Apple has added a banner on its web site that says the company has teamed up with the American Red Cross for donations that will go to those who need it because of the Louisiana Floods that have affected the state for weeks.
Clicking on the link will take you to a donation page via iTunes where users can donate at various amounts.
Our readers can see it here.
CNN/Money: The hammer has fallen at Cisco.
Cisco (CSCO, Tech30) confirmed Wednesday that it will slash 5,500 jobs, or about 7% of its total workforce, to cut costs and make room for investments in trendy new areas like cloud computing and the Internet of Things.
"Today's market requires Cisco and our customers to be decisive, move with greater speed and drive more innovation than we've seen in our history," Cisco said in its earnings release announcing the cuts. "We expect to reinvest substantially all of the cost savings from these actions back into these businesses and will continue to aggressively invest to focus on our areas of future growth."
The layoffs, while significant, are smaller than had been rumored. CRN, a technology publication, first reported Tuesday that Cisco planned to cut 14,000 jobs or almost 20% of its workforce.
Cisco is pushing to make the shift from pricey networking hardware for businesses to software and cloud services.
Under CEO Chuck Robbins, who took over from John Chambers about a year ago, Cisco has pushed to stay competitive through a $1.4 billion acquisition of Jasper, a company focused on the Internet of Things, and through partnerships with businesses like Apple.
Despite those concerns, the layoffs come as Cisco remains in a position of some strength.
Cisco's earnings and revenue beat Wall Street estimates for the quarter ending in June. Overall sales hit $12.6 billion for the quarter, up 2% from the same period a year earlier.
Cisco is far from the only tech company making layoffs this year.
So far in 2016, tech firms have announced 62,917 job cuts, not counting the latest layoffs from Cisco, according to data provided by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. That's up 71% from cuts made in this sector last year through the end of July.
Those cuts have come from companies like Dell, Intel (INTC, Tech30) and Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30), among others.
Worsening the situation at Cisco on Wednesday, the company was also forced to put out a public advisory to all of its customers that its products are vulnerable to hacking and spying by the U.S. National Security Agency.
Earlier this week, a powerful set of cyberweapons -- largely believed to belong to the NSA -- was dangerously leaked to the public. These hacking tools exploit vulnerabilities in Cisco firewalls, as well as products by other technology companies.
Cisco rushed to release updates to at least eight of its products.
"I wonder what Cisco's business relationship with the U.S. government is like now, after this," cybersecurity expert Dan Tentler wrote on Twitter.
-- Jose Pagliery contributed to this report
“Malwarebytes has discovered a previously unknown piece of Mac malware that could easily fool less- technical users,” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac.
“Thomas Reed, lead researcher at Malwarebytes, told us that he found the malware on a scam page hosted on the official Advanced Mac Cleaner website,” Lovejoy reports. “It does rely on a naive user approving a request to install Advanced Mac Cleaner on their machine, but doing so also installs a second app known as Mac File Opener.”
“If a user tries to open a file for which they don’t have a corresponding app, it will be opened by Mac File Opener which then presents a reasonably convincing fake version of the normal OS X dialog box advising that no suitable app is installed,” Lovejoy reports. “The fake dialog box links to the macfileopener[dot]com website, which downloads other junk PCVARK apps, such as Mac Adware Remover or Mac Space Reviver.”
Editor's note: This is why Mac users should always use the Mac App Store.
Read more in the full article here.
After a call by U.S. Federal Communications Commission's commissioner, Apple and 32 other companies are banding together to make an industry-wide organized resistance against the expanding "robocall" scourge.
The FCC "Industry-Led Robocall Strike Force" is holding its first meeting in Washington D.C on Friday morning. AT&T CEO and strike force director Randall Stephenson is expected to detail the effort at some point Friday following the meeting.
The strike force is expected to report back to the commission with "concrete plans" on how to combat the automated call services on Oct. 19. No specific deadline for implementation of any such developed plan is known.
Apple, Google, and AT&T are three companies associated with the program. At this time, the identities other 30 companies involved in the effort are not yet known.
Apple has rudimentary blocking features in iOS. If a callers on a user's block list dials, the user is not presented with a notification of the call, nor with the phone ring.
However, at present in iOS, there is no wide-reaching "black list" feature, where known "robocallers" are blocked by default. Users can implement a de facto "white list" work-around with the "Do not disturb" feature, and selectively allow only users in the "favorites" or in specific defined group to ring the phone.
In July, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that he had spoken with major wireless carriers to expand carrier-level call-blocking services to users at no cost. Friday's meeting with the "strike force" appears to be in response to that call to arms.
Via: AppleInsider.com
