Every decade or so, a new era of computing comes along that shapes everything we do. Much of the 90s was about client-server and Windows PCs. By the aughts, the Web had taken over and every advertisement carried a URL. Then came the iPhone, and we're in the midst of a decade defined by people tapping myopically into tiny screens.So what comes next, when mobile gives way to something else? Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's VR. There's likely to be a lot of that, but there's a more foundational technology that makes VR possible and permeates other areas besides.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The owner of a Web hosting company who claimed to have erased his entire business from the Internet with a single script command appears to have made the whole thing up.Marco Marsala of Italy posted a cry for help on the popular Server Fault forum earlier this week, claiming he’d accidentally erased all the data on his servers including backups.“I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1,535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers,” Marsala wrote. “Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google and Rackspace are designing a server based on IBM's upcoming Power9 processor, a sure sign that Intel is no longer the only game in town for cloud service providers.The companies announced plans for the system, which they call Zaius, at IBM's OpenPower Summit in Silicon Valley on Wednesday. It's one of several new Power servers on show at the event.They plan to submit the design to the Open Compute Project, meaning other companies will be able to use the design as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI says it may have discovered a way to break into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters, and an important court hearing in the case that was scheduled for Tuesday has been postponed.
"On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone," lawyers for the government said in a court filing Monday afternoon, referring to the shooter Syed Farook.
"Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case," the government lawyers wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has joined Facebook's Open Compute Project and proposed a new design for server racks that could help cloud data centers cut their energy bills.The OCP was started by Facebook six years ago as a way for end-user companies to get together and design their own data center equipment, free of the unneeded features that drive up costs for traditional vendor products.Other big cloud providers such as Microsoft jumped on board, but Google, which is known for operating some of the world's most advanced data centers, stayed away. On Wednesday, at the OCP Summit in Silicon Valley, it said it has now joined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has joined Facebook's Open Compute Project and proposed a new design for server racks that could help cloud data centers cut their energy bills.The OCP was started by Facebook six years ago as a way for end-user companies to get together and design their own data center equipment, free of the unneeded features that drive up costs for traditional vendor products.Other big cloud providers such as Microsoft jumped on board, but Google, which is known for operating some of the world's most advanced data centers, stayed away. On Wednesday, at the OCP Summit in Silicon Valley, it said it has now joined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The inventors of public key cryptography have won the 2015 Turing Award, just as a contentious debate kicks off in Washington over how much protection encryption should really provide.
The Association for Computing Machinery announced Tuesday that Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman received the ACM Turing Award for their contributions to cryptography.
The two are credited with the invention of public key cryptography, which is widely used to scramble data so it can be sent securely between users and websites, and to protect information on devices like smartphones and computer hard drives.
“The ability for two parties to communicate privately over a secure channel is fundamental for billions of people around the world,” ACM said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple filed court papers on Thursday urging a judge to overturn her order requiring it to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in last December's San Bernardino attacks.
Forcing it to help unlock the phone would set a dangerous precedent that would undermine security for all its customers and open the door to more invasive government requests in future, Apple argued.
"If Apple can be forced to write code in this case to bypass security features and create new accessibility, what is to stop the government from demanding that Apple write code to turn on the microphone in aid of government surveillance, activate the video camera, surreptitiously record conversations, or turn on location services to track the phone’s user? Nothing," the company's lawyers wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tim Cook has said the U.S. government is requiring Apple to write "the software equivalent of cancer" by demanding that it help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.“What’s at stake here is, can the government compel Apple to write software that we believe would make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world -- including the U.S. -- and also trample civil liberties,” Cook said.+ ALSO Apple v. FBI – Who’s for, against opening up the terrorist’s iPhone +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tim Cook has said the U.S. government is requiring Apple to write "the software equivalent of cancer" by demanding that it help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
“What’s at stake here is, can the government compel Apple to write software that we believe would make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world -- including the U.S. -- and also trample civil liberties,” Cook said.
He made his remarks in a 30-minute interview that aired on ABC News Wednesday evening. The CEO was pressed repeatedly on why Apple shouldn't make an exception for a single iPhone that was used by a terrorist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the week since Apple said it would do battle with the FBI over the agency's request for access to a smartphone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists, tech industry leaders have been weighing in with their views.Most have come down in support of Apple, though others, including Bill Gates and Simon Segars, CEO of UK chip company ARM, have leaned more towards the FBI's position.Here's a roundup of what tech leaders have said so far, starting with some of the most recent views expressed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most Americans think that Apple should help the FBI unlock a smartphone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino mass shooting, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center.
Fifty-one percent of those asked said they think Apple should unlock the iPhone to help the FBI with its investigation, while 38 percent said it should not unlock the phone to protect the security of its other users. Eleven percent of respondents had no opinion either way. Pew
Pew found that a majority of Americans think Apple should help the FBI unlock the iPhoneTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big telcos including Verizon and AT&T have joined a Facebook-led project to build low-cost computing hardware, posing a fresh challenge for network vendors like Cisco and Juniper.The telcos have signed onto the Open Compute Project, a non-profit set up by Facebook in which end-user companies get together and design their own, no-frills hardware including servers, network and storage gear.The OCP members can include just the capabilities they need in a product, free of the "gratuitous differentiation" that bumps up prices in equipment from traditional vendors. They enlist low-cost manufacturers in Asia to produce the equipment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big telcos including Verizon and AT&T have joined a Facebook-led project to build low-cost computing hardware, posing a fresh challenge for network vendors like Cisco and Juniper.The telcos have signed onto the Open Compute Project, a non-profit set up by Facebook in which end-user companies get together and design their own, no-frills hardware including servers, network and storage gear.The OCP members can include just the capabilities they need in a product, free of the "gratuitous differentiation" that bumps up prices in equipment from traditional vendors. They enlist low-cost manufacturers in Asia to produce the equipment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A few years ago, you wouldn't have bet much on IBM's Power systems having a bright future. The major Unix platforms have all been on the decline for more than a decade, giving way to Linux servers powered by increasingly capable x86 processors from Intel.The jury is still out on Power, but there are signs that a bold push by IBM to revive the technology has started to pay off. Oracle's Sparc platform is also proving surprisingly resilient, raising a question about whether Hewlett-Packard should have killed its own proprietary Unix chip, PA-RISC, all those years ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has been collecting information about schoolchildren's browsing habits despite signing a pledge saying it was committed to their privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a complaint filed Tuesday.The digital rights group said Google's use of the data, collected through its Google for Education program, puts the company in breach of Section 5 of the Federal Communications Act and asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate.“Despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students’ browsing data and other information, and uses it for the company’s own purposes," the EFF said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has developed a new type of "composable' hardware that it claims will cut data center costs and slash the time it takes to spin up new applications.Called HPE Synergy, it combines storage, compute and network equipment in one chassis, along with management software that can quickly configure the hardware automatically to provide just the resources needed to run an application, HPE said."HPE Synergy's unique built-in software intelligence, auto discovery capabilities and fluid resource pools enable customers to instantly boot up infrastructure ready to run physical, virtual and containerized applications," the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you believe what the tech industry tells us, everything is coming online. From pacemakers to washing machines to street lights, all will be networked together and feeding data into the cloud. If this Internet of Things comes to pass, we're going to need a lot more security than we have today.Chip design company ARM announced plans Tuesday for a new line of chips intended to help secure those devices. ARM is best known for designing the microprocessors in smartphones and tablets, but it also designs smaller chips, called microcontrollers, that feature heavily in IoT. Some four billion ARM microcontrollers were shipped by ARM licensees last year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dell has released a new family of servers aimed at companies that want some of the cost savings of using custom-built hardware but without having to do as much of the engineering work.The servers are aimed at what Dell calls the second tier of hyper-scale customers -- those big enough to buy hundreds or even thousands of servers at a time, but who aren't as massive as a Google or a Facebook. That includes smaller Web-scale companies as well as telcos, financial services firms, cloud software companies and others.The Googles of the world design their own hardware to make it as energy- and space-efficient as possible. That means stripping out management software and redundant components, and building resiliency into their software stack rather than the hardware itself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Next time you go for an MRI scan, remember that the doctor might not be the only one who sees your results.Thousands of medical devices, including MRI scanners, x-ray machines and drug infusion pumps, are vulnerable to hacking, creating significant health risks for patients, security researchers said this week.The risks arise partly because medical equipment is increasingly connected to the Internet so that data can be fed into electronic patient records systems, said researcher Scott Erven, who presented his findings with fellow researcher Mark Collao at the DerbyCon security conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
James Niccolai