US lawmakers demand to know how many residents are under surveillance

Two powerful U.S. lawmakers are pushing President Donald Trump administration's to tell them how many of the country's residents are under surveillance by the National Security Agency.In a letter sent Friday, Representatives Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers Jr. asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide an estimate of the number of U.S. residents whose communications are swept up in NSA surveillance of foreign targets. Goodlatte, a Republican, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Conyers is the committee's senior Democrat.Committee members have been seeking an estimate of the surveillance numbers from the ODNI for a year now. Other lawmakers have been asking for the surveillance numbers since 2011, but ODNI has failed to provide them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US lawmakers demand to know how many residents are under surveillance

Two powerful U.S. lawmakers are pushing President Donald Trump administration's to tell them how many of the country's residents are under surveillance by the National Security Agency.In a letter sent Friday, Representatives Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers Jr. asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide an estimate of the number of U.S. residents whose communications are swept up in NSA surveillance of foreign targets. Goodlatte, a Republican, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Conyers is the committee's senior Democrat.Committee members have been seeking an estimate of the surveillance numbers from the ODNI for a year now. Other lawmakers have been asking for the surveillance numbers since 2011, but ODNI has failed to provide them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA semantic program seeks to glean truth from obfuscation

In this era where disinformation, alternative facts and other falsehoods are the rule of the day, the researchers at DARPA are looking to build a mechanism that can glean some truth from the obfuscation.DARPA says the program, called Active Interpretation of Disparate Alternatives (AIDA), looks to develop a “semantic engine” that generates alternative interpretations or meaning of real-world events, situations, and trends based on data obtained from an extensive range of channels. The program aims to create technology capable of aggregating and mapping pieces of information automatically derived from multiple media sources into a common representation or storyline, and then generating and exploring multiple theories about the true nature and implications of events, situations, and trends of interest, DARPA says. +More on Network World: DARPA plan would reinvent not-so-clever machine learning systems+  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA semantic program seeks to glean truth from obfuscation

In this era where disinformation, alternative facts and other falsehoods are the rule of the day, the researchers at DARPA are looking to build a mechanism that can glean some truth from the obfuscation.DARPA says the program, called Active Interpretation of Disparate Alternatives (AIDA), looks to develop a “semantic engine” that generates alternative interpretations or meaning of real-world events, situations, and trends based on data obtained from an extensive range of channels. The program aims to create technology capable of aggregating and mapping pieces of information automatically derived from multiple media sources into a common representation or storyline, and then generating and exploring multiple theories about the true nature and implications of events, situations, and trends of interest, DARPA says. +More on Network World: DARPA plan would reinvent not-so-clever machine learning systems+  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Short Take – The Present Future of the Net

A few random thoughts from ONS and Networking Field Day 15 this week:

  • Intel is really, really, really pushing their 5 generation (5G) wireless network. Note this is not Gen5 fibre channel or 5G 802.11 networking. This is the successor to LTE and capable of pushing a ridiculous amount of data to a very small handset. This is one of those “sure thing” technologies that is going to have a huge impact on our networks. Carriers and service providers are already trying to cope with the client rates we have now. What happens when they are two or three times faster?
  • PNDA has some huge potential for networking a data analytics. Their presentation had some of the most technical discussion during the event. They’re also the basis for a lot of other projects that are in the pipeline. Make sure you check them out. The project organizers suggest that you get started with the documentation and perhaps even help contribute some writing to get more people on board.
  • VMware hosted a dinner for us that had some pretty luminary speakers like Bruce Davie and James Watters. They talked about the journey from traditional networking to a new paradigm filled Continue reading

Privacy settings may be the Creators Update’s biggest change

From the time it launched, Windows 10 has been the source of controversy over its aggressive monitoring of user activity, and I readily admit to fanning those flames at the start. A cottage industry of utilities has sprung up that will turn off all of the offending features in one fell swoop, which has quieted a lot of people, me included.RELATED: 11 hidden tips and tweaks for Windows 10 With the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has made a major change in the nature of its data collection in the OS and has revealed a great deal of information on the telemetry that it gathers from your system. It is documented in a lengthy blog post by Windows chief Terry Myerson.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CyberX assesses industrial environments for cyber risks, provides continuous monitoring

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received reports of 59 cyber incidents at energy facilities in 2016. This is an increase of nearly a third over 2015. Security specialists believe this number is quite conservative, considering that energy companies aren’t required to report cyberattacks to DHS.But the actual number of incidents isn’t the really concerning part of the story. More worrisome, say federal cybersecurity officials and private security specialists, is that the vast majority of energy industry companies lack the technology and personnel to continuously monitor their operational systems for anomalous activity, which leaves them unable to detect intrusions when they happen. Consequently, they don’t even know about incidents to be able to report them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CyberX assesses industrial environments for cyber risks, provides continuous monitoring

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received reports of 59 cyber incidents at energy facilities in 2016. This is an increase of nearly a third over 2015. Security specialists believe this number is quite conservative, considering that energy companies aren’t required to report cyberattacks to DHS.But the actual number of incidents isn’t the really concerning part of the story. More worrisome, say federal cybersecurity officials and private security specialists, is that the vast majority of energy industry companies lack the technology and personnel to continuously monitor their operational systems for anomalous activity, which leaves them unable to detect intrusions when they happen. Consequently, they don’t even know about incidents to be able to report them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For April 7th, 2017

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

Visualization of the magic system behind software infrastructure. (eyezmaze@ThePracticalDev

If you like this sort of Stuff then please support me on Patreon.
  • 10-20: aminoacids can be made per second; 64800x: faster DDL Aurora vs MySQL; 25 TFLOPS: cap for F1 simulations; 15x to 30x: Tensor Processing Unit faster than GPUs and CPUs; 100 Million: Intel transistors per square millimeter; 25%: Internet traffic generated by Google; $1 million: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award; 43%: phones FBI couldn't open because of crypto;

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @adulau: To summarize the discussions of yesterday. All tor exit nodes are evil except the ones I operate.
    • @sinavaziri: Let's say a data center costs $1-2B. Then the TPU saved Google $15-30B of capex?
    • Vinton G. Cerf: While it would be a vast overstatement to ascribe all this innovation to genetic disposition, it seems to me inarguable that much of our profession was born in the fecund minds of emigrants coming to America and to the West over the past century.
    • Alan Bundy: AI systems are not just narrowly focused by design, because we have yet to accomplish artificial Continue reading

The ‘new’ McAfee

I’ve worked with McAfee for a long time—from its independent days, during the Network Associates timeframe, through financial issues, back to McAfee and the go-go Dave DeWalt era, and finally as Intel Security. To be honest, Intel’s acquisition of McAfee was always a head-scratcher for me. The 20-somethings on Wall Street crowed about Intel cramming McAfee security in its chip set, but this made no sense to me—Intel had long added security (and other) functionality into its processors with lukewarm market reception. The two cultures were a mismatch, as well. Ultimately, it seems Intel came to a similar conclusion and recently spun out McAfee in a private equity stew. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The ‘new’ McAfee

I’ve worked with McAfee for a long time—from its independent days, during the Network Associates timeframe, through financial issues, back to McAfee and the go-go Dave DeWalt era, and finally as Intel Security. To be honest, Intel’s acquisition of McAfee was always a head-scratcher for me. The 20-somethings on Wall Street crowed about Intel cramming McAfee security in its chip set, but this made no sense to me—Intel had long added security (and other) functionality into its processors with lukewarm market reception. The two cultures were a mismatch, as well. Ultimately, it seems Intel came to a similar conclusion and recently spun out McAfee in a private equity stew. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Current developments in Wi-Fi spectrum

The allocation of radio spectrum is a fiercely contested matter. Government regulators—the FCC in the U.S., OFCOM in the U.K., and others—manage spectrum as a national resource. They seek to balance the needs of various groups, including cellular operators, government users, scientific and amateur radio groups. And, of course, they represent the public both directly and via their political masters.Industries that depend on access to spectrum must work hard to ensure continuing access, and they must head off proposals for new services that might cause interference. As established users of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, here are some of the areas where the Wi-Fi industry is active today, working with regulators.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Introducing Moby Mingle at DockerCon 2017

If you’re pumped about all the things you learn and all the people you meet at Docker events, you’re going to love what we have planned for you at this year’s DockerCon! With more than 5000 attendees, there will be a wealth of knowledge in the room, ready to be shared, explored and cultivated. This year we’re going to draw on the power of the DockerCon crowd to open-source the attendee experience and bring the focus of the conference back to our users. Every attendee has different experiences, backgrounds, and interests to share. The trick becomes finding the right individual, with the specific knowledge you’re looking for.

So we’re excited to give everyone at DockerCon access to a tool called #MobyMingle to connect with people who share the same Docker use cases, topic of interests or hack ideas, or even your favorite TV shows. So no matter where you’re traveling from or how many people you know before the conference, we will make sure you end up feeling at home!

Using a web based platform, you’re able to build a profile, set goals around what you want to get out of Dockercon, and then make Offers and Requests to help Continue reading

McAfee: Trend indicates 2017 will be bumper year for new malware

A cycle of increasing new malware is well underway and could last the rest of this year if a trend established over the past two years continues.Defenders enjoyed a nine-month dip in malware innovation last year, but that’s over with, according to a cycle identified by McAfee Labs.Its latest McAfee Labs Threats Report says that starting at the beginning of 2015, the volume of new threats has fluctuated in a regular pattern, with two to three quarters of growth followed by three quarters of decline. The last three quarters of 2016 showed decline, so the next uptick should have started last quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here