Technology News

Network administrators, IT managers and security professionals face a never-ending battle, constantly checking on what exactly is running on their networks and the vulnerabilities that lurk within. While there is a wealth of monitoring utilities available for network mapping and security auditing, nothing beats Nmap's combination of versatility and usability, making it the widely acknowledged de facto standard.
What is Nmap? Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a free, open-source tool for vulnerability scanning and network discovery. Network administrators use Nmap to identify what devices are running on their systems, discovering hosts that are available and the services they offer, finding open ports and detecting security risks.
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This pilot fish is writing mainframe software for a large defense contractor, and he's discovered a way to become a lot more efficient: arrive at work at 6 a.m.
“The traffic is light at that hour, and I get a couple of hours of work in without much interruption,” says fish. “It also means I get to find what changes the computer center — which is at a different location — has made overnight.
“One morning I sat down, fired up the PC that's my terminal and started to work. But the editor was acting very strangely, so I called a system guy I know to find out what was going on.
Fish: Fred, what did you do the editor last night?
Fred: “We made some minor changes, but there were no changes visible to the user.”
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Being the creator of JavaScript has been a blessing and a curse for Brendan Eich. On the one hand, JavaScript has the distinction of being the most popular programming language in the world. On the other, no language has been the target of more snark.
Eich is well aware of the language’s drawbacks—after all, in 1995, he worked around the clock to create JavaScript in a mere 10 days. In this lively interview with IDG’s Eric Knorr, Eich readily admits to JavaScript’s flaws and talks frankly about what he might have done better, while touching on JavaScript’s improvements over its 23-year lifespan. Warts and all, JavaScript has indeed become “the assembly language of the web.”
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What do Russian trolls, Facebook, and US elections have to do with machine learning? Recommendation engines are at the heart of the central feedback loop of social networks and the user-generated content (UGC) they create. Users join the network and are recommended users and content with which to engage. Recommendation engines can be gamed because they amplify the effects of thought bubbles. The 2016 US presidential election showed how important it is to understand how recommendation engines work and the limitations and strengths they offer.
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(Insider Story)

“It works.” That’s a term used to go right along with “success,” but these days it means that you’ve gotten an instance of a cloud solution up and running. But it’s typically falling short in some way that those that use the term “it works” don’t yet understand.
Why? If you have an IT problem to solve using cloud computing technology, there are about 5! (five factorial) solutions, and they all “work.” However, only one solution pattern and corresponding technology solution are the most optimal.
[ InfoWorld explains: What is cloud-native? The modern way to develop software. | Get started: Azure cloud migration guide. • Tutorial: Get started with Google Cloud. | Keep up with the latest developments in cloud computing with InfoWorld’s Cloud Computing newsletter. ] So, you can have something working, but it’s costing you $1 million a month in lost efficiency. Yet those who crafted the solution are marveling at the fact that it’s functioning—and are typically unaware of the lost value that ..

Avengers: Infinity War directors put up a picture on Instagram, said it was the title reveal for Avengers 4, and then promptly deleted the post. Marvel fans lost it. Check out the screenshot here.

Researchers have shown how to shuttle lithium ions back and forth into the crystal structure of a quantum material, representing a new avenue for research and potential applications in batteries, 'smart windows' and brain-inspired computers containing artificial synapses.

As researchers engineer solutions for eventually replacing electronics with photonics, one team team has simplified the manufacturing process that allows utilizing multiple colors at the same time on an electronic chip instead of a single color at a time.

Astronomers have found evidence that the faintest satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way galaxy are among the very first galaxies that formed in our universe.

Scientists have confirmed that the 3.4-billion-year-old Strelley Pool microfossils had chemical characteristics similar to modern bacteria. This all but confirms their biological origin and ranks them amongs the world's oldest microfossils.