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Five budget-friendly open source storage servers

Storage is essential for the enterprise: Data must be stored. Data must be retrieved. Data must be shared. Data must be secured. At the same time, storage must not consume the entirety of your IT budget. Fortunately, you can find effective solutions in the world of open source. Outside of cost effectiveness, one of the biggest benefits of these solutions is the ability to modify them to perfectly fit your needs. You can make minor changes or even roll your own storage solution based on one of these tools. If you want enterprise support and a "solution in a can" that will meet just about any enterprise storage need, you should turn to Red Hat or SUSE. Both Linux-based companies offer some of the most powerful enterprise-ready tools on the market. But if you'd rather get your hands dirty and craft something of your own—something that won't demolish your budget—these five open source tools are a great place to start. 1: ownCloud ownCloud ( Figure ...

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Use Cortana to define words for you in Windows 10

Microsoft’s Cortana has many uses including sending emails or checking the weather. One of the best uses though is a simple look-up feature for words and their definitions. Combined with the Hey Cortana voice recognition using Cortana to tell you quickly what a word means is a great hands-free tip. There are multiple ways to get Cortana to define a word. If you have Hey Cortana enabled you can simply blurt out your request: “Hey Cortana what is the meaning/definition of  inchoate ?” “Hey Cortana define  ubiquitously “ You can, of course, also just type in your request e.g “ define beatitude ” although this admittedly takes some of the speed (and fun) out of using the personal digital assistant. For many words, Cortana displays the definition within a card, and OxfordDictionaries or EncartaDictionaries powers it. Sometimes, if Cortana misunderstands you or does not have the definition, the assistant opens up a web page after performing a web search for...

Airbnb will open its Cuba listings to users outside the United States

Airbnb  will now let travelers from outside the U.S. to book properties in Cuba after receiving authorization from the U.S. government,  reports the Associated Press . Previously, only Americans were allowed to reserve the site’s  Cuban listings . They will open to international users on April 2. Airbnb launched its  Cuban operations in April 2014 , four months after the Obama administration revealed that it will begin to  restore diplomatic relations with the Communist country . The historic policy change means that  travel and trade sanctions will be lifted , which is expected to boost tourism to Cuba dramatically because Americans no longer need licenses to visit. In fact, President Obama is  currently on an official visit to Cuba , the first president since Calvin Coolidge to do so. According to the AP, Cuba is currently Airbnb’s fastest-growing market, with about 4,000 homes added since it opened listings. Other travel businesses...