November, 2017 - itbusinessdirect

LightStep emerges from stealth with a tool for application performance monitoring

November 14, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

LightStep, a company which has developed a new tool for application performance management, has emerged from stealth with a $29 million dollar war chest. The company, founded by ex-Google engineer Ben Sigelman, has developed a group of software tools to track the how well applications are working across enterprises. At Google, Sigelman was responsible for the creation and operation of Dapper, a distributed monitoring system that could analyze 2 billion transactions per second, according to a LightStep statement. Sigelman also was one of the developer behind the OpenTracing standard, part…

Saving the Rainforest with Old Cell Phones

November 13, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Rainforests have some of the most complicated soundscapes on the planet. In this dense noise of insects, primates, birds, and everything else that moves in the forest, how can you detect the sounds of illegal logging? The old cell phone you have sitting in your desk drawer may have the answer. How do you go about saving the rainforest with old cell phones? After a visit to the rainforests of Borneo, physicist and engineer Topher White was struck by the sounds of the forest. In particular, he noises he couldn’t…

Phishing Makes It Easy To Hijack Accounts

November 13, 2017 Staff Writer

Cyber-thieves grab almost 250,000 valid log-in names and passwords for Google accounts every week, suggests research. The study by Google and UC Berkeley looked at the ways email and other accounts get hijacked. It used 12 months of log-in and account data found on websites and criminal forums or which had been harvested by hacking tools. Google said the research helped secure accounts by showing how people fell victim to scammers and hackers. During the 12 months studying the underground markets, the researchers identified more than 788,000 credentials stolen via…

Eco-friendly bitcoin competitor Chia, Invented

November 13, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. Considering he invented the ubiquitous peer-to-peer file transfer protocol BitTorrent, you should take him seriously. Cohen has just started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Essentially, Chia will harness cheap and abundant unused storage space on hard drives to verify its blockchain. “The idea…

Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest billions

November 13, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

The long-anticipated SoftBank Group investment into Uber has been agreed upon, confirms a spokesperson. “We’ve entered into an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer on a potential investment. We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Uber’s long-term potential. Upon closing, it will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance.” Uber has not yet elaborated on plans, but we’ve been told that it includes a $1 billion investment in the company at the…

Reinvention of the alarm clock in the age of smartphones

November 13, 2017

The alarm clock has existed in a weird place since the advent of the smartphone — after all, why have a separate device on your nightstand for telling the time or waking you up in the morning when your phone already does that? That hasn’t stopped companies from trying to reinvent the alarm clock for the connected era, and Circa, a new Kickstarter project from Circa Labs, seems like one of the nicer attempts at the idea. Unlike some of the other smart alarm clocks out there, Circa doesn’t include…

Self-driving shuttle bus in crash on first day

November 9, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

A self-driving shuttle bus in Las Vegas was involved in a crash on its first day of service. The vehicle – carrying “several” passengers – was hit by a lorry driving at slow speed. Nobody was injured in the incident which city officials say was the fault of the human driver of the lorry. The man was subsequently given a ticket by police. The shuttle is the first of its kind to be used on public roads in the US. The collision comes a day after Waymo – owned by…

Aluminium foil increases your wireless speed

November 9, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Researchers at Dartmouth University have found that a 3D printed shape covered in aluminum foil can improve wireless range and increase Wi-Fi security. The project, which appeared on Eurekalert, involves placing a reflector on and around a Wi-Fi router’s antennae to shape the beam, increasing range and preventing it from passing through to unwanted spaces. “With a simple investment of about $35 and specifying coverage requirements, a wireless reflector can be custom-built to outperform antennae that cost thousands of dollars,” said Xia Zhou, a Dartmouth assistant professor. In their paper,…