Welcome to the smartphone revolution

You say you want a revolution? The smartphone market as we know is about to be flipped upside down -- and there's no turning back from this kind of change.

        

It's been a long time coming, gang, but it's finally here. Yes, oh, yes: The smartphone revolution has officially begun.

Hang on a sec -- let me clarify. By "smartphone revolution," I don't mean that mobile technology is just now maturing or becoming an integral part of our lives. That obviously happened a while ago; we've all been toting around and depending on our devices for years, and the technology is pretty much moving forward incrementally at this point.

Nay, the revolution of which I speak isn't about the technology itself -- but rather the way we pay for the privilege of carrying it. For the first time, particularly in America, smartphones are becoming a consumer's game. Both in purchasing them and using them, the tables have at long last started to turn our way.

Stay with me for a minute, because we've got a fair amount of ground to cover here. The revolution is actually happening on a couple different fronts -- first, with the long overdue and much-deserved death of the two-year carrier contract.

The smartphone revolution, part I: The crumbling of the carrier resistance

You've heard about this pending doom by now, right? Sprint announced the other day that it's phasing out contracts and the subsidies that accompany them by the end of this year. Verizon made a similar move earlier this month, while T-Mobile killed off its contracts two years ago. Only AT&T is still clinging to the antiquated notion of locking consumers in, and we'll see how much longer that's able to last.

Of course, those of us in the know have been avoiding carrier contracts for a while. Once you realize that a "$200 phone" actually costs $700 to $900 -- and that under most carrier contract plans, you end up paying that full price and then some via the ongoing inflated monthly service charges -- it becomes a no-brainer to simply purchase phones unlocked and then find an inexpensive (and commitment-free) prepaid plan that fits your needs.

The problem is that most people are completely unaware that such options exist. In America, the norm has long been to walk into a carrier store and pick out a new device right then and there. Near-ubiquitous ads touting shiny new flagship phones for "ONLY $200!" are pretty deceptive -- and until your eyes are opened to the actual math behind those numbers, it's easy to be misled.

With contracts finally going the way of the dodo, though, the smartphone-purchasing landscape is starting to look drastically different. Everyone's suddenly realizing, holy crap, that "$200 phone" actually costs $815! Maybe the carrier is offering a way to spread out the cost over monthly payment plans separate from your base service -- in other words, a less shady and deceptive way of doing what they were doing before -- but that big final number is no longer hidden behind tiny and out-of-the-way print.

And while the initial sticker shock may come as, well, a shock to some people, trust me: This is a good thing for consumers. Over the course of two years, you'll almost certainly end up paying less than you would have on those old bloated contract plans, even with the misleading smoke and mirrors of a lower upfront cost that accompanied them. And that's not even considering if you take the time to find an inexpensive prepaid plan, like the ones I mentioned before -- which are still widely available and still generally provide better deals than what the carriers themselves will give you.

But that's only part one of the revolution.

The smartphone revolution, part II: The battle of new phone cost

The other and equally important part is the price of the phones themselves -- and this is where things really start to get interesting.

We've been seeing an explosion of surprisingly decent affordable Android phones for a while now. Most of them have been budget-level to midrange devices, but even so, many provide admirable overall experiences -- like Motorola's new Moto G, which costs $180 to $220 and is honest-to-Goog more than enough muscle for the majority of smartphone users.

But the price drops are no longer stopping at that midrange level. Motorola is now also about to offer its new 2015 flagship Moto X phone for a mere $400. That's $400, unlocked and off-contract, for a beautifully designed and premium phone that promises to be one of the best all-around devices of the year.

That, my friends, is unheard of. And here's what's especially fascinating: That move -- along with the proliferation of the lower-end-but-still-perfectly-decent super-cheap smartphones -- is changing the way we think about mobile device pricing.

A year ago, the conversation surrounding Motorola's 2014 Moto X -- which itself was a bargain at the time, at $500 unlocked -- was that the phone was a particularly good deal. It was unusually inexpensive relative to the then-widely-accepted flagship phone norm.

This year, the conversation is taking a very different shape. It's something I've been noticing as I've worked on my review of Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 and tuned in closely to the public reaction to that device. The new Note is priced in the mid-$700-range (with slight fluctuations depending on where you buy it), which is not at all unusual for a flagship phone; in fact, last year's Note 4 was priced even higher, in the mid-$800-range off-contract, when it first came out.

But -- can you see where this is going? -- two things have changed:

People are more aware of the actual price of phones, thanks to the phasing out of carrier contracts and subsidies.

Along with that awareness, people are seeing that some Android phones are available for significantly less -- both in the budget-to-midrange realm, where you can get "good enough" for a couple hundred bucks, and in the flagship realm, where you can get a major manufacturer's top-of-the-line offering for $400.

As a result, for the first time this year, Samsung's phones are being described as expensive. Take a minute and wrap your head around that: A new flagship phone that actually costs less than its predecessor is being described as expensive -- pretty widely, if you look around -- all because of the way the environment surrounding that phone has evolved.

"Eventually, resistance will become futile

Call it commoditization or call it whatever you want, but the times are definitely a-changin'. And while Samsung still has a firm leg up over Motorola with its huge marketing budget, brand name recognition, and carrier store placement, sooner or later, "normal" smartphone shoppers are gonna start picking up on what we enthusiasts already see.

At some point, another major manufacturer will feel the pressure. Another major manufacturer will start trying to compete with Motorola at those lower off-contract prices. And then the ball will really be rolling. Little by little, over time, the base cost of buying a smartphone is going to plummet -- and eventually, resistance will become futile. It's practically inevitable.

After all, if Motorola manages to deliver on its promise of an excellent camera and superb stamina in the new Moto X (and after seeing what the company managed to do with the lower-end Moto G, I'm optimistic it can), the perception of being "expensive" starts to be a real problem for Samsung. Sure, a lot of people have grown to like Samsung's smartphones -- and the devices certainly have plenty of compelling qualities -- but for most shoppers, is there anything about them that makes them worth an extra $350 over Motorola's equivalent? (To say nothing of being worth an extra $500-and-change over the extremely low-cost alternatives.) We're talking nearly double the price from one flagship to another.

Apple might be able to pull off that kind of "premium pricing" approach, as people really do buy into that brand and the connotations it carries. But Samsung? I'm not sure Samsung is at that same level of allegiance. Not when we're talking a difference of hundreds of dollars -- a difference shoppers are about to see more clearly than ever.

(I'm using the new Note as an example, by the way, since that's where I started to notice this "expensive" discussion beginning. Samsung's smaller Galaxy S6 isn't much cheaper, though: That phone is in the mid-$600-range off-contract. And it's not just Samsung, either: Current flagships from HTC and LG are also in that same general range. This is very much an industry-wide phenomenon.)

Now, don't expect any sort of drastic changes to happen overnight. Like most things, it's going to take time for the effects of this to spread throughout the industry and start making a difference. But just like with the carrier contracts three years ago, a rumbling is rising down under. Expectations are evolving. The writing is on the wall.

The smartphone revolution is upon us, my comrades. And for us as consumers, that's nothing but good news.

After years of oppression, the ball is finally in our court.

PayPal expands One Touch program to new markets in Europe, Australia

PayPal expands One Touch program to new markets in Europe, Australia

The PayPal logo is seen during an event at Terra Gallery in San Francisco, California May 21, 2015.

PayPal Holdings Inc said on Tuesday it would expand its One Touch payments product to 13 new markets in Europe and Australia, bringing a simpler check-out to online shoppers and merchants.

PayPal, which separated from eBay Inc last month, is a formidable player in the fast-growing payments industry, which has attracted new entrants like Apple Inc.

The company said "millions" of consumers had already enabled One Touch to make payments on desktops and through mobile apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada and that half of the world's top 100 online retailers were already using the program.

Existing PayPal users can opt-in to use One Touch once and then no longer be required to re-enter their billing and shipping information into shopping apps or websites that support PayPal in their checkouts. Merchants that already accept PayPal will see One Touch automatically enabled, PayPal said.

A smoother shopping experience is crucial to online retailers as they often blame the high rates of unfinished or abandoned online sales on the tiring process of re-entering payment information.

PayPal said more than half of e-commerce shopping sessions are taking place on mobile but said that only around 10 to 15 percent of purchases occur on mobile devices.

"If consumers can't check out in one touch or tap and instead have to do data entry on their mobile device they're far less likely to complete the transaction," Bill Ready, PayPal's senior vice president, said in an emailed response to Reuters.

"With One Touch, we're bridging that gap and creating better buying experiences for consumers, which in turn means higher conversions for merchants."

PayPal said the One Touch program had led to 50 percent or greater improvement in conversion rates and said it planned to eventually launch One Touch to all markets in which PayPal exists.

The company, which has more than 169 million customer accounts worldwide, processed 4 billion payments last year totaling $235 billion. PayPal also said $40 billion was spent globally on mobile devices with the company.

Top 10 technology schools in the States

Interested in going to one of the best colleges or universities to study technology? Here are the top 10 schools known for their computer science and engineering programs.

Top technology schools

Every year, Money releases its rankings of every college and university in the U.S., and not surprisingly, a number of those top schools are leaders in the tech space. Here are the top 10 technology schools, according to Money's most recent survey of the best colleges in America.

1. Stanford University

First on the list for not only technology colleges, but all colleges, Stanford University has an impressive 96 percent graduation rate. The average price for a degree is $178,731 and students earn, on average, $64,400 per year upon graduation. Stanford's global engineering program allows its 4,850 students to travel around the globe while studying engineering. There are nine departments in the engineering program: aeronautics and astronautics, bioengineering, chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, management science and engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering.

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Mass., is the second best technology school in the country, with a 93 percent graduation rate. The average net price of a degree comes in at a $166,855, but students can expect an average starting salary of $72,500 per year after graduating. As one of the top engineering schools, it's ranked number 1 for chemical, aerospace/aeronautical, computer and electrical engineering. The top employers for the 57 percent of graduates that enter the workforce immediately include companies like Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil. Another 32 percent of students, however, go on to pursue a higher degree.

3. California Institute of Technology

Located in Pasadena, Calif., the California Institute of Technology has a graduation rate of 93 percent. The average cost of a degree is $186,122, and students earn an average starting salary of $72,300. CalTech, as it's often called, has departments in aerospace, applied physics and materials studies, computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering, environmental science and engineering, mechanical and civil engineering, and medical engineering. The prestigious college is also home to 31 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

4. Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. has a strong technology program, putting it at number 4 on the list of top technology schools. The cost of tuition is also one of the highest on this list, at $196,551 for a degree. Graduates of Harvey Mudd earn an average of $76,400 early on in their careers and the graduation rate is 91 percent. The engineering program at Harvey Mudd College focuses on helping students apply their skills to real world situations. Students can also get professional experience and help solve design problems outside of the classroom through an engineering clinic.

5. Harvard University

Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Mass., technically ties with Harvey Mudd for top technology schools, and top overall colleges. The graduation rate is 97 percent and the average price of a degree is $187, 763 while graduates earn an average annual salary of $60,000 when starting their careers. At Harvard's Jon A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which goes back as far as 1847, undergraduate students can study applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, engineering sciences and mechanical engineering.

6. University of California at Berkeley

The University of California at Berkeley has a graduation rate of 91 percent, and students can get a degree for around $133,549. After graduation, the average salary for students starting out their careers is $58,300 per year. The electrical engineering and computer science division of the University of California at Berkeley has around 2,000 undergraduate students and is the largest department within the university.

7. University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Penn., has a graduation rate of 96 percent and the average cost of a degree is $194,148. Students graduating from UPenn and beginning out their careers earn an average annual starting salary of $59,200. The UPenn engineering department focuses on computer and information science. Students can study computer science, computer engineering, digital media design, networked and social systems engineering, computational biology as well as computer and cognitive science.

8. Rice University

Located in Houston, Rice University has a graduation rate of 91 percent and the average cost of a degree is $157,824. Upon graduation, the average starting salary for students comes in at $61,200 per year. Rice University has a Department of Computer Science where students can work in faculty research programs and describes the perfect computer science student as a "mathematician seeking adventurer," a quote from system architect Bob Barton. In the electrical and computer engineering department, students can prepare for a career in oil and gas, wearables, entertainment, renewable energy, gaming, healthcare, space industry, security and aviation.

9. Brigham Young University-Provo

Brigham Young University-Provo, located in Provo, Utah, has a graduation rate of 78 percent, but students won't have as many loans as other colleges on this list. The average price of a degree is a moderate $80,988 and the average starting salary for graduates is around $51,600 per year. Brigham Young University-Provo offers degrees in electrical engineering, computer engineering and computer science. With a wide array of programs to choose from in each degree, Brigham Young University-Provo boasts a rigorous course load with an emphasis on gaining practical skills for the workforce.

10. Texas A&M University

College Station, Texas is home to Texas A&M University where 79 percent of students graduate and the average cost of a degree is $84,732. Students can expect to earn an average starting salary of $54,000 per year after graduation. The Texas A&M computer science and engineering program boasts an "open, accepting, and compassionate community that encourages the exploration of ideas." Students should expect to leave the program prepared to help solve real-world challenges in the technology industry through applied research.

Oracle, still clueless about security

Oracle's CSO has some wrongheaded notions about her area of expertise. What is the company doing about that?

Oracle’s chief security officer, Mary Ann Davidson, recently ticked off almost everyone in the security business. She proclaimed that you had to do security “expertise in-house because security is a core element of software development and you cannot outsource it.” She continued, “Whom do you think is more trustworthy? Who has a greater incentive to do the job right — someone who builds something, or someone who builds FUD around what others build?”

What she said in 2015 was that security reports based on reverse-engineering Oracle code and then applying static or dynamic analysis to it does not lead to “proof of an actual vulnerability. Often, they are not much more than a pile of steaming … FUD.”

Davidson’s blog post is one long rant that boils down to, “How dare people analyze Oracle code?” “I have seen a large-ish uptick in customers reverse engineering our code to attempt to find security vulnerabilities in it. <Insert big sigh here.> This is why I’ve been writing a lot of letters to customers that start with “hi, howzit, aloha” but end with ‘please comply with your license agreement and stop reverse engineering our code, already.’”

Because God forbid someone should find a security hole!

Oracle backed away from Davidson’s position in less than 24 hours. “We removed the post as it does not reflect our beliefs or our relationship with our customers,” wrote Edward Screven, Oracle executive vice president and chief corporate architect.

But Oracle has not taken down Davidson’s 2011 rant, nor others. For example, in an earlier 2015 post, Davidson described security researchers outside Oracle’s Unbreakable walls as little more than greedy brats crying for attention:

A researcher first finds vulnerability in a widely-used library: the more widely-used, the better … Next, the researcher comes up with a catchy name. You get extra points for it being an acronym for the nature of the vulnerability, such as SUCKS—Security Undermining of Critical Key Systems. Then, you put up a website (more points for cute animated creature dancing around and singing the SUCKS song). Add links so visitors can Order the T-shirt, Download the App, and Get a Free Bumper Sticker! Get a hash tag. Develop a Facebook page and ask your friends to Like your vulnerability. (I might be exaggerating, but not by much.) Now, sit back and wait for the uninformed public to regurgitate the headlines about “New Vulnerability SUCKS!” If you are a security researcher who dreamed up all the above, start planning your speaking engagements on how the world as we know it will end, because (wait for it), “Everything SUCKS.

This is so much horse-pucky.

Yes, people want to make money and gain fame by finding and revealing security holes. Is that such a bad thing? It’s certainly better than, say, finding a security hole and then exploiting it, isn’t it? I think so.

Davidson also seems stuck in the dark ages of security. She believes in security by obscurity.

In 2012, for example, Davidson lambasted the Payment Card Industry Security (PCI) Standards Council for requiring “vendors to disclose (dare we say ‘tell all?’) to PCI any known security vulnerabilities and associated security breaches.” Or, as she put it more succinctly, “tell your customers that you have to rat them out to PCI.”

She added, just to make it perfectly clear where she’s coming from, that information on security vulnerabilities at Oracle is on a “need to know” basis.

Perhaps Davidson’s extreme reactionary stance comes from the fact that David Litchfield, the famed U.K. security expert, has made a career of hacking Oracle database software. Back in 2005, Litchfield, who reverse-engineers Oracle code to find its vulnerabilities, said, “It is my belief that the CSO [Davidson] has categorically failed. Oracle security has stagnated under her leadership and it’s time for change.”

Ten years later, people like Davidson who believe that keeping code closed and proprietary is a good thing have grown far fewer in number. Even Microsoft has gotten the open-source message.

Who loves Linux? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella loves Linux.

Oracle with Linux and MySQL gets open source too. But Davidson? Not so much.

One of open source’s tenets is Linus’s Law: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” Davidson, with her naked contempt for anyone who examines Oracle’s code, appears to be out of step with Oracle and the open-source method.

Or, is she?

It’s not as if Davidson is saying anything new. She’s been making juvenile attacks — I mean what’s a chief anything officer doing saying “suck” over and over again? — for years now. She’s been Oracle’s CSO for 15 years, and Oracle still lets her babble to the public without any control. Larry Ellison, if no one else, clearly thinks she’s doing a great job.

I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on inside Oracle. People at Oracle who talk to reporters don’t tend to keep their jobs for very long.

From the outside looking in, I see a company that both embraces and rejects the open-source method. That second part is not healthy for its products’ security. And, in the long run, it’s not healthy for Oracle’s future as a company.

Back in 2006, Davidson said, her “goal is to be out of a job.” Maybe it’s time for Oracle to take her up on that offer.

Google Is Millions Of Miles Ahead Of Apple In Driverless Cars

Last week’s “exclusive” in the Guardian claiming to “confirm Apple is building self-driving car” raised quite a buzz. Much of that buzz was skeptical, with many pointing out that the facts failed to support the Guardian’s conclusion.

The logical leap that Guardian made was that an Apple engineer’s interest in the GoMentum Station vehicle test track confirmed Apple’s driverless car program. This is too big a leap, as a range of Apple car-related aspirations—self-driving or not—might have use for such a test track.

Let’s assume, however, that the Guardian is right and Apple does have a driverless car ready for testing. (This is possible, as Apple has hired many automotive engineers, including the former CEO of Mercedes Benz’s Silicon Valley research center.) What would that say about the relative state of Apple’s driverless car?

It would tell us that Apple is millions of miles behind Google, and falling further behind every day.

As one of the few companies in the world richer than Google, Apple can match the cars, sensors, processors, navigational systems and other pieces of hardware that Google might deploy. It can replicate the sophisticated maps that Google has compiled. It will have a very hard time, however, catching up with Google’s on-the-road learning.

Actual road miles are critical because driverless cars learn to drive like humans do—through experience. Sophisticated hardware tells the car where it is and what the other things around it are doing. The actual driving, including identifying those other things, predicting what they might do, and handling all possible situations to safely get the car to where it needs to go, depends on very sophisticated machine learning algorithms. Those algorithms, in turn, depend on analyzing real-world driving situations.

Microsoft fires back at Google with Bing contextual search on Android

'Snapshots on Tap' echoes a feature coming with the next version of Android

Microsoft has pre-empted a new feature Google plans to include in the next version of Android with an update released Thursday for the Bing Search app that lets users get information about what they're looking at by pressing and holding their device's home button.

Called Bing Snapshots, the feature is incredibly similar to the Now on Tap functionality Google announced for Android Marshmallow at its I/O developer conference earlier this year. Bing will look over a user's screen when they call up a Snapshot and then provide them with relevant information along with links they can use to take action like finding hotels at a travel destination.

For example, someone watching a movie trailer can press and hold on their device's home button and pull up a Bing Snapshot that will give them easy access to reviews of the film in question, along with a link that lets them buy tickets through Fandango. 

Google Now On Tap, which is slated for release with Android Marshmallow later this year, will offer similar features with a user interface that would appear to take up less screen real estate right off the bat, at least in the early incarnations Google showed off at I/O.

The new functionality highlights one of the major differences between Android and iOS: Microsoft can replace system functionality originally controlled by Google Now and use that to push its own search engine and virtual assistant. Microsoft is currently beta testing a version of its virtual assistant Cortana on Android for release later this year as well. 

A Cortana app is also in the cards for iOS, but Apple almost certainly won't allow a virtual assistant to take over capabilities from Cortana, especially since Google Now remains quarantined inside the Google app on that mobile platform. 

All of this comes as those three companies remained locked in a tight battle to out-innovate one another in the virtual assistant market as a means of controlling how users pull up information across their computers and mobile devices. For Microsoft and Google, there's an additional incentive behind the improvements: driving users to their respective assistants has the potential to boost use of the connected search engines. 

PHP 7 drops first release candidate

The release candidate for the speedy PHP upgrade features bug fixes and stability improvements, but it cannot be used in production yet

 Faster PHP is approaching. PHP 7.0.0, which has been promoted as a much quicker upgrade to the server-side scripting language, has just gone into a release candidate stage, bringing its general availability even closer to fruition.

Available today, the release candidate is the sixth pre-release of the PHP 7 major series, according to PHP.net.  Once again, PHP proponents are advising that this latest release is not to be used in production, as it's just a development preview.

"PHP 7.0.0 RC 1 contains fixes for 27 reported bugs and altogether over 200 commits with various stability improvements for database, array, assert, streams, and other functionality," PHP.net said in its bulletin. 

Featuring a new version of Zend Engine, version 7.0.0 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6, and it offers consistent 64-bit support. Also featured are return type and scalar type declarations and anonymous classes. Many fatal errors become exceptions in the upgrade and old, unsupported SAPIs and extensions are removed. In a recent presentation, PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf emphasized that the upgrade would require fewer servers as well as offer performance gains for "real-world" applications.

PHP builders are asked to test the version and report incompatibilities in the project's bug tracking system. A second release candidate is planned for September 3, and the final version of PHP 7.0.0 is set for release on November 12.

Importing an Eclipse Project into Android Studio

Silicon Valley's 'pressure cooker:' Thrive or get out

Spotlight may be on Amazon, but tech jobs are high profit and high stress

It's true. People working in Silicon Valley may cry at their desks, may be expected to respond to emails in the middle of the night, and may be in the office when they'd rather be sick in bed.

But that's the price employees pay to work for some of the most successful and innovative tech companies in the world, according to industry analysts.

"It's a pressure cooker for tech workers," said Bill Reynolds, research director for Foote Partners LLC, an IT workforce research firm. "But for every disgruntled employee, someone will tell you it's fine. This is the ticket to working in this area and they're willing to pay it."

 The tech industry has been like this for years, he added.

Employees are either Type A personalities who thrive on the pressure, would rather focus on a project than get a full night's sleep and don't mind pushing or being pushed.

If that's not who they are, they should get another job and probably in another industry.

"A lot of tech companies failed, and the ones that made it, made it based on a driven culture. No one made it working 9 to 5," said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm. "Silicon Valley has been the vanguard of this type of work culture. It can get out of control. It can be too much and people can burn out. But it's who these companies are."

Work culture at tech companies, specifically at Amazon, hit the spotlight earlier this week when the New York Times ran a story on the online retailer and what it called its "bruising workplace."

The story talked about employees crying at their desks, working 80-plus-hour weeks and being expected to work when they're not well or after a family tragedy.

"At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are "unreasonably high," the article noted.

In response, Amazon.com CEO Jeff  Bezos sent a memo to employees saying he didn't recognize the company described in the Times article.

"The article doesn't describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day," Bezos wrote. "More broadly, I don't think any company adopting the approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today's highly competitive tech hiring market."

Bezos hasn't been the only one at Amazon to respond. Nick Ciubotariu, head of Infrastructure development at Amazon.com, wrote a piece on LinkedIn, taking on theTimes article.

"During my 18 months at Amazon, I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to. No one tells me to work nights," he wrote. "We work hard, and have fun. We have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand. We go out after work. We have 'Fun Fridays.' We banter, argue, play video games and Foosball. And we're vocal about our employee happiness."

Working for the big players

Amazon has high expectations of its workers because it's one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, according to industry analysts.

The company, which started as an online book store, now sells everything from cosmetics to bicycles and toasters. With a valuation of $250 billion, Amazon even surpassed mega retailer Walmart this summer as the biggest retailer in the U.S.

With that kind of success comes a lot of pressure to stay on top and to come up with new, innovative ways to keep customers happy.

That kind of challenge can lead to a stressful workplace where employees are called on to work long hours and to outwork competitors' own employees.

It's just the way of the beast, according to Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates Inc., a management consulting firm.

"If you go to work for a high-powered company where you have a chance of being a millionaire in a few years, you are going to work 70 to 80 hours a week," he said. "You are going to have to be right all the time and you are going to be under a lot of stress. Your regular Joe is really going to struggle there."

This kind of work stress isn't relegated to Amazon alone. Far from it, Janulaitis said.

"I think it's fairly widespread in any tech company that is successful," he noted. "It's just a very stressful environment. You're dealing with a lot of money and a lot of Type A personalities who want to get things done. If you're not a certain type of person, you're not going to make it. It's much like the Wild West. They have their own rules."

Of course, tech companies, whether Amazon, Google, Apple or Facebook, are known to work people hard, going back to the days when IBM was launching its first PCs and Microsoft was making its Office software ubiquitous around the world.

However, tech companies also are known for giving their employees perks that people working in other industries only dream of.

Google, for instance, has world-class chefs cooking free food for its employees, while also setting up nap pods, meditation classes and sandy volleyball courts.

Netflix recently made global headlines for offering mothers and fathers unlimited time off for up to a year after the birth or adoption of a child.

It's the yin and yang of Silicon Valley, said Megan Slabinski, district president of Robert Half Technology, a human resources consulting firm.

"All those perks - the ping pong tables, the free snacks, the free day care -- that started in the tech industry come with the job because the job is so demanding," she said. "There's a level of demand in the tech industry that translates to the work environment."

Amazon, Microsoft strengthen tools to store app and enterprise data in their...

When asked if Amazon is any harder on its employees than other major tech companies, Slabinski laughed.

"Amazon isn't different culturally from other IT companies," she said. "I've been doing this for 16 years. You see the good, the bad and the ugly. If you are working for tech companies, the expectation is you are going to work really hard. This is bleeding-edge technology, and the trade-off is there's less work-life balance. The people who thrive in this industry, thrive on being on the bleeding edge. If you can't take it, you go into another industry."

Janulaitis noted that top-tier employees are always chased by other companies, but middle-tier workers -- those who are doing a good job but might not be the brightest stars of the workforce -- are hunkering down and staying put.

Fears of a still jittery job market have convinced a lot of people to keep their heads down, put up with whatever their managers ask of them and continue to be able to pay their mortgages, especially if they live in pricey Silicon Valley.

That, said Janulaitis, makes companies more apt to ask even more from their employees, who know they're likely stuck where they are for now.

"Once the job market changes, turnover will increase significantly in the IT field," he said.

Like stock traders working under extreme pressure on Wall Street or medical interns working 36-hour shifts, the tech industry is a high-stress environment - one that's not suited to every worker.

"If you can't live with that pressure, you should go somewhere else," said Reynolds. "For people in Silicon Valley, it's who they are. It's the kind of person they are."

Another serious vulnerability found in Android's media processing service

Rogue applications could exploit the flaw to gain sensitive permissions

The Android service that processes multimedia files has been the source of several vulnerabilities recently, including a new one that could give rogue applications access to sensitive permissions.

The latest vulnerability in Android's mediaserver component was discovered by security researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro and stems from a feature called AudioEffect.

The implementation of this feature does not properly check some buffer sizes that are supplied by clients, like media player applications. Therefore it is possible to craft a rogue application without any special permissions that could exploit the flaw to trigger a heap overflow, the Trend Micro researchers said Monday in a blog post.

By exploiting the vulnerability, the rogue application would be able to execute the same actions as the mediaserver component, which includes taking pictures, recording videos, reading MP4 files, and other privacy sensitive functions.

The flaw, which affects Android versions 2.3 to 5.1.1, was reported to Google in June and a fix for it was published to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) on Aug. 1, according to the researchers.

It is now up to phone manufacturers to incorporate the fix into their code and release firmware updates for affected devices. Even though the distribution of updates in the Android ecosystem has shown some improvements lately, there will likely be many devices that will not be patched because they are no longer supported.

At the beginning of August many device vendors launched a large scale patching effort in response to a separate vulnerability in Android's media processing code. The flaw was revealed last month and could be exploited remotely through an MMS message or a Web page.

In a talk at the Black Hat security conference on Aug. 5, Android's lead security engineer, Adrian Ludwig, referred to the Stagefright patching effort as the "single largest unified software update in the world."

However, security researchers from a firm called Exodus Intelligence reported last week that Google's initial patch for the Stagefright flaw was incomplete. This forced the Android team to create another patch which, according to The Register, Google already distributed to its partners and will deliver to its Nexus and Nexus Player devices in September.

In addition to the Stagefright vulnerability and this latest AudioEffect flaw, researchers from Trend Micro have also recently reported two other vulnerabilities in Android's media server component that could force devices into a reboot loop or cause them to become unresponsive.

Both Joshua Drake, the researcher who found the first Stagefright vulnerability, and the Trend Micro researchers have warned that Android's multimedia processing code is likely to be a source of future vulnerabilities.

Apple vs. Samsung rages on as core iPhone patent is ruled invalid

One of Apple's iPhone patents -- the one that a jury used to decide that Samsung owed Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in damages -- was just ruled invalid by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent in question, D618677, covers the design of the iPhone 3G and was filed in November 2008, but Apple relied on two patents filed in January 2007 to give that 2008 patent an earlier protection date. It's a common practice, but the earlier patents have to sufficiently describe the later one in order to extend the protection date. The U.S. patent office decided that those two original patents didn't describe the design patented in late 2008 sufficiently enough, and that perhaps that patent should have never been issued to begin with, according to FOSS Patents.

In the nearly two years between the two patent filing dates, a host of other smartphone makers produced phones that looked similar to the iPhone, including Samsung. Those devices stand as "prior art" now, which means that the patent covers design traits that were already common by the time it was filed.

The story behind the story: Samsung is still fighting the $548 million damages bill it owes Apple, money that was awarded largely due to this now invalid design patent. A date for a new trial, the third in this lengthy legal battle, has yet to be set to determine the final amount Samsung owes, but it's likely that Samsung will point to the patent office's ruling as evidence that it owes Apple nothing.

Samsung unveils 15TB SSD based on densest flash memory

The new SSD is the world's highest capacity 2.5-inch flash drive        

Samsung has developed a 15.36TB solid-state drive (SSD) based on a 2.5-inch form factor, the same size drives used in today's laptops.

The new 15.36TB (model PM1633a) SSD was among a group of new SSDs Samsung unveiled at the Flash Memory Summit this week. While the other drives were touted in a statement from the company, the PM1633a was only mentioned during a keynote presentation by Samsung officials.

There are no details yet as to when with world's highest capacity 2.5-inch SSD will be available. The three other SSDs are available immediately, Samsung said.

While Samsung released no details about the PM1633a, it did say it's three other new SSDs are based on the company's 32GB (256Gbit), 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory chip.

In 2014, Samsung became the first company to announce a 3D NAND flash chip with a 3-bit multi-level cell (MLC) architecture. In October, the company announced a 32-layer V-NAND chip and last week, it announced it is now mass producing the new 48-layer 3D chips for use in SSDs.

"By making full use of Samsung V-NAND’s excellent features, we will expand our premium-level business in the enterprise and data center market segments, as well as in the consumer market, while continuing to strengthen our strategic SSD focus," Young-Hyun Jun, president of Samsung Electronics memory business, said in a statement.

Three-dimensional NAND flash stacks layers of data-storing silicon like a microscopic skyscraper, creating a new pathway for the non-volatile memory market, which had been up against a wall in terms of scaling.

While Samsung may be the first to mass produce the 48-layer 3D NAND chips, it's not alone in developing them. Earlier this month, SanDisk and Toshiba announced that they preparing to manufacture 256Gbit, 3-bit-per-cell (X3) 48-layer 3D NAND flash chips that offer twice the capacity of their previously densest memory.

Three-dimensional NAND is the future of non-volatile memory, as several leading NAND flash makers have said they no longer plan on further reducing the process size of NAND flash beyond the current 15-nanometer lithography.

Samsung's new SSD lineup also includes the PM1633 (a lower capacity model than the PM1633a), the PM1725 and the PM953, all of which are designed for use by computer system manufacturers. Each of the three SSD models, however, is targeted for different uses within a data center.

The PM1633 is a 2.5-inch, 12Gbps serial-attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs designed for enterprise-class storage systems in data centers. An SSD's designated use, however, doesn't preclude it from finding its way onto the open market for consumer use -- though prices for the SSD are likely to be in the thousands of dollars.

In contrast to the PM1633a, Samsung's PM1633 SSD will be offered in 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB and 3.84TB versions.

The PM1633 delivers random read and write speeds of up to 160,000 and 18,000 input/output per second (IOPS) respectively, and boasts sequential read and write speeds of up to 1100MBps and 1000MBps. Samsung has released little information about the PM1633a, so its performance metrics are remain unclear.

Samsung's second flash drive model announced this week is the PM1725, which comes in an expansion card form factor with a blazingly fast random read rate of 1 million IOPS and 120,000 write IOPS. The PM1725 comes in 3.2TB or 6.4TB capacity models with a half-height, half-length NVMe PCIe SSD form factor.

The PM1725 is targeted at the highest enterprise storage applications, such as online transactional processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP).

The PM1725 also boasts sequential read/write rates of up to to 5.5GBps and 1.8GBps -- speeds that would enable a user to save a 5GB video in less than three seconds.

The 6.4TB version of the PM1725 SSD boasts Samsung's best reliability rate as it's able to withstand up to five full drive writes per day for five years, which translates to writing a total of 32TBs per day during that time.

Samsung also announced its new PM953: an advanced NVMe SSD in both an M.2 (mini expansion card) and 2.5-inch form factors; it offers up to 1.92TB of storage capacity.

The PM953 is an update to the company's first NVMe SSD, the SM951, which was introduced in only an M.2 form factor earlier this year.

The new PM953 is aimed at large-scale data centers and mobile workstations as well as ultra-slim notebook PCs and high-end desktops. The M.2 version will be offered with either 480GB or 960GB model and the 2.5-inch version will be offered in 480GB, 960GB and 1.92TB capacities.

IBM makes push for Linux customers with Ubuntu mainframes

IBM is expanding support for Linux on mainframes with a few new initiatives announced today, including plans for an Ubuntu distribution.

The announcement also includes a new Linux mainframe server called LinuxONE and mainframe code contributions to a new "Open Mainframe Project" formed by the Linux Foundation.

IBM and Canonical are teaming up to create an Ubuntu distribution for LinuxONE and existing z Systems mainframe hardware.

"z Systems clients have enjoyed the performance, security and transactional capabilities of mainframes for decades," Canonical CEO Jane Silber wrote today. "By bringing the Ubuntu operating system that developers love to the IBM z Systems mainframe, we will make the cloud and scale out applications (e.g., Apache Spark, MongoDB, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL) customers love to run on Ubuntu available to the mainframe."

Ubuntu already supports IBM's Power servers, which run Unix and Linux. IBM and Canonical did not say exactly when Ubuntu for mainframes will be available.

There are already SUSE and Red Hat distributions for LinuxONE and z Systems hardware. Though IBM has its own z/OS operating system, it has supported Linux on the mainframe for 15 years.

LinuxONE comes in two sizes for large enterprises and mid-size businesses. The larger one, based on z13 hardware, can "scale up to 8,000 virtual machines or hundreds of thousands of containers—currently the most of any single Linux system," IBM said. SUSE is the first Linux distribution for mainframes to support KVM, a hypervisor for the Linux kernel.

The Linux Foundation's Open Mainframe Project brings together academic, government and corporate members to boost adoption of Linux on mainframes. To get it started, IBM announced a contribution of mainframe code to the open source community, including "IT predictive analytics that constantly monitor for unusual system behavior and help prevent issues from turning into failures. The code can be used by developers to build similar sense and respond resiliency capabilities on other systems."

Though mainframes may seem outdated, they still have a place in many data centers. IBM is hoping to boost adoption with free access to a LinuxONE Developer Cloud that will let developers test and pilot applications without having physical access to a mainframe. IBM said it will also lower the up-front costs of mainframe hardware by offering metered billing for LinuxONE hardware.

"The metered mainframe will still sit inside the customer’s on-premises data center, but billing will be based on how much the customer uses the system, much like a cloud model, [IBM GM Ross] Mauri explained," according to TechCrunch.

Apple's New Blueprint For Your Next iPad

The smartphone market is not a place to be caught in the middle. The most successful companies are working either at the ‘high volume with low price’ budget end of the market, or the ‘lower volume with higher price’ luxury end. Companies such as Sony and HTC have found themselves stuck in the middle of the market, and are struggling to turn a profit.

The same is happening in the tablet market. There was a point when tablets filled every space in the portfolio, and consumers were spoilt for choice, but over time the market separated like oil and water. With the upcoming launch of the 12.9 inch screened iPad Pro, Apple is ready to play the high price market, comfortable in the decision to sacrifice market share for profit and influence.

When tablets first arrived, the mobile computing landscape was naturally different than today . The prominent factors of mobility were a reliance on laptops to do significant portable computing tasks, and smartphones that generally sat around the four-inch display mark for communication and connectivity. Going from these to a nine- or ten- inch screen that the first generation tablets generally shipped with (including the original iPad) and the unique advantages in portability and screen size that a tablet could offer were clear.

Over time the biggest differentiators with a smartphone has been reduced. Screens grew larger with every annual flagship smartphone update pushing the diagonal size closer and closer to tablet territory. Thanks to the rising popularity of the phablet form factor, and the increased flexibility and ability to use a smartphone as the ‘main’ portable computer, desire for tablets fell.

That’s not to say that tablets did not have a place in the market. As devices for consumption, primarily video, it’s hard to argue that a tablet is not the best choice. But many of the reasons that made sense to buy one of those first tablets are now better served by the ‘regular’ smartphone.

As for the tablet’s main use in 2015 – media consumption – you don’t need cutting edge specifications to watch a video file or read an ebook. There’s enough power in older designs and previous iterations of every manufacturer’s tablet to handle these tasks. That tablets continued to work after many years of service likely contributed to the longer replacement cycle experienced by the tablet industry compared to its smartphone brethren.

And if your specifications are no longer required to be cutting edge, then manufacturers are going to be fighting on cheaper components and lower prices, diminishing the potential for creativity and dooming the tablet to stay inside that media consumption space.

If you think that echoes the race to the bottom in the Android smartphone market, you would be right.

So where does that leave the tablet market? Well, just like the smartphone market, the answer is in the two different areas. Android tablets are doing their best to fill the low-end of the market, which leaves the top end of the market open for innovation and inventiveness. Which is where the iPad Pro is likely to come in.

Apple’s next tablet is expected to have a number of substantive changes over previous models. The screen size is looking to be a monster 12.9 inches, the addition of Force Touch to the UI will allow for easier access to more options and settings when using applications, and the rumoured use of a digital stylus will aid the creative process on the large screen.

It’s also likely to have a hefty price, comfortably more than will be asked for the rumored updates to the iPad Mini and iPad Air.

While Android smartphones command the majority of market share (around 82%) much of that success is built around low margin devices. Apple’s iPhone may not have the overall numbers, but it commands far more profit per handset and sets up Apple to gain much of the profit from the smartphone ecosystem.

If Tim Cook and the team at Cupertino can perform the same strategic manoeuvres in the tablet space by creating a high-end device such as the iPad Pro, it can draw out the bulk of the profits from the tablet ecosystem and leave the brutal low margin / high volume commodity play to every other manufacturer.