Wed. Jul 15th, 2020

Grace

Nissan stakes its EV future on the 300-mile range Ariya crossover – TechCrunch

By Grace 17 hours ago

Nissan unveiled today the Ariya, an all-electric SUV with an estimated 300 miles of range and a starting price tag of $40,000 that marks the beginning of a four-year plan aiming for growth and profitability.

The Nissan Ariya will first be sold in Japan in mid-2021, before heading to dealerships in the U.S. and Canada later in the year, the company said in digital event in Yokohama, Japan.

The unveiling is a milestone for a company that has been embroiled in controversy for more than year, following the arrest and subsequent escape of Carlos Ghosn, the former chairman of the Nissan Group and the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance.

Nissan Ariya

Image Credits: Nissan

It’s also the first all-electric to come out of Nissan since the early EV pioneer introduced the Leaf hatchback a decade ago. Nissan was an early EV pioneer and has sold nearly 500,000 Leaf vehicles since 2010. But any early dominance

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Data breaches decline 33% in the first half of 2020

By Grace 1 day ago

The Identity Theft Resource Center projects 2020 is on pace to see the lowest number of breaches and exposures since 2015.

Source: Identity Theft Resource Center

Publicly reported US identity compromises dropped 33% in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019, according to research released Tuesday by the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

Breaches impacting individuals have also dropped 66%, according to the ITRC’s data breach analysis. The nonprofit cataloged 540 public reported data breaches impacting 163,551,023 individuals as of June 30, 2020. In contrast, there were 811 breaches in 2019 impacting 493,011,910 individuals, according to the ITRC.

Attacks by external threat actors are still the most common cause of a data breach (404 so far in 2020), but compromises caused by internal threat actors are at a three-year low (83 so far in 2020) as more people work from home and have

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How Liberty Mutual is transforming its IT using serverless computing

By Grace 1 day ago

Over the last four years, Liberty Mutual has seen major process improvements and substantial cost savings by adopting serverless computing strategies.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

With a large IT infrastructure that’s still being transitioned to the cloud, global insurance giant Liberty Mutual had a conundrum. Like many other companies, it’s IT staff was kept so busy running the infrastructure that they didn’t always have the time to focus on software and process projects that could directly streamline and improve the company’s workflows.

But, that’s been changing over the last four years as Liberty Mutual began adopting serverless computing, which leaves the infrastructure management to cloud vendors, giving IT staffers much more time for creativity in building applications for the company’s employees.

The 108-year-old insurance company first started moving operations to the cloud about six years ago as part of a CIO-led cloud initiative to improve its IT processes. About 40% of

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Huawei posts revenue growth in H1 despite sanctions and pandemic – TechCrunch

By Grace 2 days ago

Huawei reported a 13.1% year-over-year revenue growth in the first half of 2020, even if countries around the world continued to weigh up bans on its equipment and smartphone sales shrink amid the pandemic, the telecom giant said in a brief on Monday.

The firm’s revenue reached 454 billion yuan ($64.88 billion) in the period, with its carrier, enterprise, and consumer businesses accounting for 35%, 8% and 56% of total revenue, respectively. It finished with a net profit margin of 9.2%, a slight increase from 8.7% in the same period last year.

The privately-owned company did not specify what contributed to its H1 growth, but said in the release that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, “information and communications technologies” — the main focus of its business — “have become not only a crucial tool for combatting the virus, but also an engine for economic recovery.”

The growth came amid the U.S.’s

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Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: A cheat sheet

By Grace 2 days ago

Samsung released a rugged smartphone for the first time in three years, and this one is built with businesses in mind.

Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro

Image: Samsung

Samsung announced in January 2020 the release of a new business-optimized and ruggedized smartphone called the Galaxy XCover Pro to minimal fanfare and only the briefest of mentions in the tech news cycle. It’s understandable that the Galaxy XCover Pro didn’t merit a lot of buzz when Samsung’s other 2020 Galaxy devices pack so many flagship features–the Galaxy XCover Pro isn’t a flagship phone, and it’s not packed to the gills with flagship features that enhance gaming, web surfing, and other consumer uses. 

What the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro does have is a design built with businesses in mind. There are a variety of applications for the IP68, MIL-STD-810G-compliant device that Samsung consumers probably won’t care about, but businesses

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Why tech is impossible for millions of Americans

By Grace 2 days ago

Coronavirus is making the digital divide worse. Starry CEO Chet Kanojia explains how we can fix it.

Dan Patterson, senior producer for CNET and CBS News, spoke with Chet Kanojia, CEO of internet service Starry, Inc. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Chet Kanojia: The big reason why what’s developed is where you have mobile providers, they’re competitive. There used to be four major providers, now there are three major providers, but the cable companies have the ability to package mobile connections as well. So you have people solving for different niches, right? 

You have your preferred carriers, for example, that are focused on the Hispanic population, the immigrant population, or things like that. Really the underlying theme is there’s a lot of competition in those markets, whereas in the fixed-line business, there is no competition, practically speaking–that’s what really drives the divide, because these networks are

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