BetaNews Staff

BMW, Intel and Mobileye team up to make self-driving vehicles

It seems that the recent tragedy in which a person was killed while riding an automated Tesla vehicle isn’t discouraging car makers from pursuing their dream of fully autonomous vehicles on our roads.

BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye have teamed up to bring fully autonomous vehicles to mass production within the next five years. That’s quite the triumvirate.

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Bitcoin is a 'safe haven' in a period of economical and political instability

Bitcoin’s transaction value has increased drastically over the past year, mostly because of both political and economic instability we’ve been witnessing in the past few years, according to a new Juniper Research report.

Total value of the cryptocurrency’s transactions is expected to hit $92 billion (£69.3bn) this year, up from less than $27 billion in 2015.

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BlackBerry readying three new Android smartphones

In what might be a last ditch effort to regain some of its former glory, BlackBerry is planning to release three new smartphones running Google’s Android OS.

Last year, the Canadian company launched its first smartphone running Android, the BlackBerry Priv. While it was well-received by critics for its implementation of Google’s OS, the smartphone with a slide-out keyboard was unable to sell well enough to turn the tide for BlackBerry, which has steadily declined since the release of Apple’s original iPhone.

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Video conferencing increases productivity

Video collaboration increases productivity and improves both business and personal relationships, according to video conferencing technology company Lifesize.

The company polled its users and says that 99.2 percent of respondents find video conferencing boosts relationships both in and out of the office. No word on how many people were polled, though.

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Oracle will pay HP $3 billion over Itanium server software

Cloud money

Oracle has been ordered to pay HP $3 billion after losing a lawsuit with the company regarding the software development for its Itanium servers.

During the lawsuit, HP claimed that Oracle had violated a contract by continuing to develop support software for its Itanium chip. The trial ran for one month in a California state court in San Jose ending with HP being granted the original amount it claimed at the beginning of the case.

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UK government websites will default to HTTPS

Starting October 1, all government digital services (GDS) websites will be required to use HTTPS encryption, according to new security guidelines.

All services will additionally have to publish a domain-based message authentication, reporting & conformance (DMARC) policy that will be applicable to their email systems.

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Office workers find printers more important than PCs

If you’d asked me what the most used item in the office is, I’d probably tell you the watercooler. But, according to new research, the most important one is the printer.

Yes, the printer is more important than the computer. Or the pen. Or the stapler.

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Apple iOS 10 playing catch-up with Android

Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 13 in San Francisco, where Tim Cook and his team announced a wide array of new features and functionality across Apple platforms, including a major update to iOS, the renaming of mac OS X to macOS (the new version will be named Sierra) and updates to watchOS, and tvOS were also announced.

After reading about it though, I can’t help but think that we already have a lot of the features talked about in a number of Android devices and personally feel that Apple is merely playing catch-up to Android. That said, I will leave you to make up your own mind.

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Most organizations don't have an IT security expert

With cyber attacks on the rise, organizations are facing pressure to beef up their security to avoid falling victim to such an attack. However, a recent IT security report from Spiceworks shows that 80 percent of organizations were affected by at least one security incident during 2015.

To compile its report, the company surveyed over 600 IT professionals from the US and UK. Shockingly, Spiceworks discovered that few organizations have either an in-house or third-party cyber security expert on call.

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UK's mobile networks have the highest speeds but lack 4G LTE coverage

The UK has the fastest mobile internet in the world, according to Akamai’s new State of the Internet report. The report found that during the first quarter of 2016, mobile users in the UK experienced average speeds of 27.9 Mbps. Of all the countries surveyed by Akamai, the UK has the highest average speeds.

The UK's speed is far higher than the rest of Europe by about 10 Mpbs. It is also significantly higher than the US which has a recorded average speed of only 5.1 Mbps when tested through Akamai’s platform.

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Box launches Shuttle service to speed up data migration

Box wants enterprises all over the world to migrate their data to the Box cloud, and it has now launched a new service to help them achieve that goal.

The service, named Box Shuttle, enables businesses the migration of millions of files in a secure and timely fashion. Announcing the new product, the company said early feedback was "extremely positive".

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Google's 60 Tbps undersea cable connecting US and Japan is live

Japan’s Internet is set for a large speed boost as Google’s 9,000km undersea Internet cable that connects the country to the United States is now officially up and running.

In 2014, the company announced that it would lay an undersea cable connecting the two countries that would have a 60 terabits per second capacity. Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, said the cable has a capacity that is "more than any active subsea cable" and is "10 million times faster than your cable modem".

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Cisco buys cloud security provider CloudLock

Cisco has announced that it will be acquiring the cloud-based security provider CloudLock for $293 million in cash and equity.

CloudLock makes use of application program interface (API) technology to allow enterprises to apply and monitor the security of documents and other content that is accessible via cloud-based applications. The service works with Office 365, Google Drive, Salesforce applications and thousands of other apps and programs.

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Let there be light: Why visibility is key to building an effective mobile policy

Business mobile devices

Consider this: Unrestricted use of Tinder may not pose a problem at a company where the majority of staff is over fifty, but if you work with millennials, you may need to swipe left and reject your current mobile policy. Don’t let your company be the next one to lose precious data and suffer the devastating cost of a data breach simply because you lacked visibility and control over how your investment in mobility is having an impact on the organization.

The mobile device is a distinctive technology that delivers tangible benefits in both personal and business settings. According to IDC’s U.S Mobile Worker Forecast, mobile workers will account for nearly three quarters (72.3 percent) of the total U.S. workforce -- or 105.4 million employees -- by 2020, creating an environment where workers expect to leverage mobile technology at work. As enterprise IT begins to more widely deploy mobile technologies in support of everyday business, mobile devices must increasingly meet corporate standards for security, compliance and acceptable use.

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Home alarms let users keep default credentials

German investigative journalists from the c’t magazine said many home security systems come with a huge vulnerability which can put every home using the system at risk.

The vulnerability, however, is nothing fancy in hacking terms -- it’s pretty obvious and straightforward, but frequently overlooked. You see, similar to Internet routers, these home security systems are configured through a browser, and many come with easily crackable passwords like "1234" or "admin1234".

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