P@SHA to Launch ‘Digital Pakistan 2020’ Campaign

Chairman of Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) Syed Ahmad, announced the launch of  ‘Digital Pakistan 2020’ campaign at its 3rd Grand Tech Executive Meetup held in Karachi this evening.

Previous two events in the series were held in Islamabad and Lahore, while the fourth meeting will be organized in Peshawar.

The event was part of an ongoing series to unite top tech executives in the industry with young and emerging startups to collectively address the issues that the industry is facing. The objective is to promote diversity in technology and innovation and collaborate with the Government to address impediments to growth, such as quality human capital, infrastructure and taxation related issues, that are being faced by individuals as well as companies in the IT sector.

Syed Ahmad explained that several other regional countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Jordan, Indonesia and India have successfully established a knowledge-based economy powered by technology. “Digital Pakistan 2020” campaign aims to create a similar environment in Pakistan.

“The IT industry can address two of Pakistan’s major issues; creation of almost 300,000 new white collar jobs for the youth, and an export jump to reach 5 billion US dollars per year by 2020,” said Syed Ahmad.

According to Syed, P@SHA will be spearheading the Digital Pakistan 2020 campaign in collaboration with key stakeholders in the industry. However, support and strength of IT companies in big numbers would be needed to create a major impact and get quantitative results in this regard.

He elaborated that P@SHA is also in the process of creating separate community platforms for freelancers and startups in Pakistan, where they will be able to find information and advice on how to take their ventures forward. They will also be able to get their queries answered through an official platform and voice their concerns related to issues like payments, taxation etc.

The Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) is the trade association representing the IT and IT Enabled Services sector. It aims to continue being the voice of the IT sector by providing platforms that are geared towards creating more opportunities for members of the ecosystem both domestically and internationally, create a collaborative sphere and arrange workshops and trainings aimed to enhance the quality of startups and freelancers.

Impressions from the Event

Many dignitaries and tech professionals were in attendance at the event in Karachi. Given Pakistan’s potential in IT, many of the attendees were of the view that official support and lack of education about IT amongst the decision makers at the provincial level was a serious matter that had to be tackled as well. For a country’s IT sector to flourish, there was a need to induct professionals who understand the ebbs and flows of the global, and more crucially, the local technological landscape at both the provincial and federal levels.

Even though the event focused on answering the queries of tech companies with regards to various taxation, political, technological and infrastructural issues that were unique to the Pak IT sector, a query was raised from one of the attendees about what P@SHA can do to better serve the interest of freelancers. Freelancers from Pakistan are another focus area for P@SHA, given how instrumental they’ve grown in bringing invaluable foreign exchange into Pakistan.

All in all, P@SHA has taken a step in the right direction, setting off a debate about the need for Pakistani tech companies to come together and represent the interests of a vital component of 21st century Pakistan.

Neverware CloudReady Turns old PCs into Productive use or Chrome OS Rigs

Do you have an old, unusable Windows PC from the 2000s that has become unusable? Want to give it a new lease of life? Then you need to migrate to Chrome OS.  A new startup called Neverware has started to bring the dual boot option with Chrome OS to old systems and laptops for free.

Neverware charges a fee for bringing the same option for enterprise or large buyers. The OS comes as a part of an update in the company’s CouldReady software. The option is not just limited to Windows. If you have a Mac you can still try it out.

As noted by The Verge, the result is quite similar to what you’d expect from a regular Chromebook. The system boots reasonably fast, the performance is understandably acceptable and most of all, the aging machine won’t compel you to tear your hair apart anymore as it’s actually productive.

There are also understandable some caveats with this.  Most notably amongst them is the battery issue which is lackluster to say the least. So if you have an old Windows laptop, you have to have a charger with you to make the most of it.

Yes, Chrome OS isn’t the most fancy but given how well it works on meager hardware, with more storage and RAM, if anything it will work only better with CloudReady.

How To Install

• Get the install file from here. Its 593 MB large for Windows laptops.
• Once the file is downloaded, you’ll need a USB drive of 1GB capacity minimum.
• Check out the guide how to make a bootable USB installer for Neverware here. Once your USB is ready, keep following the instructions provided in the link to install it.
• To run it, you will have to make a partition to install the OS. Don’t forget to read the fine print.

Neverware CloudReady only works with the UEFI mode on Windows 7, 8 or 10 for dual-booting purposes. Even if you are an enthusiast who hasn’t tried anything new in a month, this is a free treat you should take. That is until it is taken down, or anything.

Google to Ban Flash Based Advertising - Bye Flash

Google had also joined the path of Apple, Facebook, and Youtube to kill the "Adobe Flash Player" by announcing that the company is banning Flash banner support from its Adwords Advertising platform.

"To enhance the browsing experience for more people on more devices, the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing are now going 100% HTML5" Google says.

It's been two decades since Adobe Flash has ruled the Web Space Animation Arena, which was the de facto standard for playing the online videos.

Flash Player had been famous for Zero-day exploits which are a potential threat to online users.

Even Adobe tried to maintain equilibrium by releasing a countless number of patches frequently (that got hiked), for instant reported vulnerabilities, but this had annoyed both customers and companies.

The endless troubleshooting of the Flash Player plugins never resolved the vulnerabilities.

To put a full stop on this issue... many major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Youtube, Google Chrome, Firefox had been magnetized towards the new substitutor - HTML 5.

• Facebook's Security Chief publicly called for Adobe to announce a 'kill-date for Flash.'
• Google Chrome has also begun blocking auto-playing Flash ads by default.
• In January this year, YouTube moved away from Flash for delivering videos.
• Firefox also blocked the Flash plugin entirely.

By ending up Flash, all the above companies found a silver bullet to the security issues that have plagued Adobe Flash for years, as well as eliminated a third party dependency.

Steve Jobs was right about the end of Flash as he quoted as saying in his letter:

“New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

HTML 5 has gained a Word of Mouth Popularity by many developers and also have many advantages like to play the video smoothly, in fact, in a better way.

So, Google also officially declared that it would not support Flash ads in Doubleclick Digital Marketing from July 30, 2016.

Moreover, from January 2, 2017, the company will discontinue the support for Google Display Network as a part of complete Flash Wipe Out.

However, as a Result of this awful reputation, Flash Player would be rebranded as “Animate CC” with some additional features like the direct conversion of Flash Files to HTML5 Canvas files.

Adobe Animate CC – mostly looks like an update to the Flash Professional software – supports Adobe Flash (SWF) and AIR formats 'as first-class citizens,' along with other animation and video formats, including HTML5 canvas, 4K and WebGL output.

Windows 10 Sends Data Everyday, after tweaking privacy settings

Myth: By disabling all privacy compromising and telemetry features on Windows 10 will stop Microsoft to track your activities.

Fact: Even after all telemetry features disabled, Windows 10 is phoning home more than you could ever think of.

Ever since the launch of Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 10 is believed to be spying on its users. I wrote a number of articles to raise concern about Windows 10 privacy issues, including its controversial data mining features and privacy invasion features.

The only solution believed to cope up with these issues is to disable all the telemetry features or use an automated tool to disable all privacy-infringing features in just one click.

But unfortunately, all these efforts got wasted because Microsoft still tracks you, even after you tighten your Windows 10 privacy to an extreme level, claims the recent analysis conducted by a Voat user CheesusCrust.

Traffic Analysis Reveals Extent of Windows 10 Spying

Curious to know the extent of Windows 10 spying, CheesusCrust set up his Linux laptop with a Windows 10 Enterprise virtual machine as well as a DD-WRT router that was being utilized to monitor traffic.

CheesusCrust also disabled every single tracking and telemetry features in the operating system. He then left the machine running Windows 10 overnight in an effort to monitor the connections the OS is attempting to make.

The results are not so surprising:

Eight hours later, he found that the idle Windows 10 box had tried over 5,500 connections to 93 different IP addresses, out of which almost 4,000 were made to 51 different IP addresses belonging to Microsoft.

After leaving the machine for 30 hours, Windows 10 expanded that connection to 113 non-private IP addresses, potentially allowing hackers to intercept this data.

Taking his test to a step further, CheesusCrust again installed Windows 10 Enterprise virtual machine on his laptop, disabled all tracking features and enabled a third-party tool known as DisableWinTracking. 

After this, the number was reduced to 2758 connections to 30 different IP addresses in the period of 30 hours.

The interesting fact here is: This analysis was conducted on Windows 10 Enterprise Edition that comes with the most granular level of user control, far more than the standard Windows 10 Home Edition used by a sizable audience.

The Greatest Cost to Owning 'Free' Windows 10

However, based on these logs, it would be inaccurate to say that Windows 10 is sending your personal data to Microsoft's servers. But, thousands of connection attempts in the period of 8 hours just to check for updates or adjust the time, sounds more complicated than thought.

A September 2015 blog from Terry Myerson, head of the Windows team, explained that while Windows 10 does send some of your data to the company, everything is encrypted and doesn't include any of your personal details.

Here's what Microsoft says about the Windows 10 Spying concerns:

"We collect a limited amount of information to help us provide a secure and reliable experience. This includes data like an anonymous device ID, device type, and application crash data which Microsoft and our developer partners use to continuously improve application reliability. This doesn't include any of your content or files, and we take several steps to avoid collecting any information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address or account ID."

While this research doesn't provide what details Windows 10 is sending to the company even after disabling the telemetry features, you have to keep this in mind that Nothing comes for FREE. "Free" is just a relative term. May be you are paying the greatest cost to owning Windows 10.

MSI’s Latest Tobii Gaming Laptop Comes with Eye-tracking Tech

Micro-Star International (MSI) may not be the biggest or most-renowned name in technology when we talk about China, but it certainly is among the country’s most potent and cutting-edge. The latest GT72S G Tobii gaming laptop from the firm is a swell monster which is also the world’s first with eye-tracking technology.

Yes, that’s right. At the bottom of the gorgeous display, you get a set of (there’re three of those) Tobii’s near-IR illuminators which may look quite cool to you, but relay the information of your eye movement to a stream or a game.

Software Support For Eye-Tracking Technology

This technology is supported by around two dozen video game titles, including Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue and Elite: Dangerous. This means your eyes can actually give out your location or strategy to your opponent so it’s a good idea to watch out. There’s also support for all those cool eye-tracking passwords, scanners and other cool stuff in Windows 10.

The Hardware

Apart from this, the laptop comes with a 17.3″ 1080p display, along with a full-color backlit SteelSeries keyboard underneath for better responsiveness. Under the hood, you get a SkyLake 2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7 K processor with GeForce GTX 900M GPU, 32 GB DDR4 memory, 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD as well as a Blu-Ray disc burner drive.

You can also connect up to two 4K monitors externally via USB 3.0. 3W speakers and a dedicated subwoofer will make audio more interesting, while there’s also HiFi DAC support if you have some expensive headphone gear.

The early buyers will get Tom Clancy’s The Division along with their purchase as a free perk. No new tech is expected to be affordable once it comes out and this is even more so the case with a backlit, eye-tracking, IR-boasting laptop from MSI.

Available for pre-order at $2600, the GT72S will be available in the coming few months.