Apple hat einen Monat nach Veröffentlichung der Hauptversion von MacOS Sierra bereits das Update auf Version 10.12.1 nachgelegt. Es behebt die größten Fehler des neuen Betriebssystems. (Apple, Betriebssystem)
Quelle: Golem
Who are Todd and Clare Hammond, and why are they leveling false charges against Julian Assange?
That's the question following last week&039;s bizarre news that the people behind the tiny online dating site ToddandClare.com abused their membership in a UN program to publicize a Bahamian sex crimes investigation into the WikiLeaks founder. Bahamian police said the investigation doesn&039;t exist — and WikiLeaks subsequently released a trove of documents that, if genuine, show a Todd and Clare representative attempting to blackmail Assange.
The Hammonds are the ostensible founders of ToddandClare.com. After interjecting themselves into an international dialogue on the role of WikiLeaks in the US presidential election, they remain curiously silent and unreachable — despite the efforts of journalists, WikiLeaks investigators, and the Reddit hive mind. But there may be a good reason they&039;re keeping such a low profile: Todd and Clare Hammond don&039;t seem to exist.
Instead, the person behind Todd and Clare appears to be an English toymaker, cartoon director, novelist, and book publisher named Akintunde Sahara Reid-Kapo.
Neither a small army of obsessed internet sleuths nor WikiLeaks and BuzzFeed News has been able to produce photographs, or any information beyond a dead LinkedIn page, about Todd and Clare Hammond. Nexis searches in the three states associated with ToddandClare.com — California, where they claimed to live; Texas, where the website is registered; and Michigan, where they claim to have been childhood sweethearts — returned no results remotely resembling a married couple named Todd and Clare Hammond.
The only obviously real and google-able person associated with the website ToddandClare.com (other than a programmer named Scott Drotar and a few now-baffled contractors) is Noam Chomsky, the leftist icon and Foucault interlocutor, whose endorsement of the ToddandClare side project KATIA (an algorithm to weed sex offenders out of the site) was plastered all over ToddandClare. (The site has been down since last week “following a serious hack.”)
Chomsky, for his part, seems similarly befuddled. In an email to BuzzFeed News, Chomsky said while it was possible he had endorsed the project, he had no recollection of doing so, “but that doesn’t prove much.”
But his endorsement, genuine or not, may be the key to unlocking the mystery behind ToddandClare. Metadata from an undated PDF press release touting Chomsky’s endorsement appears to indicate the file initially listed its author as “Yamie Chess Ltd” when it was created in mid-May, but was then re-saved a couple of minutes later to list “T&C Network Solutions” (ToddandClare.com&039;s corporate name) as its author.
According to its website, Yamie Chess is “a diversified applied mathematics company” that makes a special chess set and accompanying comics for children, and that, jarringly, also does “data analysis and statistical consulting” for “military clients.” Though the company is now registered through a shell agent in Wyoming, the mailing address of its founder, Akintunde Sahara Reid Kapo, is 10685-B Hazelhurst Dr., Suite 14354, Houston, Texas 77043.
That&039;s the same address and suite number as ToddandClare lists here.
This indicates that someone associated with, or having access to the software of, a toy and data analytics company called Yamie Chess, which shares or shared an office with ToddandClare, wrote a press release for the dating site.
Like ToddandClare, Yamie Chess enthusiastically claims endorsements from prestigious institutions and academics; its website says “Yamie Chess has been endorsed by America&039;s best mathematicians.” (It&039;s actually not.) And like ToddandClare, it seems no one is eager to take credit for Yamie Chess. There is no staff listed on the Yamie Chess site, and the two employees listed on the Yamie Chess LinkedIn are remote contractors.
However, a 2014 Fox News article cites “Tunde Reid-Kapo” as the CEO of Yamie Chess. And on IMDB, Tunde Reid-Kapo is credited as the director and writer of “King Tigermore In Strawberry Fields,” a short and amateurish cartoon promoting Yamie Chess, which played in a handful of film festivals around the US.
Reid-Kapo seems to have been born in England in 1984. He once owned a publishing company called Schiel and Denver, through which he published an “autobiographical” novella called My Autistic Waterlilly and a “personal declaration of independence” called Financial Existentialism. While running Schiel and Denver, Reid-Kapo signed up for the UN Global Compact — the voluntary organization that ToddandClare used to promote the phantom crime investigation against Assange. As this Medium post shows, Schiel and Denver shares a Google Analytics identifier with ToddandClare.com. And an internet archive search for Schieldenver.com shows that the site redirected to ToddandClare.com as recently as Sept. 27 of this year:
Tunde Reid-Kapo proves hard to find. His companies list addresses in Texas, Nevada, Wyoming, and London. A phone number provided to BuzzFeed News by one of the Yamie Chess–endorsing mathematicians connects to a Las Vegas law firm. In December 2015, the Australian Business Name register added a company called AKINTUNDE SAHARA REID-KAPO. But he&039;s not responsive from any of the phone numbers or email addresses connected to his name. A woman named Kate Hogan, who started sending emails on behalf of ToddandClare this month (and who, in an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, described Julian Assange as “an abhorrent and disgusting narcissist with no genuine interest in supporting women&039;s rights”), did not respond to a BuzzFeed News email asking her if she was in fact Tunde Reid-Kapo.
Tunde Reid-Kapo, left, at GenCon 2014.
Of course, there are a few people who might reasonably know his whereabouts. But they aren&039;t talking either. Scott Drotar, the programmer who claims to have built KATIA — the ToddandClare side project supposedly endorsed by Chomsky — hasn&039;t responded to calls and emails. Nor has the only other person strongly connected to Yamie Chess, the chess champion and professional poker player Jennifer Shahade.
The extent of Drotar&039;s involvement in ToddandClare is unclear. In February, Drotar told a BuzzFeed News reporter that he had been contracted by the site to analyze “preliminary data test studies” on KATIA, the sex-offender screening algorithm. (According to “Todd Hammond,” that algorithm had initially been built by a Google engineer, whom he refused to name. A story BuzzFeed News started in February about KATIA stalled when “Hammond” suddenly stopped cooperating after questions about this engineer.) In March, Drotar started a Kickstarter to fund “KATIA Plus.” The project videos feature both Drotar and Lexi Graboski, a Los Angeles actress who told BuzzFeed News she was hired to be a video spokesperson for ToddandClare over Fiverr, a freelance marketplace. (Graboski said that the account she interacted with on Fiverr, “NYCPrincess,” is now defunct.)
There’s also a connection between Drotar’s activity online and ToddandClare’s YouTube channel. On Drotar&039;s personal website, where he frequently blogs about living with spinal muscular atrophy, and on his personal YouTube channel, he promotes the work of Danielle Sheypuk, a psychologist known for her TEDx Talk about dating and sex for the disabled. A January video on the ToddandClare YouTube titled “Dating Advice for Guys With Disabilities” is captioned “In response to Dr. Danielle Sheypuk&039;s inspiring Ted Talk at Barnard College, Todd and Clare is the first American dating network to ACTIVELY WELCOME people with disabilities to join our network and search for love.”
And strangely, Drotar had an imaginary girlfriend named Claire before he started working as a programmer for ToddandClare. In a blog post from 2014 — months before Drotar claims to have started working on KATIA — Drotar describes his addiction to prescription painkillers. In it, he realizes that the addiction has led to a profound fabrication: “It was at this time that I realized something that completely changed my life. There was no Claire. Claire was a hallucination. Everything I thought that I knew about her is what my mind had made up to make me believe she was real.”
Then there&039;s Jennifer Shahade, a two-time US women’s chess champion. Listed on the Yamie Chess site and elsewhere as the game&039;s creator, Shahade promoted the game at several conferences in 2014, including Toy Fair in New York and GenCon in Indianapolis, where she appeared along with Reid-Kapo. She did not respond to calls or a Twitter message from BuzzFeed News.
The GenCon connection is especially interesting. In an interview with BuzzFeed News in February 2016 about ToddandClare, someone claiming to be Todd Hammond said that he and his wife, Clare, came up with the idea for the dating site at a tabletop gaming conference in Indianapolis called, you guessed it, GenCon.
Whether or not Reid-Kapo and Shahade — with or without Drotar — are the pair behind the tiny dating site, they certainly seem to hold the answers to the question of Todd and Clare Hammond&039;s real identities. Which leaves just one real question:
What, exactly, do they have against Julian Assange?
Stephanie Lee contributed to the reporting in this story.
Quelle: <a href="Who’s Behind The Dating Site That Accused Julian Assange Of Pedophilia?“>BuzzFeed
Apple
At Apple's iPhone event in September, company SVP Phil Schiller announced “Portrait Mode,” a new camera feature exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus. The beta version of Portrait Mode, which uses the device&039;s dual-camera system to add a gauzy, out-of-focus “bokeh” effect to a photo&039;s background while keeping the foreground in focus, is finally available today via the iOS 10.1 update.
The iPhone 7 Plus can preview Portrait Mode&039;s depth-of-field effect live, allowing photographers the ability to calibrate their portrait shots before hitting the shutter. “This is something you can’t even do with a DSLR,” Schiller said at Apple&039;s event.
Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News
To try out Portrait Mode, you need to have an iPhone 7 Plus with iOS 10.1 installed. Back up your phone, and go to Settings > General > Software Update.
Once the update is installed, open the Camera app and swipe to the left to reach the Portrait tab.
You&039;ll see suggestions in the preview area, like “more light required,” “place subject within eight feet,” or “move farther away.”
Allyson Laquian / BuzzFeed News
Portrait is exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus, because it takes advantage of the phone&039;s dual-camera system. The phone takes information from both the 56mm telephoto lens and the wide angle lens to map the “depth” of the image. The effect looks best on (no surprise here) close-up portraits.
The Google Camera app has had a similar feature, called “Lens Blur,” since 2014. The app uses computer vision algorithms to track the camera&039;s 3D position and sense the depth of a photo to create the same depth-of-field effects.
Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News
No word from Apple on when Portrait Mode will leave beta, but the company said it will continue to make improvements to the feature. Intrigued by Apple&039;s newest iPhones? Here&039;s our review of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
iOS 10.1 includes some other noteworthy features. In Messages, effects will now play when Reduce Motion is enabled. Previously, Reduce Motion needed to be turned off to view full-screen and bubble effects. Users can also replay Messages effects in the update. The Maps app will now show a transit fare comparison when viewing alternative transit routes. On the iPhone 7, the Home Button click settings now appear in search results.
The update is available for iPhone 5 and newer, iPad 4 and newer, and the sixth generation iPod Touch.
Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What The iPhone&039;s "Portrait Mode" Depth Effect Looks Like“>BuzzFeed
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors spoke about Trump both onstage and to BuzzFeed News at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco.
“I think this election has been a force in [highlighting] much bigger issues about how we think about women and immigration. It's gotten people engaged. I also think the creative energy that&039;s come out about women — there&039;s really the beginning of true change and true movement. And I give Trump thanks for that,” she said, smiling. Issues that affect women, such as sexual assault, were “already starting to reach crescendo,” and have now become national conversations.
Brad Barket / Getty Images
“I think the United States is incredibly robust. We’re not a new democracy, we’re very robust, but it is inappropriate for a presidential candidate to erode that around the edges. They should be trying to burnish it instead of erode it. And when you look at the pattern of things, it’s just not going after the media and threatening retribution for people who scrutinize him, it is also saying that he may not give a graceful concession speech if he loses the election. That erodes our democracy around the edges. Saying that he might block his opponent if he wins
erodes our democracy around the edges. These aren’t acceptable behaviors, in my opinion.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
“We have a duopoly in government and it&039;s not working … We&039;re just an ATM and our vote doesn&039;t even seem to count. Washington seems to get a lot more out of California than California gets out of Washington. We have a huge problem. We need a new system. We need a third party. We’re given two candidates and that&039;s the best we can do?!”
Danny Moloshok / Reuters
“The short-term impacts [on the stock market if Trump is elected] are probably overstated and the long-term impacts are probably underestimated. Most of us who have public market exposure are getting an emotive risk off going into November 8th, and so a lot of the volatility is going to be short term and relatively muted if he wins. I just think you have to take a bigger step back and say: It’s like you’re just repudiating all the good things that make America awesome — and the long-term implications of that. People like us, people like me — I immigrated to this country and I pour enormous amounts of capital, I pay enormous amounts of taxes. I want to be here, I want to help this team win.”
Mike Windle / Getty Images
Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What Tech Leaders Think About Trump“>BuzzFeed
In this briefing, Dynatrace’s Martin Etmajer explains how to efficiently tackle the complexities of microservice architectures in Continuous Delivery and perform root-cause analysis once in production in seconds, instead of weeks, using Dynatrace on OpenShift.
Quelle: OpenShift
Celanese Corporation reduced operational costs by more than 50 percent while improving response to workload demands and delivering superior service levels for its managed infrastructure by switching to a cloud managed services solution.
Now the chemical company can reallocate these cost savings to drive innovation, strategy and an increased emphasis on security.
Based in Dallas, Texas, Celanese produces a wide variety of specialty materials used in everyday household and industrial products. The company’s Materials Solutions division and Acetyl Chain division share an IT infrastructure running a single instance of SAP.
This infrastructure supports various business-critical functions such as finance, human resources and manufacturing, as well as applications including business intelligence, advanced planning, risk and compliance.
Costs piling up
To support its SAP deployment, Celanese hosted its servers in a data center owned and operated by a third party. As the infrastructure expanded to match the company’s growth, Celanese faced serious the challenge of rising costs associated with owning physical assets that were managed and maintained by somebody else. Frequent upgrades also required the company to outsource for people with niche SAP skills, which drove costs even higher.
“The costs were piling up, and we reached the point where we had to transition away from the capital expense model,” Madhu Bangalore, Senior Manager of Application Development Strategy for Celanese, said. “As we moved to a virtual environment, we were still tied up in the old world of physical machines, and the upkeep with maintenance costs, operating costs and licensing costs became exorbitant.”
To remain competitive, Celanese sought to cut operational costs with a more flexible delivery model for its SAP platforms and operations, reducing the need to outsource for people with niche skills to manage the infrastructure.
Cutting costs with managed cloud hosting
Celanese engaged IBM Cloud Managed Services for SAP to help the company move 40 SAP systems, 213 interfaces and approximately 30 terabytes (TB) of data to a private hosted cloud infrastructure. The new solution provides Celanese with a security-rich, cost-effective and scalable cloud environment with nearly all operating system and system management licenses and services consolidated into a single, monthly charge.
By moving to a private hosted cloud solution, Celanese can quickly bring new businesses online and see the immediate impact on the company’s operating budget while avoiding the usual capital expenses associated with such acquisitions. The solution drives a lower total cost of ownership and is a simpler way to measure return on investment. This is particularly valuable in an industry in which mergers, acquisitions and divestitures are common.
As a result of this successful implementation, the company is now looking into moving its non-SAP data center into the cloud as well. “[IBM] definitely knew what they were doing,” Bangalore said. “We were confident they were the right partner to help take us through the migration.”
Learn more about what a cloud managed services solution can do for your business, whether you’re using SAP, Oracle or another application.
The post Why Celanese moved to a cloud managed services solution appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud
Imagine being able to stand up thousands of tenants with thousands of apps, running thousands of Docker-formatted container images and routes, on a self-healing cluster. Take that one step further with all those images being updatable through a single upload to the registry, all without downtime. We were given the opportunity to do just that on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform running on Red Hat OpenStack on the 1000 node Cloud Native Foundation’s cluster.
Quelle: OpenShift
Restricting access to your content by country is a powerful CDN feature. We’re excited to announce this is now available for all Akamai Standard profiles directly in the Azure portal.
This feature will allow you to specify specific paths on your endpoint and set rules to block or allow access to a specific list of countries.
If you are using either Standard or Premium from Verizon, the feature will still be accessed through the supplemental management portal for the time being. It will be migrated to the Azure portal in the future.
To access the new feature, follow these steps:
Find your CDN profile at https://portal.azure.com.
2. Select an Endpoint.
3. Navigate to Geo-filtering.
4. Enter a file or directory path for PATH, an ACTION to block or allow, and one or more countries. The example below allows access to “myendpoint1.azureedge.net/pictures/mypics/*” from only the United States.
5. Hit Save and wait for the changes to propagate.
For more details, see please visit the full documentation page.
Additional resources
CDN feature overview
Azure CDN UserVoice
Azure CDN MSDN forum
Quelle: Azure
Studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam? Be sure to check out our new, AWS-authored study guide available on Amazon.com in hardcopy or Kindle e-reader formats.
Quelle: aws.amazon.com
Die Dualkamera des iPhone 7 Plus lernt mit dem Update den angekündigten Unschärfeeffekt für Fotos. iOS 10.1 soll außerdem etliche Probleme beseitigen, unter anderem bei Bluetooth-Verbindungen zu Dritt-Hardware.
Quelle: Heise Tech News
