The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in European Union law that was adopted in April 2016 and became enforceable in May 2018 following a transition period of two years. It addresses data protection and the privacy of individuals within the EU and the export of their personal data outside the EU.

Its main aim is to give control back to individuals within the EU over their personal data as well as to unify regulation within the EU.

The GDPR legislation replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and will affect any companies processing or storing personal data of those in the EU. The main changes and how they affect data storage are briefly discussed below.

Main Changes In Legislation

Probably the biggest change is the extended jurisdiction of the GDPR. It now applies to all companies processing the personal data of data subjects residing in the EU, regardless of the company’s own location. The directive was more ambiguous and referred to data process ‘in context of an establishment’.

With regard to penalties, organisations breaching the regulations can be fined up to four percent of their annual global turnover or twenty million euros (whichever is higher). There is a tiered approach to penalties which culminate in this maximum fine. This applies to both controllers and processors, so ‘clouds’ aren’t exempt.

Conditions for consent are stronger and requests for consent must be given in an intelligible and easily accessible form. The purpose for data processing must also be attached to the consent and withdrawal of consent must be as easy as giving it.

Breach notification within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach will become compulsory in all member states where it is likely to “result in a risk for the rights and freedoms of individuals”. Customer will also need to be notified “without undue delay” after data processors first becoming aware of a breach.

Data subjects have a greater right to access regarding whether or not personal data concerning them is being processed, where and why. They can also request a copy of this data in electronic format free of charge.

Under the GDPR data subjects also have the right to be forgotten, i.e. to have all their personal data erased and to stop it being circulated, including the right to have third parties stop processing their data.

Data subjects also have the right to data portability whereby they can receive the personal data concerning them, as previously provided in a “commonly used and machine readable format”, and can pass on that data to another controller.

Privacy by design is becoming part of a legal requirement with the GDPR. It calls for the inclusion of data protection from the onset of the designing of systems, rather than as an addition.

There are also important changes regarding Data Protection Officers, alleviating the bureaucratic ordeal required under the current directive.

There are very few companies who won’t be affected by the new GDPR legislation so it’s vital that you make sure you’re aware of exactly what is required from you regarding data storage and GDPR, as ignorance is not a defence.

Our sister company Recycle You Tec have the ability to data wipe your sensitive information in accordance to the new GDPR regulations, using military grade software,  full documentation is provided to confirm complete sanitation of the data held on your hard drives.

Core Processors Explained.

Looking to buy wholesale laptops ? But not sure what the best Core processor is, we look into what is a core processor, the difference between them and how they work depending on what you shall be using them for.

What is a core in a processor?

A quad-core processor is a chip with four independent units called cores that read and execute central processing unit (CPU) instructions such as add, move data, and branch. Within the chip, each core operates in conjunction with other circuits such as cache, memory management, and input/output (I/O) ports.

What’s the difference between i3 i5 and i7 processors?

For the most part, you’ll get faster CPU performance from the Core i5 parts over Core i3. Some Core i5 processors are dual-core and some are quad-core. Most of the time, a true quad-core CPU will perform better than a dual-core processor, especially on multimedia tasks like video transcoding or photo editing

The most confusing part of buying a computer is the bewildering array of CPUs (also known as processors) on offer. Which? explains what you should be looking out for and what sort of processor is best for which task. If you’re buying a computer, chances are it’ll have an Intel processor on board, although a small number come with AMD chips. In this guide, we’ll explain what different Intel processor models mean and what sort of user they’re best suited for.

Intel Atom –

Tiny tablets Atom processors heralded the arrival of ultra-thin, ultra-light laptops in the mid-2000s. These chips offered four cores for sprightly everyday computing performance. Nowadays, these chips are generally relegated to very cheap Windows tablets costing under £200. They’re not fast by any means, but they make up for their lack of oomph with impressive battery life figures and their ability to fit into very thin devices.

Intel Celeron and Pentium –

Cheap laptops and very cheap desktops Celeron and Pentium processors are at the very bottom of Intel’s range. You might be familiar with the Pentium brand, with the name being a mainstay of more powerful computers of the late 1990s. Nowadays, it sits just above Celeron in terms of performance. Newer Pentium models, such as those launched in 2017 onwards, are becoming more common on laptops costing between £250 and £300. These chips are power-efficient, meaning they’re great when you want a laptop with a long battery life. They’re perfectly usable for web browsing and basic office work. You can also find Celerons inside some very cheap desktops. These machines tend to score very poorly in our tests and negate many of the advantages you get from having bought a desktop in the first place. We don’t tend to recommend them.

Intel Core i3, i5 and i7,

More complicated than they seem This is where things start to get a little bit confusing and is where Intel’s naming convention disguises how powerful a laptop actually is.   When looking at what sort of processor a computer has, be sure to check the full specification sheet to see the precise processor model. This makes a big difference to how powerful your PC will be. For example, a computer that’s labelled as having a ‘Core i5’ processor could have any number of different specifications. Taking the Core i5 example, your computer could have any of the following, and many beyond that as well: Core i5-7400, Core i5 7600K, Core i5 7300U, Core i5-7500HQ, Core i5-7400T and Core i5 7Y57. The trend applies to i3 and i7 chips, too. Note the different four-digit number and the trailing letter (or the Y in one case). It’s the trailing letter (suffix) that gives you the most information about what sort of processor you’re looking at. No suffix: This is a standard desktop processor, generally with four cores and a high clock speed for excellent everyday performance and the ability to edit videos and photos at high speed. T suffix: Found in smaller desktops and AIO PCs. These chips are functionally the same as those without a suffix and have the same number of cores, but with a slower clock speed. K suffix: The highest-performance processor you’ll find in a computer you can buy on the high street. Similar to a chip with no suffix, but generally with a higher clock speed. These chips can be ‘overclocked’ by those with technical knowledge. U suffix: ‘Ultra’ low power. These chips generally have two cores (although newer models now have four cores) and are among the slowest processors with Core i branding. These chips can often be found in cheaper AIO PCs and in many laptops. They can be suitable for photo and video editing, but tend to be a lot slower when performing tasks such as exporting files to disk. If you’re looking for a photo-editing machine, pick a Core i5 or even try to stretch to an i7. HQ suffix: Generally found in powerful laptops and normally come with four cores. Perfect for video and photo editing, but sacrifices battery life and portability. Y in the middle: Y are the lowest-power chips you can find. They aren’t really suitable for photo or video editing but will be fine for lighter tasks. The advantage of choosing one of these is very good performance for lighter tasks, coupled with a longer battery life. Laptops that use this chip tend to have fanless designs, meaning they’re totally silent and very thin.

Plus In April 2018, Intel announced Intel Core i3+, i5+ and i7+. This new naming convention shows when an Intel Optane SSD is installed in a computer. Optane works out which files and programs you use most and moves them to an ultra-fast SSD for better performance. You don’t have to manage this yourself; it’s done completely automatically and doesn’t affect where you’ll find your files on your PC. Core i9 In 2017, Intel introduced the Core i9 product lines. These are hugely expensive processors for PCs that cost in excess of £800. The company also introduced i9 chips to laptops in 2018. Again, these are reserved to powerful laptops designed for high-end work such as video editing.

At ALM we sell a wide range of Core wholesale laptops, ranging from i3 to i7 4th generation, so no matter what you are looking for, we can provide high end core processors at low wholesale value.

Visit our website here to check out our used laptops deals.

Before the iMac or even the iMac Pro, came the Apple Lisa, the desktop computer was developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It was one of the first personal computers to offer a graphical user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users.
Originally intended to sell for $2,000 and ship in 1981, the Lisa is delayed until 1983 and sells for $10,000. Utilizing technology that is ahead of its time, the high cost, with a 5 MB hard drive, relatively low performance and unreliable Apple FileWare, or “Twiggy” floppy disks, led to poor sales, with only 100,000 units sold ultimately sink the success of the Lisa.

Much of the technology introduced by the Lisa influenced the development of the Macintosh as well as other future computer and operating system designs, as in 1982 Steve Jobs joins the Macintosh project, at that time developing a much more limited machine with task-switching interface. Jobs redirected the Macintosh team to build a cheaper and better version of Lisa, releasing it in January 1984. quickly outstripping Lisa sales.

Newer versions of the Lisa were introduced that addressed its original faults and had lowered its price considerably, but it failed to achieve favorable sales compared to the much less expensive Mac. The final revision of the Lisa, the Lisa 2/10, was modified and sold as the Macintosh XL.

The Lisa operating system features protected memory, enabled by a crude hardware circuit compared to the Sun-1 workstation (c. 1982), which featured a full memory management unit. Based, in part, on elements from the failed Apple III SOS operating system released three years earlier, the Lisa’s disk operating system also organizes its files in hierarchical directories, as did UNIX workstations of the time which were the main competition to Lisa in terms of price and hardware. Filesystem directories enable the use of GUI “folders” with the Lisa, as with previous Xerox PARC computers from which the Lisa borrowed heavily. Conceptually, the Lisa resembles the Xerox Star in the sense that it was envisioned as an office computing system. Consequently, Lisa has two main user modes: the Lisa Office System and the Workshop.

The Lisa Office System is the GUI environment for end users. The Workshop is a program development environment and is almost entirely text-based, though it uses a GUI text editor. The Lisa Office System was eventually renamed “7/7”, in reference to the seven supplied application programs: LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal.

The operating system – rather than the applications themselves – is incapable of supporting the demands of advanced users and is prone to crash then restart under heavy load from large, complex spreadsheets or graphs produced from
them. Apple’s warranty said that this software works precisely as stated, and Apple refunded an unspecified number of users in full for their systems. These operating system frailties, and costly (to Apple) recalls, combined with the very high price point led to the failure of the Lisa in the marketplace.

BYTE wrote in February 1983 after previewing the Lisa that it was “the most important development in computers in the last five years, easily outpacing [the IBM PC]”. It acknowledged that the $9,995 price was high, and concluded “Apple is not unaware that most people would be incredibly interested in a similar but less expensive machine. We’ll see what happens”.

Apple sold approximately 100,000 Lisa machines at a price of $9995, generating sales in total close to a billion US dollars, against a development cost of 50 US million dollars.

An often-overlooked feature the Lisa system used is its early approach of document-centric[citation needed] computing instead of application-centric computing. On a Macintosh, Windows, or Linux system, a user typically seeks a program. In the Lisa system, users use stationery to begin using an application. Apple implemented stationery documents on System 7 in 1991 and attempted to further advance this approach on the Mac platform later with OpenDoc. Microsoft also later implemented stationery in a limited fashion via the Windows Start menu for Microsoft Office.

Today’s Mac is faster and more powerful than ever, iMac is now equipped with seventh-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and the latest high-performance graphics. Storage kicks into high gear as well, with the speedy and spacious Fusion Drive now available in standard configurations of both the 27‑inch and 21.5‑inch Retina models.

While at its time the machine looked state of the art, looking back being able to compare it to today’s Imac, it’s amazing to think how far technology has come in 30 years.

Tik Tok, Known as Douyin in China is a music video and social media app. The app lets you shoot and edit short clips, then add music and special effects to them. Tik Tok is owned by the same parent company that bought social video app Musical.ly for $1 billion last year.

According to Sensor Tower, Tik Tok has become a “total phenomenon” in China in recent months. In the first quarter of 2018, the app was downloaded an estimated 45.8 million times.

The app reached 150 million daily active users (500 million monthly active users) in June 2018, its seen as the most downloaded app in the world, beating Facebook-owned apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, even the powerful video-sharing application YouTube.

Recent History

• On 23 January 2018, the app ranked No.1 among free mobile app downloads on App stores in Thailand. In February 2018,
• Tik Tok launched a partnership with Modern Sky to monetize music.
• On August 2nd, 2018, Tik Tok merged their app with musical.ly to create a “bigger and better video community”. They kept the name Tik Tok and both app users joined to continue creating on one platform.
• Aug 2018, TikTok’s global talent campaign One Million Audition is in Russia for the first time.

Available on Android and the App store, just search for Tik Tok, just it out today.

This blog was completed by ALM Wholesale LTD, visit our website here.

Use advanced passwords
This may be the most obvious yet overlooked tip. A strong password includes uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, Don’t make the password a personal reference, and don’t store a list in a saved file. Most importantly, don’t use the same password for multiple accounts. There are some great tools like LastPass and 1Password that securely store passwords. Also, it’s crucial to change passwords frequently — especially for vulnerable accounts like email and banking.

Use a two-factor authentication
The most pro-active method to prevent a hack from occurring is by utilizing two-factor authentication. The process involves using your password and another step, such as a text message PIN that is sent to your smartphone. The best part of this process is that it is offered for free from most online companies, but sadly less than 10% of users take advantage of this service.

While Facebook calls it login approvals, Google and Microsoft call it two-step verification and Twitter names the process login verification. The process takes a few minutes to set up. Two-factor authentication is the best thing you can do to protect your accounts online, Even if your password is stolen or compromised in a breach, the hackers will not be able to access your account. Besides your social media and email accounts, ask your bank and insurance companies if two-factor authentication is available.

On public Wi-Fi? Don’t share personal data
Thinking about buying that plane ticket or checking your bank account while sitting at the coffee shop? You may want to think twice about that, as you have no idea how secure that connection is.The same goes for places like hotels and conference centers. Security researchers just uncovered a vulnerability that made Wi-Fi traffic at some of the world’s biggest hotels vulnerable to attack.There is no way for an individual to know if this is happening, so it’s best to be judicious with where you are surfing.

If you must access private information while on these networks, it would be good to use tools like virtual private networks (VPNs), which encrypt traffic so the Wi-Fi network can’t see where you’re surfing. Or, better yet, just set up a hotspot using your mobile data.

Use a VPN when necessary.
If you’re not at home and need to get online, use a virtual private network (VPN). However, be careful. Most of them are not as secure as you hope. Unless you can setup your own VPN, which you can do with Algo VPN from Trail of Bits, you may want to look into Cloak, Freedome, or PIA.

Be wary of the cloud
Here’s a good rule of thumb — if you don’t want people to access your information, don’t share it. This includes cloud storage. No matter how secure a platform says it is, you ought to keep in mind that you’re giving it to someone else to watch over. While it’s in the company’s best interests to keep it secure, many privacy experts maintain that anything you put online stands the chance of being published online.

Does this mean you shouldn’t store anything in the cloud? Not necessarily, it’s just helpful to remain aware of where your files are going. And to know the practices of your cloud storage provider. Additionally, be sure that if you delete files on your computer or smartphone that they are also deleted on any cloud backups you have too.

Be suspicious of email
A lot of cyberattacks are launched through simple malicious email campaigns. Email is a wonderful communication platform because you can sending anything to anyone, but that means it can be a huge security risk. Phishing, for example, sends victims seemingly innocuous emails that will lead victims to fake websites asking to update their personal information. The best way to avoid being scammed by phony emails is to just make sure the sender is who you think it is.

Check their email address to see if they match with the website you think it’s from. To be extra cautious you can check the IP address of the sender. You can do this by finding the source information from the email and looking for the IP address that follows the line “Received: from.” You can then Google the IP address to learn the email’s source. (Here is a good primer on finding email IP addresses.)

Conclusion.

It is impossible not to be online today if you want to be productive. However, with these systems in place, you can do it with security and peace of mind. It takes as little as 15 minutes to set up the right measures to avoid having your identity stolen, your email hacked, or sensitive photos and other information leaked.

This blog was completed by ALM Wholesale LTD

Visit our website here.