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Intel Looking Into Atomic Energy
May 25, 2016 by admin
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Shortly after cancelling two generations of Atom mobile chips, Intel putting its weight behind future low-power mobile technologies with a new research collaboration with a French atomic energy lab.
Fundamental research leading towards faster wireless networks, secure low-power technologies for the Internet of Things, and even 3D displays will be the focus of Intel’s collaboration with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
Intel and the CEA already work together in the field of high-performance computing, and a new agreement signed Thursday will see Intel fund work at the CEA’s Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology (LETI) over the next five years, according to Rajeeb Hazra, vice president of Intel’s data center group.
The CEA was founded in 1945 to develop civil and military uses of nuclear power. Its work with Intel began soon after it ceased its atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons test programs, as it turned to computer modeling to continue its weapons research, CEA managing director Daniel Verwaerde said Thursday.
That effort continues, but the organization’s research interests today are more wide-ranging, encompassing materials science, climate, health, renewable energy, security and electronics.
These last two areas will be at the heart of the new research collaboration, which will see scientists at LETI exchanging information with those at Intel.
Both parties dodged questions about who will have the commercial rights to the fruits of their research, but each said it had protected its rights. The deal took a year to negotiate.
“It’s a balanced agreement,” said Stéphane Siebert, director of CEA Technology, the division of which LETI is a part.
Who owns what from the five-year research collaboration may become a thorny issue, for French taxpayers and Intel shareholders alike, as it will be many years before it becomes clear which technologies or patents are important.
Hazra emphasized the extent to which Intel is dependent on researchers outside the U.S. The company has over 50 laboratories in Europe, four of them specifically pursuing so-called exa-scale computing, systems capable of billions of billions of calculations per second.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/intel-look-to-atomic-energy-for-mobile-technologys-future.html
Xerox To Revamp Healthcare IT Business
Xerox Corp said it would overhaul its healthcare IT business and record a related impairment charge of about $145 million in the second quarter.
The company said it would end sales of its integrated eligibility system, a software system which can support operations in call centers and document imaging.
The healthcare business provides administrative and care management solutions to state Medicaid programs and government healthcare programs.
“Going forward, Xerox will focus on managing and completing the current Health Enterprise implementations, and will be highly selective in responding to new Medicaid Management Information System opportunities,” the company said on Friday.
The healthcare business contributes “$2 billion plus” to total revenue, a company spokeswoman said. The company reported total revenue of $19.54 billion for 2014.
“Basically, they are focusing their government healthcare business away from less profitable initiatives that they were pursuing. I see it as a positive,” Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross said.
“From a long-term stand point, it (Medicaid) is a profitable business,” Cross said.
Xerox, which has been shifting its focus to IT services from making printers and copiers, adjusted its earnings estimate for the quarter ended June to reflect the charge.
The company said it now expects earnings from continuing operations of 9-11 cents per share, below its prior guidance of 17-19 cents per share.
Shares of Xerox, which is expected to report second-quarter results on July 24, were up 1.6 percent at $10.79 in afternoon trading.
Jawbone Sues Fitbit
June 23, 2015 by admin
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Jawbone has filed another lawsuit against Fitbit in less than two weeks, alleging its activity tracking products infringe several of Jawbone’s patents.
The new suit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco by Jawbone parent company AliphCom, seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to block the sale of Fitbit devices such as the Flex, Charge and Surge bands.
Late last month, Jawbone filed another lawsuit, accusing Fitbit of poaching its employees and stealing trade secrets. Fitbit has said it has no knowledge of any such information in its possession.
In its latest complaint, Jawbone says it will also ask the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate Fitbit, which could potentially lead to an import ban on Fitbit products.
Jawbone says it has hundreds of patents granted or pending, and claims that Fitbit infringes several of them. One patent describes a “general health and wellness management method and apparatus for a wellness application using data from a data-capable band.”
Another patent covers a “system for detecting, monitoring, and reporting an individual’s physiological or contextual status.”
Fitbit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest suit.
The timing is bad for Fitbit, which is preparing to go public on the U.S. stock markets. It also faces intense competition from a number of rivals, which also include Garmin and Apple with its Apple Watch.
Both Jawbone and Fitbit make wearable bands and associated software that tracks people’s movement, exercise, sleep and heart rate.
Medical Data Becoming Valuable To Hackers
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The personal information stored in health care records fetches increasingly impressive sums on underground markets, making any company that stores such data a very attractive target for attackers.
“Hackers will go after anyone with health care information,” said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute, adding that in recent years hackers have increasingly set their sights on EHRs (electronic health records).
With medical data, “there’s a bunch of ways you can turn that into cash,” he said. For example, Social Security numbers and mailing addresses can be used to apply for credit cards or get around corporate antifraud measures.
This could explain why attackers have recently targeted U.S. health insurance providers. Last Tuesday, Premera Blue Cross disclosed that the personal details of 11 million customers had been exposed in a hack that was discovered in January. Last month, Anthem, another health insurance provider, said that 78.8 million customer and employee records were accessed in an attack.
Both attacks exposed similar data, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, member identification numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses. In the Premera breach, medical claims information was also accessed.
If the attackers try to monetize this information, the payout could prove lucrative.
Credentials that include Social Security numbers can sell for a couple of hundred dollars since the data’s lifetime is much longer compared to pilfered credit card numbers, said Matt Little, vice president of product development at PKWARE, an encryption software company with clients that include health care providers. Credit card numbers, which go for a few dollars, tend to work only for a handful of days after being reported stolen.
ARM Buys Offspark For IoT
ARM has snaffled up Dutch Internet of Things (IoT) company Offspark.
The move is designed to improve ARM’s security credentials for IoT offerings.
Offspark is the creator of PolarSSL, a widely used protocol for IoT security products, and ARM hopes that the combined companies can offer a one-stop shop for IoT developers.
Krisztian Flautner, ARM’s IoT manager, said: “PolarSSL technology is already deployed by the leading IoT players.
“The fact that those same companies also use ARM Cortex processor and software technologies means we are now able to provide a complete bedrock solution for the industry to innovate from.”
The product will be renamed ARM Mbed TLS, but will remain open source, reports Tech Week Europe.
Paul Bakker, CEO of Offspark, added: “Security is the most fundamental aspect in ensuring people trust IoT technology and that is only possible with a truly tailored solution.
“Together, ARM and Offspark can provide security to the edge of any system and we look forward to working with our partners to help them deliver some exciting new projects.”
Developers will be able to license the technology for commercial use as well as embedding it into future ARM products.
Last week the company released the ARM Cortex-A72 processor, a 64-bit effort offering support for Android 5.x Lollipop and incorporating the big.LITTLE architecture that prioritises jobs to different processor cores based on their computational requirements.
A message on the Offspark website indicates that it has been taken down and redirects to ARM.
Anthem Gets Hacked
Health insurer Anthem Inc, which has nearly 40 million U.S. customers, has confirmed that hackers had breached one of its IT systems and stolen personal information relating to current and former consumers and employees.
The No. 2 health insurer in the United States said the breach did not appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit card or bank account numbers.
The information accessed during the “very sophisticated attack” did include names, birthdays, social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data, the company said.
Anthem said that it immediately made every effort to close the security vulnerability and reported the attack to the FBI. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc FEYE. said it had been hired to help Anthem investigate the attack.
The company did not say how many customers and staff were affected, but the Wall Street Journal earlier reported it was suspected that records of tens of millions of people had been taken, which would likely make it the largest data breach involving a U.S. health insurer.
Anthem had 37.5 million medical members as of the end of December.
“This attack is another reminder of the persistent threats we face, and the need for Congress to take aggressive action to remove legal barriers for sharing cyber threat information,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement late Wednesday.
ARM Develops IoT For Students
ARM has created a course to teach IoT skills to students at University College London (UCL)
The course is designed to encourage graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) to seek careers in IT.
The IoT Education Kit will teach students how to use the Mbed IoT operating system to create smartphone apps that control mini-robots or wearable devices.
Students are expected to be interested in building their own IoT business, or joining IoT-focused enterprises like ARM. The course will also try to limit the number of Stem graduates pursuing non-technology careers.
ARM reported statistics from a 2012 study by Oxford Policy and Research revealing how many engineering graduates (36 percent of males, 51 percent of females), technology graduates (44 percent, 53 percent) and computer scientists (64 percent, 66 percent) end up with non-Stem jobs.
The IoT Education Kit will be rolled out by UCL’s Department of Electronics from September 2015, with a week-long module for full-time and continuing professional development students.
The Kit comprises a complete set of teaching materials, Mbed-enabled hardware boards made by Nordic Semiconductor, and software licensed from ARM. A second teaching module for engineering graduates is being developed for 2016.
“Students with strong science and mathematical skills are in demand and we need to make sure they stay in engineering,” said ARM CTO Mike Muller.
“The growth of the IoT gives us a great opportunity to prove to students why our profession is more exciting and sustainable than others.”
UCL professor Izzat Darwazeh also highlighted the importance of Stem skills, saying that “many students are not following through to an engineering career and that is a real risk to our long-term success as a nation of innovators”.
Venture Capaitalist Going Internet Again
January 30, 2014 by admin
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Venture capitalists invested more money into Internet companies last year than they have since the dot-com bust, according to a survey published last Friday.
Internet companies in the U.S. took in $7.1 billion from VCs in 1,059 deals in 2013, the highest level of Internet investment in terms of dollars and deals since 2001, according to The MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, based on data from Thomson Reuters. In comparison, VC investment in Internet companies totaled $6.7 billion in 995 deals in 2012, another strong year, according to the MoneyTree report.
In addition, VCs invested $110 billion in 1,523 software industry deals last year, the highest level in both dollars and number of deals for the sector since 2000, according to the MoneyTree report. VC dollars going into software rose 27 percent year over year, while the number of deals increased 10 percent.
The amount of money invested in the software industry accounted for 37 percent of total VC investments in 2013, the highest percentage since the MoneyTree report was initiated in 1995.
All this is taking place against a backdrop of a generally strong VC environment, as VCs invested $29.4 billion in 3,995 deals across all sectors in 2013, a year-over-year increase of 7 percent in dollars and 4 percent in deals, according to the report.
Companies involved in big data, mobile apps, security, digital marketing, and medical and health software are among those that are especially interesting to VCs, according to Mark McCaffrey, PwC’s U.S. and global software leader.
Top deals in the fourth quarter of 2013 included a $225,000 investment in Pinterest, a site for sharing photos, recipes and other items of personal interest, and a $177,514 investment in Palantir Technologies, a government contractor in the systems integration business, according to MoneyTree data.
Going into 2014 a sense of optimism prevails, but this does not mean that the tech industry is going through a bubble of the sort that arose in 1999 and 2000, McCaffrey said.
Does The Cloud Need To Standardize?
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Frank Baitman, the CIO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was at the Amazon Web Services conference praising the company’s services. Baitman’s lecture was on the verge of becoming a long infomercial, when he stepped back and changed direction.
Baitman has reason to speak well of Amazon. As the big government system integrators slept, Amazon rushed in with its cloud model and began selling its services to federal agencies. HHS and Amazon worked together in a real sense.
The agency helped Amazon get an all-important security certification best known by its acronym, FedRAMP, while Amazon moved its health data to the cloud. It was the first large cloud vendor to get this security certification.
“[Amazon] gives us the scalability that we need for health data,” said Baitman.
But then he said that while it would “make things simpler and nicer” to work with Amazon, since they did the groundwork to get Amazon federal authorizations, “we also believe that there are different reasons to go with different vendors.”
Baitman said that HHS will be working with other vendors as it has with Amazon.
“We recognize different solutions are needed for different problems,” said Baitman. “Ultimately we would love to have a competitive environment that brings best value to the taxpayer and keeps vendors innovating.”
To accomplish this, HHS plans to implement a cloud broker model, an intermediary process that can help government entities identify the best cloud approach for a particular workload. That means being able to compare different price points, terms of service and service-level agreements.
To make comparisons possible, Baitman said the vendors will have to “standardize in those areas that we evaluate cloud on.”
The Amazon conference had about 2,500 registered to attend, and judging from the size of the crowd it certainly appeared to have that many at the Washington Convention Center. It was a leap in attendance. In 2012, attendance at Amazon’s government conference was about 900; in 2011, 300 attended; and in 2010, just 50, Teresa Carlson, vice president of worldwide public sector at Amazon, said in an interview.