done is tweak the world in a very meaningful way. Apple’s products are starting to hit more senses. Thanks to haptics the iPhone and the Apple Watch are able to tap into our nervous system. In that case, Apple nuzzles us, offering a feather flick of interaction. Interestingly, I’m already feeling ‘phantom taps’ even when I wear a mechanical watch, a sign that old Pavlov was right.

With 3D Touch, The Apple devices ask us to touch them with a little more intent, to move past the glass and into something deeper behind the surface. This is an important change in how we use our phones and one sure to be successful. Of all of the other improvements in these new phones, 3D Touch is the most compelling and it is the one so subtle that Apple itself didn’t really talk it up during the keynote or briefings. ‘By the way,’ they seemed to say. ‘You can now stick your finger through the phone. No big deal.’

Apple hasn’t dented the universe in a while but they have tapped it with lots of force. They’ll ding it eventually, but until then we can all enjoy the odd ‘Tick’ of this latest feature.”

I may have found my new phone!

Nexus 6P Presentation Leak Includes More Images, Confirms Metal Body, Gorilla Glass 4, And 3450mAh Battery

Android Police – By: Michael Crider – “The leaks continue to flow out of Mountain View. The latest information on Huawei’s Nexus 6P, the larger and presumably more expensive of the two Nexus devices Google is expected to announce next week, comes from a public image gallery posted to Imgur. It’s a series of slides that appear to be designed for retail employees to use as an information and promotional tool. The slides include a set of hardware specifications and new photos.

By the way, that metal body means that the phone probably doesn’t feature wireless charging, but I’d be amazed if Qualcomm’s quick charging wasn’t included.

Slides dedicated to the camera and fingerprint sensor don’t reveal much that we didn’t already know – the marketing text says the camera ‘allows in more light,’ which probably just means a low F-stop value. The first slide in the deck includes a mention of Gorilla Glass 4, the latest design of enhanced tempered glass from Corning.

Other slides include more information on the benefits of Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Now on Tap, which most of you should be familiar with, and the last slide confirms that the Nexus 6P will be available in 32, 64, and 128GB capacities. Based on the Aluminium, Graphite, Frost, and Gold color choices, it looks like the body is made of aluminum (which is hardly surprising). And apparently that Gold color will only be available in Japan, at least during the initial launch of the phone. Google has a habit of releasing new colors late into a Nexus phone life cycle, so take that for what it’s worth.

One last tidbit: one of the slides includes a slightly angled photo of the rear of the Nexus 6P, which shows that the camera ‘bump’ so commonly derided in previous leaks may be less noticeable than we had hitherto thought. It’s still there, certainly, but it’s not quite as pronounced as it looked in other renders and leaked photos.

There’s still a few things we haven’t been able to confirm: the price, still unmentioned, and the display panel type, though IPS-LCD seems most likely. Google will announce the Huawei Nexus 6P, along with the LG Nexus 5X (and probably a few other things), in San Francisco on September 29th.”

Having trouble with Skype? Microsoft is aware and working on the issue

Windows Central – By: Rich Edmonds – “Skype appears to be having trouble staying online and connecting humans worldwide. We’ve received numerous reports from readers who have been unable to access Microsoft’s communication platform. We’ve been able to confirm that Skype is indeed down, but luckily Microsoft appears to be aware of the issue and is actively working on it.

‘Some of you may experience problems with Skype presence and may not see online. We have detected an issue with the status settings of Skype. Affected users will not be able to change their status, their contacts will all show as offline and they will be unable to start Skype calls to them.’

Interestingly, the web version of Skype still works, so if you’re in desperate need to communicate with a contact, you could try your luck on the web client. Also, Microsoft states that instant messages are still being delivered as usual, and you should be able to make calls and send messages on the web. We’ll update this article once services are back up and running.

Update: After several hours of downtime, Microsoft is now restoring Skype access after figuring out what went wrong:

We have identified the network issue which prevented users from logging in and using Skype today. We’re in the process of reconnecting our users, and focused on restoring full service. The issue did not affect Skype for Business users.’

Update 2: While a number of Skype users have indeed had their service restored, it looks like there are still reports of users who cannot sign into Skype.”

An audio-only Chromecast is coming to enable your speakers!

Exclusive: Chromecast Audio, codenamed ‘Hendrix,’ is a separate device & made to WiFi-enable your speakers

9to5Google – By: Stephen Hall – “We told you earlier today about the 2nd generation Chromecast, scheduled to be launched later this month. We also mentioned that Google is planning to launch something called ‘Chromecast Audio,’ although details were unclear until now. Thanks to several sources familiar with Google’s plans, 9to5Google has learned that Chromecast Audio is indeed a second Chromecast device targeted specifically at WiFi-enabling the speakers in your home, launching alongside the 2nd generation device…

Not to be confused with Google Cast for Audio, which is Google’s platform for making speakers and other audio hardware directly compatible with the Chromecast, ‘Chromecast Audio’ is a second Chromecast scheduled to be made official at Google’s September 29th event alongside many other announcements.

Sources have also informed us that the device goes by the codename ‘Hendrix,’ which makes sense given it being audio and music-focused.

As seen in the image we published earlier today, this device can plug directly into any speaker by way of 3.5 mm headphone cable, and it appears Google might plan to include one with the device.

This device will, according to the documents and sources, have multi-room support, which could mean that several devices could power multiple speakers outputting the same audio at the same time. Additionally, the device is said to have the ability to mirror the audio coming from your Chrome browser or an Android phone. Google brags that the device will feature ‘high-quality’ audio, and that Spotify will indeed support it.”

Oooohh, you know I love this!

Whoa. Microsoft Is Using Linux to Run Its Cloud

Wired – By: Klint Finley – “Microsoft has admitted to something that used to be unthinkable: using Linux to run some of its own operations.

In a blog post on Thursday, Microsoft Azure networking principal architect Kamala Subramaniam explained how the company developed a new software system, dubbed Azure Cloud Switch, for running the networking gear that Microsoft’s cloud service depends on.

Network switches typically come with their own software baked right into the product. The problem Microsoft faced, according to Subramaniam, was integrating the software that ships with those switches with the wide variety of software it uses to run its Azure cloud service. So Microsoft had to build its own switch software—and it turned to Linux to do just that.

While the move to Linux is certainly a departure for Microsoft, which used to be quite hostile to open source, it’s not a huge surprise. Microsoft has cozied up to the open source community in recent years. It now offers Linux as an option for Azure customers, helped port major open source projects like Hadoop and Node.js to Windows, and even open sourced its own .NET development platform last year.

A Little More Daylight

This also isn’t the first time that Microsoft has used open source operating systems internally. When the company acquired Hotmail in 1997, the web-based email service ran on the Unix descendant FreeBSD and did so for many years after the acquisition. But Microsoft’s decision to use Linux for a new internal project is unusual, especially considering the fact that Microsoft makes a slimmed down version of Windows that can be used to run gadgets like networking switches.

Microsoft isn’t the first tech giant to decide it needs its own software for its networking gear. Facebook and Google have been rolling their own networking software for years. That need for custom networking software among large-scale web companies led to the creation of OpenDaylight, an open source networking platform backed by Cisco, Microsoft and others.

Although there’s no mention in Subramaniam’s blog post of OpenDaylight, Microsoft is using Linux for Azure Cloud Switch for the same reason that any company would use open source: by building on open source software, Microsoft can take advantage of improvements to the code made by other companies with similar problems.

‘We’re talking about ACS publicly as we believe this approach of disaggregating the switch software from the switch hardware will continue to be a growing trend in the networking industry, and we would like to contribute our insights and experiences of this journey starting here,’ Subramaniam wrote.

That’s what open source is all about.”

Yes, there were Apple announcements this past week. Some good, some just OK, but here is a guy that sees the good and the bad!

Why Apple’s announcements are both dream and nightmare

Venture Beat – By: Robert McCarthy – “Like everyone, I was wide-eyed and paying close attention to Apple’s announcement Wednesday; not only to see what was going to be unveiled, but to discern what impact those announcements would have on the industry. The event left me both excited and terrified – some announcements are what dreams are made of, while others might make up someone’s worst nightmare – especially for those in IT and Information Security.

First … the stuff of dreams

The announcement of iOS9 a few months ago foreshadowed the inevitable release of ‘bigger, better, faster’ hardware and devices designed to make use of the new features within the OS. Wednesday’s event was no different, with the announcement of an impressive new array of devices for home, mobile, and the office designed to delight and dazzle the average consumer, and (hopefully) compel them to upgrade to the latest and greatest Apple offering.

One platform that really stood out to me – even as an avowed iPad pessimist – was the iPad Pro. To date, iPads in general have been nothing more than a toy for enterprises; they’ve lacked the horsepower, battery life, and productivity apps necessary to move the budget needle for most serious companies. But that may change with this latest offering. Featuring a class-leading processor in the A9X, a powerful graphics chip, smart energy conservation, and an elegant set of input mechanisms, this is a device I can see being used in a number of enterprise settings. For example, design and creative teams sketching wireframes, boardroom collaboration on spreadsheets and charts, and meaningful – not gimmicky – presentations anywhere. Until now, without the iOS9 capabilities for multi-app usage and lacking the horsepower to drive enterprise-class apps, the iPad had been relegated to personal note-taking in the enterprise and treated as a second-class device in the world of IT.

A few key elements to the power of this new iPad Pro: the 3D Touch, the Keyboard, and the Pencil. Since each of these will have hundreds of articles written about them, I will just point out the things about them that resonated with me.

The 3D Touch opens a new dimension (quite literally) in navigation. It enables applications to open up and display inner contents or provide contextual menus, and it provides much-needed efficiency to touch-based productivity apps.
The keyboard input, as commonplace as it is today with laptops, desktops, and even older iPads, was sorely lacking the ‘Apple finish’ until now. Its addition to the iPad Pro makes for a seamless, integrated, elegant experience.
The Pencil, which garnered a few laughs from the audience, actually demonstrates how serious Apple is about the enterprise. This input device could only be introduced with hardware like the iPad Pro to support it, as it tracks multiple input components like force, speed, and angle to accurately reflect the user’s desired actions. The fact is, whiteboards, paper, and even slate still exist in the enterprise because creativity of all sorts – from wireframes to logical architecture to roadmaps and product packaging – flows most naturally from a person’s brain through the tip of the pen; removing the speedbumps of clicks and taps and drags in all the drawing software means people can be more creative, more engaged, and more poised to layout and share their ideas using iPad Pro and Pencil than they ever have before with an iPad.

And now … the nightmares

As a security advisor, I am always concerned about data leakage, which can come in so many forms. Data is lost to poor database management, poor policies surrounding mail and apps management, and of course to malicious agents (such as bad apps and external hackers). Hot mics (as any politician can tell you) are the bane of a security person’s existence when trying to control the data, message, and information.

In the interest of keeping up with the competition, like Android’s Now, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri now comes in the form of an always-on, hands-free wakeup, called ‘Hey Siri.’ I can only hope that there are well-built device management policies surrounding this service to lock it down, containerize it, and secure the flow of the information – or iOS9 will be a non-starter for a number of sensitive enterprise industries.

I imagine there are also a number of mobile UX designers in panic mode following the announcement of 3D Touch. Their UX designs – as they stood on September 9 – will have to radically change in order to accommodate the demands of these new platforms and input methods. There will no doubt be a number of competitors with their own ‘z-axis’ implementation of UX in the coming year, so design won’t be relegated to ‘iOS9 only.’ Creative designers will have to think through the impact of new elements like ‘peek and pop,’ new navigation paradigms, and of anticipating demand for new input methods that test the boundaries of app design.

All in all, this was a much more positive set of announcements for enterprise mobility and productivity than I had expected from Apple this year. While there have been a number of strategic initiatives around partnerships with Cisco and IBM, I had expected this year’s announcements to focus much more on the consumer market – on cars, TVs, and selfies. Instead, they surprised everyone with their continued aggressive push into the enterprise, seeking to displace a number of incumbents who have stood too long in the supply chain delivering cookie-cutter, boring, and uncreative enterprise solutions because there was no alternative. But now there is.

Robert McCarthy is Tech Advisor at Mobiquity.”