Enough with the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) rumors: News about the 10th anniversary Apple iPhone seems to be getting real...

PROCESSOR IN PRODUCTION

Much of the speculation about the expected 5.8-inch iPhone 8 of late has been about delays and more delays, but a report from DigiTimes that has been picked up by a slew of others states that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has started cranking out the main processors for the much anticipated iOS device. 

The presumed 10nm A11 system-on-chips would likely show up in the iPhone 8 as well as expected iPhone 7s and 7s Plus phones. While Apple uses multiple suppliers for other components, such as modems, TSMC is believed to be the only A11 supplier.

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Amazon is cranking out new products as fast as it can, such as the new Alexa-powered Echo Show device with a screen, but SNL has an even more practical idea.

The SNL spoof ad, from the minds of Amazon and AARP, addresses the unique needs of older people unable to quite get the latest gadgets. It even includes Uh Huh mode to deal with those situations where people make a short story longer...

MORE: Most memorable SNL tech bits and skits

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When I saw that the creators of the Andrew File System (AFS) had been named recipients of the $35K ACM Software System Award, I said to myself "That's cool, I remember AFS from the days of companies like Sun Microsystems... just please don't ask me to explain what the heck it is."

Don't ask my colleagues either. A quick walking-around-the-office survey of a half dozen of them turned up mostly blank stares at the mention of the Andrew File System, a technology developed in the early 1980s and named after Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. But as the Association for Computing Machinery's award would indicate, AFS is indeed worth knowing about as a foundational technology that paved the way for widely used cloud computing techniques and applications.

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Vendor partnerships usually don't raise too many eyebrows or pulse rates around here, but when I came across an announcement by Lemko and Federated Wireless promoting a joint effort on the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) it did get my attention.

CBRS, if you aren't familiar, refers to shared 3.5 GHz spectrum recently opened by the FCC for commercial applications, and everyone from the big carriers to the likes of Cisco and Google are throwing their weight behind it. One possible application would be LTE services, which could come in the form of extended carrier networks, new cable service provider networks, and even private enterprise networks for IoT or other connectivity.

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If you think you’re sick of the iPhone 8 rumors, pity Apple CEO Tim Cook, who acknowledged during a Q&A following the company’s earnings results announcement this past week that “earlier and much more frequent reports about future iPhones” did in fact “pause” purchases of current models.

451 Research, issuing smartphone demand survey findings this week, concurred with Cook's assessment, noting that while Apple remains the preferred manufacturer among planned smartphone buyers surveyed, much fewer of them are planning purchases in the next 90 days as they anticipate iPhone 7s, iPhone 7s Plus and possibly a 10th-anniversary premium phone. 

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Snagging an internship at Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Google is certainly reason for celebration, but interns can also fare pretty darn well at enterprise-oriented vendors such as Juniper Networks, VMware and Salesforce.com.

The latest report from online jobs site Glassdoor on highest paying internships features at least 15 tech companies in the top 25, depending upon how you define a tech company.

Facebook is No. 1 on the list with median monthly pay of $8K, not to mention lots of perks, from free food to housing accommodations in some cases.

Amazon and Apple both have median intern pay of $6,400 per month, and Google follows close behind with $6K per month.

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Columbia University has announced that Jeannette Wing, who has led Microsoft Research since the start of 2013, will be circling back to the world of academia in July as director of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and professor of computer science. 

“Jeannette Wing is a pioneering figure in the world of computer science research and education, and her addition to the University’s academic leadership team reflects the continuing expansion of our work in this field,” said Columbia President Lee Bollinger said in a statement. “Our Data Science Institute is indispensable to virtually every scholarly initiative at the University dedicated to addressing a societal problem.  The benefits to be derived from Jeannette’s leadership and her presence here will be immense.” 

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I did wonder whether my youngest teenage son would return from a recent week-long service trip on which electronic devices were banned quivering from some sort of social media withdrawal, but he survived just fine and the salmon in Washington State thank him for his efforts.

Despite what you might see all around you, teens taking either voluntary or involuntary hiatuses from social media apparently isn't entirely unusual: A new survey of nearly 800 Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 found that 58% of them reported taking significant breaks from the likes of Snapchat and Instagram.

What's more, 65% of those teens claimed to have done so voluntarily, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. Also, one in five teens who haven't taken a break say they would like to do so.

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Verizon has begun warning customers that it’s getting out of the email game and that you need to act soon if you want to keep your Verizon.net email address.

One alternative is to actually keep that Verizon.net address, but have Verizon acquisition AOL manage it for you. So your address would be yourname@Verizon.net on the surface, but AOL underneath due to Verizon ending its email service. (See also: "How to keep your Verizon email account from being killed off")

But if this whole situation might be prompting you to make a clean break from your carrier’s email system, here are a few free messaging services that you might want to consider, some more obvious than others. I’ve taken a fresh spin through each of the email systems to collect the latest info on them, figuring at least a good chunk of the 4.5 million email accounts controlled by Verizon will be moving elsewhere sooner than later.

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Professor Dina Katabi's endlessly inventive team at MIT's CSAIL outfit has now come up with what it says is an unobtrusive way to wirelessly detect possible health issues via changes in walking speed.

The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) claims its WiGait system is more accurate than wearables like FitBits and smartphone-based step trackers, and they outline the technology in a new paper titled "Extracting Gait Velocity and Stride Length from Surrounding Radio Signals" to be presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The researchers claim WiGait, a wall-mounted device described as being the size of a small painting, is 95% to 99% accurate at measuring walking speeds of multiple people and requires no wearable gear on its targets.

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Perhaps new research that found more iPhone buyers opting for legacy models over the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will give Apple a little nudge to make sure there's really incentive to buy the forthcoming iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) instead of going with the 7 or 7 Plus later this year.

Not that Apple necessarily is going to take any cues from research outfits like Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, but anything to ensure that the next flagship iPhones aren't dull is worth at least pointing out...

IPHONE 8 BATTERY LIFE

Battery life is far from a glamorous topic, but really, what's more important in terms of an iPhone upgrade for most users? As Apple Insider reports, citing the relentless KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could be planning to use a logic board format that will allow for more space in the iPhone 8 chassis, and that could mean room for a more powerful and longer lasting battery. 

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Lydia Kavraki, a professor of computer science and bioengineering at Rice University, has been named as the 2017-2018 Athena Lecturer by the Association for Computing Machinery in recognition her work in robotics. 

Initiated in 2006 by the ACM Council on Women in Computing, the Athena Lecturer Award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science and comes with a cash prize of $25K via Google. And there is an actual lecture, to be presented at an ACM event.

Association for Computing Machinery/Rice University

An exciting class of startups with a focus on enterprise IT are those built on open source foundations, in some cases commercializing and adding value to an already popular open source project.

We recently highlighted 5 such open source-oriented companies, and below we introduce you to 5 more. Note that this list only contains companies that have announced funding over the past year or so, and isn't intended to be an all-inclusive compilation. Without further ado…

Confluent

Founded: 2014

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Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's USAFacts project, an ambitious and sometimes overwhelming repository of data about local to state to federal U.S. government spending and outcomes that was launched on Tax Day, is surprisingly light on technology-related data.

Not that Ballmer is obligated to spend his post-Microsoft life focused on technology —indeed, he's mainly been known for his purchase of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers in recent years — but given his background I expected that I might find more tech-related nuggets in this graphically-pleasing data trove that's been three years in the making. Interested in the possibilities for data journalism stories spun from USAFacts, I made an inquiry to the outfit's media relations contact and will update this post if I hear back from them with any clarification on possible additions of such techie numbers.

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As if getting venture funding themselves isn't exciting enough for open source-oriented startups, seeing an open source-focused company like Deis get snapped up by Microsoft must be a thrill as well.

While it would be more thrilling, perhaps, if Microsoft disclosed how much it paid, I'm sure those in the startup world and their backers have ways of finding out that information. Not that the acquisition path is necessarily the exit route that all of these startups envision for themselves, but such money can obviously talk.

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When it comes to iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) scuttlebutt, there are rumors, and then there are leaks. This has been a big week for leaks...

LEAKY IPHONE 8

Renders, schematics or whatever you want to call them were circulating wildly among Apple rumor mongerers and watchers this week. Appropriately enough, one such schematic surfaced on a site called /Leaks, and shows an iPhone with a vertical dual-camera set-up and a home button on the back, and a very comprehensive display on the front.

MacRumors cautions that it's very hard to say how legit the schematic is, and that if it is for real, it could well be any of numerous prototypes that Apple engineers have tested.

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If you're a Verizon customer who uses the carrier's email service, you very well might have an imminent decision to make about your Verizon.net address or risk losing access to your account and associated data.

Verizon has been notifying customers on a rolling basis in recent months that it plans to shutter its email service so that the company can focus on higher priorities. The Verizon.net email domain can be traced back to 2000, when Verizon formed, and the company stopped issuing new Verizon.net email addresses in late 2015.

MORE: 2016 Technology Industry Graveyard | How Verizon finds IoT innovation outside its four walls

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Cisco is holding its first big developers' conference, DevNet Create, on May 23-24 in San Francisco, and the focus will be on the Internet of Things and cloud computing.

You won't find mentions of terms more commonly associated with Cisco, like routers or switches, on this event site, though they're there in spirit in that the conference is described as being "where applications meet infrastructure."

You can learn more about DevNet Create via my interview with Susie Wee, Cisco VP and CTO of DevNet Innovations. But here are 5 basic things to know about the event if you're thinking this might be a show for you:

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You’d think ponying up for a technology leader to be your school’s commencement day speaker would be so much less of a hassle than going with a high profile politician such as President Donald Trump or his rival Hillary Clinton, yet 2017 appears to be a lean year for top techies on the college/university commencement circuit.

This seems especially true for tech leaders in enterprise networking and IT, whereas in the past the heads of companies such as Cisco, IBM and Salesforce.com have commanded the commencement day stage at top schools.

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Speculation is heating up again this week regarding the possibility that Apple might delay the arrival of its iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) smartphone until October or November due to technical issues related to the lamination of its new curved OLED displays as well as with its 3D sensing system.

Apple historically has released its new flagship iPhones in September, but scuttlebutt in the supply chain says things could be otherwise in 2017. Speculation is that Apple could roll out its 7s and 7s Plus phones in September, with the high-end iPhone 8 becoming available shortly afterwards.

MORE: Apple's Mobility Partner Program comes out of hiding

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Yeah, yeah, Samsung introduced the edge-to-edge and physical-home-buttonless Galaxy S8 Android smartphone this week. Now back to iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) rumors and design concepts...

BUTTON ON THE BACK

A site called iDrop News (we have "obtained exclusive information from a source with intimate knowledge of Apple’s manufacturing facility") got iPhone 8 buzzers buzzing by posting concept designs of the next flagship Apple smartphone ("the iPhone Edition") with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the back of the device, beneath the Apple logo. The idea seems to be that the bezel-less front won't allow for the fingerprint scanner there.

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Google researchers have released a collection of 2 million-plus labeled audio snippets designed to spark innovation in the area of sound search.

The company earlier this month published a paper titled "AudioSet: An ontology and human-labeled dataset for audio events" that it hopes will combine with image recognition to strengthen overall search and identification capabilities that could be used in a wide variety of machine learning applications, including the automation of video captions that include sound effects. Google began work on the project last year.

Google has exploited its YouTube business to collect 2 million ten-second YouTube excerpts (totaling 5.8 thousand hours of audio) labeled with more than 500 sound categories to create its AudioSet. Categories start at high levels such as Human Sounds and Music, and then get more specific, such as Whistling and Music Genre.

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Yes, you can save quite a bit of money taking an Uber instead of a cab in most cases, but not if you leave your smartphone, purse, guitar or engagement ring behind. Kind of gives a new meaning to the term "Sharing Economy".

Uber, which does have a good system for helping you recover forgotten items, has just published a list of the most commonly forgotten items left in its cars as well as a list of the "most unique" items left behind. It also reports that Los Angeles is the most forgetful city in North America

MORE: Blame the cellphone — Injuries pile up, from cat bites to shocks to broken bones

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I practically kick myself every time our Verizon FiOS cable bill arrives because I still haven't acted on my intention to cut the cord in some way that won't drive my family nuts and will allow me to watch local sports.

Re-energizing my focus of late, I've created a Google Alert on "cord cutting" to force myself to read up on the topic and latest statistics daily. But if I was confused before, I'm even more so now.

MORE: Father of the web cites 3 big concerns about his 28-year-old baby

Deloitte, in its 11th annual Digital Democracy Survey of U.S. consumers, found that three quarters of more than 2,100 consumers surveyed online said they still subscribe to pay TV, such as cable or satellite, most because it comes bundled with internet service. Nevertheless, almost half of consumers subscribe to a paid streaming video service like Netflix, and nearly 60% of generation Z, millennials and Gen X do so. And more services, like YouTube TV announced last month, keep coming.

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Against my better judgment, I'm going to share a few tidbits from a vendor survey — one of those marketing schemes that have become the bane of my existence as a tech journalist (See: "Right back at you vendors: OUR independent study of YOUR independent research")

But I figured you'd want to know what superpowers your peers desire, since I'm sure that's a discussion you and your colleagues have had at some point or another (my superpower would be to dodge vendor survey pitches).

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Carnegie Mellon University this week launches its third annual online capture the flag (CTF) contest aimed at introducing middle and high school students to the world of IT security — and just maybe attract some of them into a segment of the job market hungry for talent.

Anyone can register to play the free picoCTF online hacking contest beginning on March 31 and ending April 14, but only U.S. students in grades 6-12 are eligible for some $30K in prizes. CMU says about 30,000 people have partaken in picoCTF, a game in which participants must reverse engineer, hack, decrypt and do whatever it takes to solve a challenge.

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You have until Friday, March 31 at 10am pacific time to register for a chance to buy tickets to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which takes place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose from June 5-9.

Oh, and make sure you have $1,600 to spare for a ticket in case you do get selected. You must be a member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program as of February 16, 2017 to register for the lottery. Last year, those who were picked in the lottery started getting notifications within a few days of the lottery deadline.

MORE: You'll see right through this iPhone 8 concept design

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Apple has made iOS 10.3 publicly available and the software update for its iPhones and iPads is packed with a Find-My-AirPod feature as well as a slew of Siri, CarPlay and other additions.

You probably know the routine by now: Head over to the General icon on your device, then hit Software Update and you'll be given the option to grab iOS 10.3 (a bit over 611MB on my iPhone) either over the air or via iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. Unless you want to wait it out a bit and make sure Apple hasn't mucked anything up.

Bob Brown/NetworkWorld

Bob Brown/NetworkWorld

Not to be overlooked in iOS 10.3, even though it works behind the scenes, is support for the Apple File System (APFS) that the company introduced last year at its Worldwide Developers Conference. APFS is designed to work better with flash storage and has improved encryption support.

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No doubt many a soccer fan has been inspired to pick up a fancy call center package or some sweet, sweet SDN technology after catching a San Jose Earthquakes soccer match at Avaya Stadium, but the company found its brand splattered all over headlines it would rather have avoided after an ugly incident at the field on Sunday.

My Google Alert on Avaya, used mainly to help keep track of the company's product announcements and business drama (Chapter 11 filing, networking business sale to Extreme, etc.), started blowing up this morning:

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Thursday morning's FCC meeting promises to be dramatic: It will feature testimony by an ex-corrections officer who survived after being shot six times at his South Carolina home as the result of a hit ordered on him hit by an inmate using a contraband cellphone.

Capt. Robert Johnson (ret.) of the South Carolina Department of Corrections has become an advocate for putting the clamps on contraband cellphones since that 2010 incident, and he has an ally in new FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. A year ago Pai and then South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley co-authored an op-ed piece in USA Today titled "Cellphones are too dangerous for prison."

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