BlackBerry may stop making smartphones

BlackBerry Ltd. (BBRY:US)’s John Chen is giving himself two years to overhaul the smartphone maker and offset declining handset demand with sales of software that connects computers with all manner of machines, from cars to heart monitors.

Chen, who took over as chief executive officer (BBRY:US) in November, is stepping up BlackBerry’s reliance on business customers instead of the smartphones that made the company famous. In the worst-case scenario in which he misses his goal of generating cash flow by this fiscal year, Chen said he’ll have six to eight quarters to replace declining hardware sales (BBRY:US) with higher-margin software revenue.

“I don’t have a plan to get rid of handsets, I have a plan to not be dependent on handsets,” Chen said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “All I need to do is replace the handset revenue, and this company will be very different.”


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Facebook soon ... less publicity but larger banners

The web version of Facebook will display shortly less advertisements in the right column. Good news? Yes and no: those that will be larger, for attracting the eye.

Facebook multiplies the ads, but not necessarily for the best: after stating that the Messenger application will soon be mandatory on mobile, the social network has formalized an overhaul of its advertising strategy. Program: less than banner ads on the web version, but those that remain will be larger.

A new advertising format was inaugurated for the occasion. Larger and more visual, it is intended to make better use of its content and attract the attention of the Internet more effectively. In fact, it should be less reluctant to click on, to the delight of advertisers. "In our first tests, we found an increased commitment - up to 3 times higher than before - people vis-à-vis the new design," says Facebook .

Another advantage to advertisers: This format is the same as that used in the current flow, which prevents repeated layouts. The benefit should be important to them, but also for Facebook, which is expected to attract newcomers. For members of the platform, if less ads will appear, the situation should be balanced with the presence of the most impressive spaces pub.

Nikon launches a more affordable 18-300 mm zoom lens for its SLR

In addition to two new cameras, Nikon has finally announced this morning a new lens for its SLR, a 18-300 mm more economical, which causes a decrease in the price of another good goal.

Nikon's full range of so-called trans-standards ranging from wide angle to telephoto zooms, an economic variant of an existing model. A third objective, the Tamron 18-270 mm , actually cannibalize sales of existing Nikon 18-300 mm .

Nikon 18-300 mm is launching an alternative that complements but does not replace the existing model. This new model equivalent to a 27-450 mm is less bright as one zooms: a maximum aperture of f / 3.5 wide angle but it gradually descends to f / 6,3 telephoto position, as on the Tamron, against f / 5,6 on the previous model. 


In return, the goal is more compact and lighter, and the new optical image stabilizer compensates for movements of the photographer up to 4 EV, against 3.5 in the high-end model (which means that compensates for blur move a shutter with sixteen times longer than without stabilization time).

The optical formula includes 3 aspherical lenses, as the other two goals and three ED glass (used to minimize chromatic aberrations), against 2 on the Tamron. The diaphragm has 7 circular blades, what issue a blur Honourable background. The manufacturer provides a carrying pouch, but the visor HB39 is optional.

Remains at 760 euros, Nikon AF-S DX 18-300 mm f / 3,5-6,3 G ED VR remains far from Tamron on the tariff plan, since it is sold 350 euros . The 18-300 mm f / 3,5-5,6 remains at 980 euros, but the famous 18-200 mm , the critically acclaimed, meanwhile passes from 870 to 650 euros.

Nikon: a new camera on Android

After a Nikon S800c that has not marked the spirits, Nikon tries again to launch a camera on Android. S810c is the first camera, with classic features: illuminated CMOS sensor 16 million pixels (1/2, 3 inches), 25-300 mm lens in 35mm equivalent (12x zoom so) and 3 ISO 200 at maximum. He filmed in 1080p30 and has a microSD and a internal memory of 1GB location for photos.

For the Android part, we have a 3.7-inch 720 x 480 LCD technology. The processor is based on Cortex A9, no further details (hopefully at least a dual core 1.2 GHz), and the device has 4GB of internal memory. This memory, there is 1 GB for applications, approximately 1 GB for photos and the rest is in principle reserved for Android 4.2.2, which runs the unit. In terms of connectivity, it has Wi-Fi (11n), a headphone jack, a microUSB socket and microHDMI output.

 

This camera's main advantage is its price: 300 €. But for the rest, cameras Android Samsung (or rather smartphones oriented photo) are more technically interesting, as the latest smartphones of the brand, which have a 16-megapixel sensor. For those who want to send photos via Instagram and social networks in general, the solution of Nikon may seem interesting, but limited technical capacity and the use of a system already exceeded (Android 4.4 is beginning to be implemented) which concern the worst.

OpenSSL is not developed by a project team

The consequences of bug Heartbleed in the OpenSSL library is still difficult to assess, but it is assumed that this is one of the biggest security vulnerabilities that have affected the internet. Yet Heartbleed could never exist, or at least be much less common. To improve the performance of OpenSSL, the OpenSSL development team has indeed circumvent a protection measure in the memory management.

In principle, the extension operates Heartbleed heartbeat that keeps active without SSL renegotiation. The client sends a packet HeartbeatRequest and must receive a packet from the server immediately HeartbeatResponse almost identical. The content of the packages is supposed to be identical, the client sending a piece of memory is copied and retried by the server. However, it is possible to cheat by asking the server to return a larger amount of data than that provided in the application, up to 64 kb . The server then uses a portion near or random memory to complete the Heartbeat response, up to 64 kb. Multiplying requests, an attacker can thus pumping portion of the server's memory, falling with a bit of luck on the SSL passwords or user keys.

The bug can be easily fixed by adding a simple verification: the query is not empty and that the answer is correct size. But according to Theo de Raadt , founder of OpenBSD, the bug could also have been avoided if using the standard OpenSSL based memory management (malloc) and not the specific version created by OpenSSL (OpenSSL_malloc) team . According to De Raadt, malloc is expected to crash itself facing some anomalies. But this protection resulting performance degradation on some platforms, OpenSSL has preferred to create its own function disabling it for all platforms.

An approach that makes him severely that team OpenSSL is irresponsible.