Google's Chrome OS platform sure has come a long way.

From the early days, when Chrome OS was little more than an experimental "browser in a box," to today — with the platform powering first-class hardware and supporting a diverse range of productivity applications — Google's once-crazy-seeming project has turned into one of the world's most intriguing and rapidly expanding technological forces.

I've been covering Chrome OS closely since the start. I lived with the first Chromebook prototype, the Cr-48, and have used Chromebooks as part of my own personal computing setup in varying capacities ever since. I write about the field not only as someone who's studied it professionally from day 1 but also as someone who has used it personally that entire time, up through today.

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Apple will probably release the next versions of iOS and macOS to users within the next four weeks, according to past practices of the Cupertino, Calif. company.

The new operating systems — iOS 12 and macOS 10.14, the latter also known as "Mojave" — have been circulating as betas for developers since early June and for the general public since the tail end of that month. Unless Apple upends the cadence it's established the last three years — the last two in particular — it will soon wrap up those previews, then deliver iOS 12 in three weeks and macOS Mojave in four.

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VMware is expanding its security range with a new version of its virtualization software that has security integrated into the hypervisor.

“Our flagship VMware vSphere product now has AppDefense built right in,” VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger told the audience at VMworld 2018, which kicked off this week in Las Vegas. “Platinum will enable virtualization teams – you – to give an enormous contribution to the security profile of your enterprise.”

Announced one year ago, AppDefense is VMware’s data-center endpoint-security product, designed to protect applications running in virtualized environments. AppDefense uses machine learning and behavioral analytics to understand how an application is supposed to behave, and it detects threats by monitoring for changes to the application’s intended state.

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While Java Development Kit (JDK) 11 won’t arrive for another month, work proceeds on its successor, JDK 12, with a switch expressions capability lined up for the release, expected in March 2019. Simplified coding is a goal of this capability.

Switch expressions, which will be in beta state in JDK 12, extends the switch statement so it can be used as either a statement or an expression. This would enable both forms to use either “traditional” or “ simplified” scoping and control flow behavior. These changes would result in simplified “everyday” coding and prepare the way for use of pattern matching in switch.

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Microsoft is offering extended support for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 to customers who shift these platforms from on-premises into Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

The scheduled ends of extended support for the 2008 versions of Server and SQL Server are Jan. 14, 2020 and July 9, 2019, respectively. But if customers move these workloads into the Azure cloud, they get three extra years of support at no extra cost beyond the price of the Azure service.

In the past, when the end-of-life clock started ticking, organizations made a mad dash to upgrade operating systems and SQL servers in order to keep their systems supported. Some organizations chose to continue running their applications completely unsupported, unpatched and un-updated – a very bad thing to do in this age of viruses, malware and cyberattacks.

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Smaller monthly updates for Windows 10 may help push the operating system onto more machines as its predecessor faces retirement, a patch expert said.

"Lots of companies are feeling the pain [of large updates] and deferring or delaying migration to Windows 10 because of that," said Chris Goettl, product manager with client security and management vendor Ivanti, in an interview last week. "We should see Windows 10 adoption move forward again because [customers] can overcome the size problem."

Currently, Microsoft delivers three different sizes of quality updates — security patches and non-security bug fixes that are issued several times monthly — full, express and a third, dubbed delta. However, beginning with Windows 10 1809, the feature upgrade set to ship next month or in October, Microsoft will offer only one size; that update will be considerably smaller than what Microsoft now calls the full update and only slightly larger than express on individual PCs.

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When Delphix moved from selling only packaged software to also offering Software-as-a-Service solutions, it found something lacking in the DevOps principles it had been following for years.

Company leaders noticed the absence of security and thought it, too, should be included in processes alongside development and operations.

Today’s best laptops bask in the glow of Intel’s 8th-gen Core CPUs, which at last bring quad-core performance to mainstream machines. The only thing missing is Oprah shouting, “and you get an 8th-gen quad-core laptop!”

There’s plenty of good news with this new generation. Our favorite convertible laptop, HP’s Spectre x360 13, sports a quad-core 8th-gen chip while maintaining its diminutive size. It’s really the total package. 

But let’s be honest: You probably don’t need a quad-core powerhouse, especially if the hottest application you run is Microsoft Excel. Check out our budget favorites, like the Acer Aspire E 15 and Asus ZenBook Flip, whose dual-core CPUs do just fine with mainstream fare. Or read about the Asus Chromebook Flip, a well-priced and versatile laptop for living on the web—or delving into the wide, wide world of Android apps. 

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Email holds the keys to the kingdom. All your password resets go through email, and abandoning an old domain name makes it easy for attackers to re-register the old domain and get your stuff.

The problem is especially grave for law firms where partnerships form, dissolve, and merge often, security researcher Gabor Szathmari points out. A merger or acquisition typically involves either new branding for the new firm, with a new domain name to match, or the acquired firm dropping their old branding and domain name. Letting those old domains expire is dangerous.

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Windows 10 on Chromebooks? At first, it sounds downright stupid. You can already do just about everything on a Chromebook with Chrome OS, including running a ton of Windows apps. Why bother? I have some ideas, but first, the background.

The eagle-eyed developers at XDA Developers have spotted a new Google Pixelbook firmware branch. This new code, “eve-campfire,” includes a new “Alt OS mode.” That “Alt OS”? WIndows 10.

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Traditional firewalls track the domains that traffic is coming from and the ports it's going to. Nextgen firewalls go beyond that -- they also monitor the content of the messages for malware and data exfiltration and can react in real time to stop threats. The newest iterations do even more, adding behavioral analytics, application security, zero-day malware detection, support for cloud and hybrid environments, and even endpoint protection.