Have you ever wondered why the word “farm” appears so frequently in the names of American insurance companies? It stems from the dissatisfaction farmers felt after being charged the same insurance premiums as city dwellers, despite leading far less risky lives. This pushback led to a monumental shift in the way insurance companies viewed and protected their customers, as organizations quickly realized that people who face less risk should be entitled to preferred rates.
The world continues to change, and insurance companies realize it’s time to catch up. In just a few months, 30 of the largest insurance companies have joined Plug and Play’s Insurtech program for one-on-one access to today’s hottest insurance-focused startups, showing they are ready to innovate the industry.
But to really understand where the disruption is stemming from, we first need to remember that at its foundation, the insurance business comes down to managing risk and customer service. That is very broad, so to make things easier, we bucketed the areas ripe for disruption.
Today’s insurance companies built empires on traditional business models that have not changed in decades, and thus have become extremely inefficient. On the other hand, today’s consumers have evolved greatly, quickly adapting to new products and services being released daily. Service providers with slow response times or clunky interfaces have no place in a world where a taxi can be called within minutes of a single click. In working with today’s insurance giants, we have identified the main areas of improvement in four categories:
Improving user experience is without question a top priority among industry leaders. User experience touches nearly every facet of a company, especially within an industry as service-focused as insurance. Startups are improving user experience by leveraging technologies like video chat for instant claim processing, bundling services for streamlined policy management, using drones to make underwriting quick and painless, employing chatbots for better customer service or adding devices to cars and houses to instantly notify authorities in the case of an emergency. It can take 10 years to build a good reputation — and 10 seconds to destroy it. Insurance companies help consumers at their most vulnerable moments, so it is imperative that the customer-facing part of the business should be as seamless as possible, or a lifelong customer will be lost over a single bad experience.
Risk assessment and underwriting is at the very core of the business. An insurer’s ability to protect its customers at a fair price is only as good as its ability to calculate and underwrite the risk. There has been a huge push in leveraging machine learning and new data sources to better understand the risks we face on a daily basis. We are constantly collecting new data points to provide insight into our daily lives, and with this information, insurance companies will be better equipped to protect consumers from unexpected tragedy at a fair premium.
Prevention of loss is becoming more of a focus for insurers, with a shift in the industry to move from merely compensating for risk to mitigation of it. Protection is more than just helping you up after you have fallen, it’s about stopping the fall before it happens. Advancements in cybersecurity, sensors for the auto industry and connected home devices are all contributing to reducing risk before an incident. This isn’t specific to P & C insurance either. Life and health insurance companies are heavily investing in preventable health technologies through fitness trackers, educational apps and programs that incentivize healthier lifestyles in an effort to reduce the cost of healthcare.
Cost reduction is a key component to any business and is often the difference between success and failure. Many insurance companies are starting to leverage new technologies to streamline outdated processes. This could be anything from more profitable ways of improving the enterprise by using uniform applications across industries to more niche applications such as reducing fraud. In addition, technologies enabling instant claim processing, better underwriting tools or enhancing agents’ capabilities by digitalization can cut down the operational costs on a massive scale.
Many new technologies have brought about a huge shift in the way we interact with the world around us. With these advances come unfamiliar liabilities, risks and market opportunities. For example, with technologies like autonomous driving, there is an expected decrease in the auto insurance market size, which means corporations will need to compensate by finding new product offerings and becoming “specialty insurers” rather than just a traditional auto insurer. Risks in the future will not be as easy to segment or blanket with overreaching policies and will require more specific expertise, tools and flexibility with the shift of liability.
On the other hand, technology can empower traditional types of insurance offerings, as well, and open the way for different carriers to offer products that were not cost-efficient before. For example, blockchain-enabled technologies can result in dissimilar ways to insure or improve the way products are offered and distributed (i.e. Smart Contracts allowing instant claim settling, digital currencies playing a large role in microinsurance, etc.).
These trends won’t be slowing down anytime soon, and there are always going to be technologies that impact markets and social behaviors in large scales. It would be wise for insurance companies to stay ahead of such trends across industries. At Plug and Play, a common interest of the insurers is to have scope across all of the industries, from mobility to new materials, to stay ahead of the latest trends that may have an effect on their markets.
Insurance is on the verge of a massive overhaul. Many technologies have changed the way consumers buy and use their most valuable assets, so shouldn’t their policies change too? Drones armed with high-tech sensors, IoT and big data analysis provide vast amounts of additional information to insurers. Technologies like AI and new distribution models streamline the way customers interact with their providers.
Insurance touches every part of our lives, and out of thousands of startups in Silicon Valley, almost all relate back to insurance in one way or another. Insurance giants are flush with capital and are flooding to Silicon Valley to find the next startup to change the future of insurance.

© Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0GUZ0QHnP-w/
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.

Samsung has dominated the solid state storage scene for the past few years and they recently updated their SSD lineup with two of the fastest drives we’ve ever tested. The MLC-based SSD 960 Pro and the more affordable TLC 960 Evo , both reviewed and proven to be extremely fast NVMe SSDs.
A tough act to follow for the competition, even for the likes of Intel , Corsair announced the Force MP500 SSD shortly after the release of the Samsung 960 Series.
The Force MP500 is a high-speed NVMe SSD targeting power users. The drive takes advantage of the more desirable MLC type NAND flash. However, unlike the 960 Pro series, capacities are available below half a terabyte. In fact, Corsair is offering this new series with a maximum capacity of 480GB while it is also possible to purchase a 240GB version and even a piddly 120GBer.
Availability for the new Samsung drives hasn’t been great, however given the performance on tap at $330 for the 512GB 960 Pro and $250 for the 500GB 960 Evo , they’ve able to single-handedly hold the competition at bay.
Intel’s SSD 750 Series and Toshiba’s OCZ RD400A simply can’t compete at the same level, so we’re looking forward to see how Corsair’s top offering holds up. We have the MP500 480GB model on hand for review and at $325 it’s priced to match the 960 Pro.
Actually, given the slight variation in capacity, the Corsair drive ends up a few cents more expensive per gigabyte, so the MP500 series isn’t exactly affordable. However, on paper, Corsair’s new flagship SSD series looks mighty impressive boasting sequential read/write speeds of 3GB/s and 2.4GB/s.
Before metaphorically seeing what the MP500 is made of, let’s take that phrase literally…
Based on the M.2-2280 form-factor all MP500 models utilize the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface for a blistering fast sequential read speed of 3GB/s, coupled with an equally impressive write throughput of 2.4GB/s.
What’s interesting is that Corsair is claiming the same sequential read and write performance for all three models (120GB, 240GB and 480GB), though there is a large discrepancy in IOPS, where the 120GB version severely lags behind the larger 240GB and 480GB models.
Whereas the 240GB and 480GB models are rated for 250,000 random read IOPS and 210,000 random write IOPS the 120GB model is good for just 150,000 read and 90,000 write IOPS.
So as you might expect performance will be down on the 120GB model, so just be aware of that. Again for testing we do have the 480GB model on hand and as the fastest model in the series we will be showing best case performance.
What’s interesting about the new Force MP500 series and rather important to note is the fact that they are using MLC NAND memory, not the cheaper and less durable TLC stuff like the 960 Evo series.
Powering the MP500 series is a Phison controller, more specifically the PS5007-E7. So far there are very few SSDs in the wild using this controller and I am personally yet to see how it handles.
Connected to the controller is Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND along with a 512MB DRAM buffer. Please note the 240GB model features a smaller 256MB buffer and the 120GB model comes with a 128MB buffer.
Currently AES 256-bit encryption isn’t supported but Corsair doesn’t hope to deliver a firmware update soon to add in support. Finally, all three models are being backed by a three-year warranty, which isn’t bad, though we would have liked to have seen them match Corsair’s five-year warranty. Still, Corsair is claiming 698TB of written data rating, but of course you only have three years to prove them wrong.
The Force MP500 series is backed by Corsair’s tacky SSD Toolbox. It has to be said I’m used to seeing much more polished looking software from Corsair and I expect the SSD Toolbox to see some major upgrades in 2017. Most of the functions aren’t compatible with NVMe drives at this point so MP500 owners can’t view the drive’s S. M. A. R. T. status or total host writes, run a secure wipe, change the overprovisioning or mess with the TRIM command settings.
Technically, the MP500 doesn’t require any special drivers to work. That said, it does if you want to extract maximum performance from the drive and right now Corsair doesn’t offer an NVMe driver. Samsung recently released a new NVM Express driver which greatly improved performance under Windows 10 and 8.1.
The problem being that these operating systems by default enable a write-cache buffer known as the Force Unit Access command, which drastically reduces performance. This command is a conservative approach taken by Microsoft to ensure data integrity in case of sudden power loss. However, from Windows 8 onwards, Microsoft incorporated an automatic FLUSH command to ensure data integrity, but it simultaneously maintained the much older Force Unit Access command in the standard drive settings.
This redundancy means that write speeds are significantly inhibited due to unnecessary write verification processes. By manually disabling the command, the write performance reached the expected levels. However, manually manipulating drive properties isn’t user-friendly, which is obviously why Samsung developed the NVMe Driver 2.0 to do this automatically. Hopefully Corsair will follow suit and do the same.

© Source: http://www.techspot.com/review/1302-corsair-force-mp500-ssd/
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.

If you need a Windows 10 laptop, you really can’t go wrong with the Dell XPS 13 — it has great specs and exceptional battery life. Heck, the company even sells a version pre-loaded with Ubuntu , making it a popular choice for Linux users too.
While you could configure the laptop with a touchscreen, there was no option for a convertible 2-in-1 version, sadly. This was particularly disappointing, since Windows 10 works wonderfully on both a laptop and a tablet. This is soon to change, apparently, as Dell has leaked a new version of the laptop — seemingly by accident — on its website.
Other than one image (seen at the top of the page) and a model number (9365), we do not know much. With that said, it is safe to assume that it will be a great machine — the company is just enhancing an already popular laptop. It should have up-to-date 7th generation Intel Kaby Lake processors, of course.
Unfortunately, Linux-based desktop operating systems, such as Ubuntu, are not yet ideal for tablets (as much as Canonical wants it to be). With that said, it is unlikely that the 2-in-1 variant of the XPS 13 will have any OS option other than Windows 10.
Want to check out the leaked XPS 13 9365 2-in-1 product page? You can see it here before it possibly gets taken down. Hopefully more will be revealed at CES 2017.
Do you think Dell leaked it by accident, or intentionally for publicity? Tell me in the comments below.

© Source: http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/dgZPGuuc4vQ/
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.

The battle against piracy continued throughout 2016 with copyright holders fiercely protecting their property, sometimes with rather ironic consequences. For instance, Fox issued a DMCA takedown request against an original YouTube clip showing a Double Dribble exploit that had been edited into an episode of Family Guy.
However, according to its Transparency Report , Google received just under 1.1 billion takedown requests during the course of last year, of which over 914 million requests were approved. This represents a near 100% increase over the 558 million requests received in 2015. Notably, the search company reached a peak of 24.1 million requests for the week ending September 19th, 2016, up from the prior weekly record set of 22.7 million in April that same year.
In terms of copyright holders, BPI, which represents the UK recorded music industry, submitted a staggering 82.4 million removal requests in 2016 while its US counterpart, the RIAA, sent a total of 12.6 million takedown requests to Google.
Looking more holistically at annual trends, Google has received the following number of takedown requests:
While monthly request volumes began to taper off toward the end of 2016, it remains to be seen if subscription services such as Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video provide timely access to enough content to dissuade consumers from turning to illegal sources.
Source: TorrentFreak via UberGizmo

© Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/neowin-main/~3/puzRpz1sd84/in-2016-google-received-more-than-one-billion-takedown-requests
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.