IT Minds

YouTube is getting a little pickier about who can make money there. Google's massive video site said Thursday that channels must reach 10,000 total views before they qualify to run ads, the most direct way to make money there. The logic, essentially, is to remove one of the main incentives that spur bad actors to set up bogus accounts with somebody else's content -- the easy money. YouTube characterized the move as a curb on channels that re-upload other people's videos or impersonate another's channel, in a  blog post  announcing the change. It also comes two weeks after YouTube suffered  big advertiser pull-outs  after a rash of news reports about brands' commercials running next to objectionable videos, like those with racist language. Starting Thursday, the service reconfigured its  YouTube Partner Program  that activates advertising on channels so that it won't serve any commercials until a channel reaches 10,000 total views. Typically, YouTube co

India's fourth-largest software services exporter, is poaching young talent -and in the process looking to possibly pip competitors who offer college placements -by hiring students straight out of high school and training them to be IT professionals.  HCL (market cap Rs 1.23 lakh crore) is offering talented Class XII grads with a background in science a starting salary of Rs 1.8 lakh per annum and train them to develop and test apps for the firm.  The technology giant re .. 

Hackers have started adding data-wiping routines to malware that's designed to infect internet-of-things and other embedded devices. Two attacks observed recently displayed this behavior but likely for different purposes. Researchers from Palo Alto Networks found  a new malware program dubbed Amnesia  that infects digital video recorders through a year-old vulnerability. Amnesia is a variation of an older IoT botnet client called Tsunami, but what makes it interesting is that it attempts to detect whether it's running inside a virtualized environment. The malware performs some checks to determine whether the Linux environment it's running in is actually a virtual machine based on VirtualBox, VMware, or QEMU. Such environments are used by security researchers to build analysis sandboxes or honeypots. Virtual machine detection has existed in Windows malware programs for years, but this is the first time when this feature has been observed in malware built for Linux-ba

It’s been a solid year and a half since Microsoft updated its  Surface Pro  line, yet the rumor mill has kept surprisingly quiet on any updates. But today we may be getting our first look at what’s to come, courtesy of longtime Microsoft connoisseur, Paul Thurrott. Unfortunately, there’s not much to it. Surface Pro 5 will not change the Surface Connect power connector, I was just told. Kaby Lake, nothing dramatic Thurrott says the Surface Pro 5 won’t make any dramatic changes. We’ll get Kaby Lake processors, as expected, but Microsoft is keeping its proprietary ‘Surface Connect’ charger (which also serves as a docking port). Some have taken this to mean that the Surface Pro 5 won’t get USB-C, but that seems extremely unlikely to me. Microsoft has held out on the port long enough, and the “no one uses USB-C” argument no longer holds water now that every new phone that isn’t an  iPhone  comes with it.  It’s also totally possible that the device could support charging through

Microsoft and Skype will now help you converse in real time with Japanese speaker — even if you don’t speak Japanese yourself. Skype  announced  this week that it was adding Japanese to its real-time translation software, which it  introduced in 2014 . In its announcement, Skype says: Japan has also become a beloved destination for both tourism and business, and we’re excited for the potential benefit Skype Translator will bring to Japan, the community and our users. In order to use it, click on the globe icon in your chat menu. If you’re using  Windows  10, click the Skype translator button in the Preview app. This isn’t just for Skype, though. Japanese is now available in all Microsoft Translation services. Japanese is the tenth language in the Translator’s repertoire. The others are: English Spanish Brazilian Portuguese French German Italian Mandarin Chinese Arabic Russian According to the same post, Japanese was a tricky language to add. Skype hopes this

Reliance Jio has decided to withdraw its Jio Summer Surprise offer in accordance with telecom regulator's advice. In a statement on Thursday, the telecom operator said: "Today, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised Jio to withdraw the 3 months complimentary benefits of Jio Summer Surprise." "Jio will be withdrawing the 3 months complimentary benefits of Jio Summer Surprise as soon as operationally feasible, over the next few days," according to the statement. Users who signed up for the offer by making a first-time recharge will, however, continue to get complimentary benefits. "All customers who have subscribed to Jio Summer Surprise offer prior to its discontinuation will remain eligible for the offer," Jio said. Under the Jio Summer Surprise offer, subscribers who enrolled before April 15 and recharged for plans of Rs 303 and more were entitled to get three months of complimentary service. Reliance Jio had on March