Ray EstevezAug 11, 2015
A Deeper Look at the New Google
Google’s new structure has few historical precedents, in tech or outside it.
Before Apple’s Steve Jobs died in 2011, he told Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page that his company was trying to do too much. As Page later told the Financial Times, he replied, “If we just do the same things we did before and don’t do something new, it seems like a crime to me.” Yet Page also acknowledged that Jobs was right in one sense: he could manage only so many things before too many would get lost in the shuffle.
A Deeper Look at the New Google
Ray EstevezAug 10, 2015
Google Bids to Make its Sideshows into Main Attractions
Google’s rebirth as Alphabet is an attempt to prove the company’s “moonshots” can be as successful as its Internet business.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem determined to prove they gave the world more than a great advertising business.
Google Bids to Make its Sideshows into Main Attractions
Ray EstevezAug 7, 2015
A Security Scanner for Human Vulnerabilities
A tool designed to test key employees with benign phishing messages aims to reduce the risk of corporate data breaches.
Data breaches like the one that hit the Pentagon’s e-mail system this week often start when one person makes a simple mistake like opening a phishing message. But the computer security industry is mostly built on tools that probe, patch, or scrutinize software rather than human errors.
A Security Scanner for Human Vulnerabilities
Ray EstevezAug 5, 2015
Mainframe Computers That Handle Our Most Sensitive Data Are Open to Internet Attacks
Mainframe computers have handled our most precious data since the 1960s, but they’re being put online without adequate security.
They’re the machines that won’t die. In the 1960s many airlines, banks, and governments began processing sensitive transactions using giant mainframe computers—and their descendants are still in use. Now it turns out these living dinosaurs of computing also have a very modern vice: they overshare on the Internet.
Mainframe Computers That Handle Our Most Sensitive Data Are Open to Internet Attacks
Ray EstevezAug 4, 2015
Robo-Sabotage Is Surprisingly Common
The beating of hitchBot reflects widespread robot sabotage in many workplaces.
As you probably know by now, hitchBot—a device made of pool noodles, rubber gloves, a bucket, and the computer power needed to talk, smile, and tweet—was deliberately decapitated and dismembered this week, only 300 miles into its hitchhiking journey across the United States. HitchBot had successfully made similar journeys across the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada, relying on bemused strangers for transportation. The geek-o-sphere is up in arms, claiming that this violence reveals something special and awful about America, or at least Philadelphia.
Robo-Sabotage Is Surprisingly Common
Ray EstevezAug 3, 2015
Securing Today’s Data Against Tomorrow’s Quantum Computers
Quantum computers are still a distant prospect, but Microsoft researchers say we should strengthen online encryption against them now.
Call it an abundance of caution. A Microsoft research project has upgraded the encryption protocol that secures the Web to resist attacks from quantum computers—machines that are expected to have stupendous power but have never been built.
Securing Today’s Data Against Tomorrow’s Quantum Computers
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