Your MacBook’s password protection has been compromised. Canada’s cloud software industry shows signs of maturity. And SnapChat unveils its biggest redesign ever.
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Trending on Facebook, a newly-discovered security flaw allows hackers to take over Apple computers. Affecting the new MacOS High Sierra operating system, the bug is surprisingly simple to abuse. Anyone trying to login as the root user just clicks the login button several times while leaving the password field blank. Apple is working on a fix for this problem. In a meantime, you might want to change the root password on your MacBook.
On Twitter, the SaaS North conference taking place in Ottawa is trending. That’s Software as a Service, by the way, not a conference about being cheeky. It turns out 2017 has been a great year for cloud software firms in Canada, with startups receiving more than $1 billion in investment in just the first three quarters. Companies with marketing and sales solution landed the most deals, with 16. Artificial Intelligence and chat bots were a close second with 14. Here are nine companies that received an investment of more than $50 million: Wealthsimple, Tulip Retail, Breather, Ritual, FreshBooks, Borrowell, Visier, Vision Critical, and Element.AI. There are signs that Canada’s software startups are maturing beyond the initial seed stage. We’re seeing companies with month-over-month grown and successful IPOs.
From Product Hunt, a new version of Snapchat is out. The big change here is a separation between the content from your friends and the content from publishers. Your friends’ content is on the left, and content from publishers and creators is on the right. A new algorithm will also determine who your best friends are and show you content from them first. The news from publishers, however, will be curated by humans in an attempt to avoid “fake news.” The new design starts rolling out tomorrow, but will take weeks to get to all users.
That’s what’s trending today. Hashtag Trending is produced by IT World Canada. Today’s episode is sponsored by Cogeco Peer 1, the company that enables businesses to unlock their IT potential. Learn more at CP1.com.
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