Today’s supercomputers will get blown away by these systems

The Department of Energy says the $40 million it is investing in nearly two dozen multi-year projects will result in exascale computing systems that perform calculations on data 50 to 100 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.The DoE Exascale Computing Project says such high-performance computing systems can make at least a billion billion calculations per second, and will be used to process data for applications such as energy security, economic security, scientific discovery, healthcare and climate/environmental science. The U.S. is shooting to attain such powerful systems by the mid-2020s and China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Today’s supercomputers will get blown away by these systems

The Department of Energy says the $40 million it is investing in nearly two dozen multi-year projects will result in exascale computing systems that perform calculations on data 50 to 100 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.The DoE Exascale Computing Project says such high-performance computing systems can make at least a billion billion calculations per second, and will be used to process data for applications such as energy security, economic security, scientific discovery, healthcare and climate/environmental science. The U.S. is shooting to attain such powerful systems by the mid-2020s and China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK police listened in to 9 percent more calls last year

The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK police listened in to 9 percent more calls last year

The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best iPhone 7 Cases & Protectors Discounted Now on Amazon – Deal Alert

While you wait for your new iPhone to come in, Amazon already has iPhone 7 cases and screen protectors in stock, and many of them are significantly discounted. Here are our picks for the best discounted iPhone 7 cases you should consider dropping in your cart right now, in various styles and colors. 73% off amFilm iPhone 7/6s/6 screen protector 74% off Maxboost 2 Pack Tempered Glass Screen Protector For Apple iPhone 7 & iPhone 6/6s [3D Touch Compatible] 0.2mm Screen Protection Case Fit 99% Touch Accurate 33% off Caseology [Envoy Series] Classic Rich Texture PU Leather [Carbon Fiber Black] for Apple iPhone 7 22% off Silk iPhone 7 Plus Wallet Case - Vault Slim Wallet for iPhone 7+ 21% off Caseology [Parallax Series] Modern Slim Geometric Design [Black / Deep Blue] [Textured Grip] for Apple iPhone 7 45% off Maxboost [Folio Style] Premium iPhone Wallet Cover with STAND Feature for Apple iPhone 7, Protective Leather Flip Cover with Card Slot + Magnetic Side Pocket 67% off Ringke [FUSION] Crystal Clear Bumper [Drop Protection/Shock Absorption Technology] with Raised Bezels 56% off Ringke [Onyx] [Resilient Strength] Flexible Durability, Durable Anti-Slip, TPU Defensive Case for Apple iPhone 7 45% off Spigen Continue reading

Microsoft’s all-in-one Surface PCs could debut next month

A few months back I reported on rumors of new Surface-branded all-in-one PCs from Microsoft that could target both other all-in-ones as well as Apple's languishing iMac line. Now new information says they are coming soon.Citing her usual deep bench of sources, Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet says there will be a hardware launch event in late October, one year after a New York City event at which Microsoft unveiled the Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Lumia 950 and 950 XL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The time Cisco’s Rob Soderbery hooped it up vs. NBA’s Kyrie Irving

Reading about Cisco exec Rob Soderbery's departure from the company, I couldn't help thinking back to the first time I came across the enterprise products muckety-muck: Back at Interop 2013 in Las Vegas, where Soderbery took on Cleveland Cavalier star Kyrie Irving in a basketball shooting contest in the name of IoT marketing.The Stanford- and Caltech-educated Soderbery was pumping up Cisco's vision for software-defined networking as well as the internet of things, and it is IoT where the Irving cameo came in.  Cisco was getting into the game of a much more connected pro sports world, where sensors in everything from basketball shoes to basketballs help teams better measure player and team performance and improve the fan experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

JBAS011469 Error in Junos Space

Just went onto a customer’s Junos Space/Security Director installation to discover that their SRX5800 was showing as ‘out of sync’.    I tried to do a ‘Resynchronize with Network’ from the Device Operations menu, but this failed with the following error:

Error while reading config from device: <devicename> javax.persistence. TransactionRequiredException: JBAS011469: Transaction is required to perform this operation (either use a transaction of extended persistence context)
jbas011469

JBAS011469 error in Space 15.2

Unfortunately (like most Space-related errors) there’s nothing about this in Juniper’s knowledgebase – the only hit I found on a Google search was a similar error, but with a different cause that had been fixed.   So I thought I’d put this here in case it helps anyone.  

The solution in the end was to update the DMI schema for the device. The SRX5800 had been upgraded from 12.1R3.5 to 12.3X48-D30.7 but the schema within Space had not.  I downloaded the appropriate schema, and now the device re-syncs just fine.


Xen Project patches serious virtual machine escape flaws

The Xen Project has fixed four vulnerabilities in its widely used virtualization software, two of which could allow malicious virtual machine administrators to take over host servers.Flaws that break the isolation layer between virtual machines are the most serious kind for a hypervisor like Xen, which allows users to run multiple VMs on the same underlying hardware in a secure manner.The Xen hypervisor is widely used by cloud computing providers and virtual private server hosting companies like Linode, which had to reboot some of its servers over the past few days to apply the new patches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Xen Project patches serious virtual machine escape flaws

The Xen Project has fixed four vulnerabilities in its widely used virtualization software, two of which could allow malicious virtual machine administrators to take over host servers.Flaws that break the isolation layer between virtual machines are the most serious kind for a hypervisor like Xen, which allows users to run multiple VMs on the same underlying hardware in a secure manner.The Xen hypervisor is widely used by cloud computing providers and virtual private server hosting companies like Linode, which had to reboot some of its servers over the past few days to apply the new patches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This USB stick will fry your unsecured computer

A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer, USBKill.com, has taken data security to the "Mission Impossible" extreme by creating a USB stick that uses an electrical discharge to fry an unauthorized computer into which it's plugged."When the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges -- all in the matter of seconds," the company said in a news release. USBKill.com The USB Kill 2.0 stick.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This USB stick will fry your unsecured computer

A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer, USBKill.com, has taken data security to the "Mission Impossible" extreme by creating a USB stick that uses an electrical discharge to fry an unauthorized computer into which it's plugged."When the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges -- all in the matter of seconds," the company said in a news release. USBKill.com The USB Kill 2.0 stick.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US lawmakers make last-ditch bid to block internet governance transfer

Republican lawmakers are making a last-ditch bid to thwart the proposed transfer by the U.S. of internet governance to a multistakeholder body, by calling on the government to reconsider its plans to put the transition into effect by month end.Raising fears that control of the internet could pass to authoritarian regimes, the legislators wrote in a letter Thursday to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker that there were unresolved issues, such as the ability to ensure that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers would in fact follow its own bylaws after the transfer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US lawmakers make last-ditch bid to block internet governance transfer

Republican lawmakers are making a last-ditch bid to thwart the proposed transfer by the U.S. of internet governance to a multistakeholder body, by calling on the government to reconsider its plans to put the transition into effect by month end.Raising fears that control of the internet could pass to authoritarian regimes, the legislators wrote in a letter Thursday to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker that there were unresolved issues, such as the ability to ensure that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers would in fact follow its own bylaws after the transfer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

University of California’s outsourcing is wrong, says U.S. lawmaker

A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA.The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services.The university employees will remain on the job until the end of February, but before then they are expecting to train their foreign replacements. The number of affected employees may expand. The university's IT services agreement with HCL can be leveraged by any institution in the 10-campus system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Basic IPv6 configuration for Nokia and Juniper routers

This is a quick IPv6 interface configuration tutorial for Nokia 7750 VSR (SROS) and Juniper vMX routers. Routers used in this lab: Nokia VSR ver. 14.0.R4, Juniper vMX 14.1R1.10. Prerequisites The following Nokia routers support IPv6: 7950 XRS systems. 7750 SR chassis systems in chassis mode c or d. 7750 SR-a chassis systems. 7750 SR-e chassis systems. 7450 ESS chassis running in

IDG Contributor Network: Massive solar storm will ‘kill’ the internet, says space expert

Not enough is being done to protect networks from solar storms that could wipe out electric power grids and destroy satellites. The end game in a catastrophic solar storm would be the internet’s time synchronization not working anymore. That would stop the internet altogether.“An impending calamitous solar storm” is how Joseph N. Pelton, the former dean of the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, describes the perceived event in his press release.Pelton, who is also a current executive board member of the International Association of Space Safety (IAASS), has published an article in Room: The Space Journal (subscription) on the subject.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here