Jon Gold

Author Archives: Jon Gold

The 10 most powerful supercomputers on Earth

The biggest supercomputers out thereThe twice-yearly top500 listing of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is out, and even if there are few surprises, the presence of a brand-new system on the top 10 is intriguing. Here’s your illustrated list of the 10 mightiest computing machines on the planet, as of June 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Config error at Boston-area hosting company takes down Reddit, others

A Boston-area hosting provider briefly knocked several large services and websites dependent on Amazon and AWS offline on Tuesday night, thanks to a configuration error.Somerville, Mass-based Axcelx said in a tweet that the problem was caused by a route leak, which is an issue that can cause a small service provider to advertise itself as a different and much, much larger one, attempting to route huge amounts of traffic across its routers and generally causing the traffic in question to grind to a halt.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: How Cisco brings communications to disaster relief efforts + One third of enterprise iOS devices vulnerable to app, data hijacking attacks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LTE-U is coming to take your Wi-Fi away, consumer advocates warn

A carrier technology that uses Wi-Fi frequencies to provide LTE connectivity could let the big wireless providers mess with your home connection and push you on to their networks, according to comments filed today with the FCC by several watchdog groups.The technology is called either LTE – Unlicensed or Licensed Assisted Access (LTE-U or LAA), and it essentially works by using 4G/LTE radios to send and receive data via the same 5GHz frequencies as Wi-Fi. This lets carriers offload traffic from their congested licensed networks to consumer Wi-Fi, easing the load.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: 9 creative ways to destroy sensitive data + The programmer's guide to breaking into management +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Disparities in Internet access persist for poorer, non-white Americans, but gaps closing

Americans with historically lower rates of Internet access are making progress in getting online, but there are still persistent disparities between rich and poor, and between English-speaking Asians and other ethnicities, according to data from the Pew Research Center released today.Roughly three-quarters of American households making less than $30,000 a year are online, compared to fully 97% of those making $75,000 and up. A similar 97% figure was found for English-speaking Asian households, compared to 81% for Hispanic households and 78% for those of non-Hispanic black people. (The number for white households was 85%.)+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco warns of default SSH keys shipped in three products + Wi-Fi router's 'pregnant women' setting sparks vendor rivalry in China +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM Power Systems GM: Big scale and big data demand OpenPower

IBM’s Power Systems division – which sells servers and systems based on the Power system architecture, as opposed to the Intel-based x86 architecture used in most personal computers – had been in free-fall for some time, posting year-on-year revenue declines of up to 37% per quarter over the past couple of years. According to the conventional wisdom, Power was another victim – along with SPARC and, to a lesser extent, ARM – of the inexorable march of the commodity x86 server.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Red Hat makes its case to be THE container company + IBM, Box partner on cloud analytics technologies +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT pros blast Google over Android’s refusal to play nice with IPv6

Two trains made of fiber, copper and code are on a collision course, as the widespread popularity of Android devices and the general move to IPv6 has put some businesses in a tough position, thanks to Android’s lack of support for a central component in the newer standard. DHCPv6 is an outgrowth of the DHCP protocol used in the older IPv4 standard – it’s an acronym for “dynamic host configuration protocol,” and is a key building block of network management. Nevertheless, Google’s wildly popular Android devices – which accounted for 78% of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the first quarter of this year – don’t support DHCPv6 for address assignment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 rumor rollup: Heavy metal! Fingerprints! A kinda-sorta-maybe release date!

Would you believe there are people so interested in Apple and all of its works that they want to know what’s going on with the next generation of the iPhone before it even comes out? My editors assure me that this is the case. So, despite the obvious lunacy of the idea – I mean, surely it’s enough to know that there will probably be another one coming out at some point, right? – I am stepping in to provide you with the latest scuttlebutt on what may or may not be the iPhone 7.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Review: The best password managers for PCs, Macs, and mobile devices + FBI investigates St Louis Cardinals over Houston Astros hacking +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Xirrus takes aim at headaches of ‘guest’ Wi-Fi networks

It’s enough to keep you on your phone’s data connection – the annoying guest wireless network. Maybe it’s got a clunky, slow-loading web portal to navigate. Maybe the password is hard to find. Or maybe it’s entirely open, but you noticed that a seedy-looking guy over there has Wireshark open on his laptop.Wireless hardware vendor Xirrus, however, is rolling out what it’s hoping is a way to simplify Wi-Fi management and make the experience less annoying – the company this week has announced an mobile data management (MDM) suite called EasyPass.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Office 365 vs. Google for Work: A cloud comparison for small businesses + The LastPass security breach: What you need to know, do, and watch out for +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech Media Watch: HBO’s “Silicon Valley” set to wrap 2nd season – it won’t be “Game Of Thrones”-esque but it’ll do

The far-and-away best satire of the technology industry on TV airs the last episode of its second season Sunday night, and you really should be watching. Silicon Valley has continued to bring the funny throughout the second set of episodes, and the finale looks like it’s leading up to a fairly insane climax.The first season ended on what was easily the strongest episode of the series so far, as the team won TechCrunch Disrupt thanks to a flash of genius inspired by what can only be described as a very clever, in-depth and witty joke having to do with an important part of the male anatomy. As good as the second season has been, its finale has a lot to live up to, if it’s going to be considered as good as the first.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MIT researchers find unemployed workers stay off their phones

The amount of time people in a given area spend using their cell phones shrinks when the job market begins to dry up, according to a study co-authored by researchers at MIT.The study, which tracked people living in a European town in which a plant had just closed, found that the total number of calls made by laid-off workers fell by 51%, when compared to the phone activity of the employed. Individually, each unemployed worker made 5% fewer calls.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: First Look: How will Windows 10 play on tablets + What do today's graduates expect in the workplace? +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Report: Blackberry’s next devices could run Android

Beleaguered smartphone manufacturer Blackberry could go Android with its next device, abandoning development of its own platform in the interest of getting a more robust ecosystem of apps into the hands of its few remaining users, according to a report from Reuters.Citing anonymous sources, the news agency said that the idea is to transform Blackberry into a software and services company, centered on BES 12, a mobility management system designed to work across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices, in addition to Blackberry’s own. (Read the full Reuters report here.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top techie Father’s Day gifts

Happy Father’s Day!Even if you’re a huge disappointment of an offspring, you might be able to crack Dad’s stony façade with the right Father’s Day gift. After all, if you give a good enough present, he’ll at least have to pretend that he’s not ashamed of you, right? Or hey, maybe your dad is actually just the best and you want to get him something out of the sheer goodness of your heart, you terrific kid, you. Read on for our top 10 ideas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Does Fortinet’s Meru buy mean we’re in for even more Wi-Fi industry consolidation?

Cybersecurity firm Fortinet’s purchase last week of wireless network manufacturer Meru Networks for $44 million is the second major acquisition of a Wi-Fi hardware vendor in three months – and, potentially, the start of a broader pattern.HP bought Aruba Networks in late February for $3 billion, in a move that upset the balance of the wireless industry by raising questions about Aruba’s OEM relationships with HP rivals like Dell. Now, that HP-Aruba deal looks as though it could be the herald of a more general consolidation in the wireless sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Comcast and TWC are (still) among the most hated companies in America

The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for 2015 placed Comcast and Time-Warner Cable near the very bottom of all telecom and technology companies in the rankings, the researchers involved announced Tuesday.The ACSI’s ratings – on a 100-point scale – gave Comcast a score of 54 as a TV service provider and 56 as an ISP, well below the industry average of 63 in both categories. TWC received a 51 in the former category and a 58 in the latter. The ratings were based on the ACSI’s in-house analysis of survey responses from 14,000 Americans, which were collected during the first quarter of 2015.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Ransomware creator apologizes for 'sleeper' attack, releases decryption keys + Intel to buy Altera for $16.7B, eyes IoT market +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Comcast and TWC are (still) among the most hated companies in America

The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for 2015 placed Comcast and Time-Warner Cable near the very bottom of all telecom and technology companies in the rankings, the researchers involved announced Tuesday.The ACSI’s ratings – on a 100-point scale – gave Comcast a score of 54 as a TV service provider and 56 as an ISP, well below the industry average of 63 in both categories. TWC received a 51 in the former category and a 58 in the latter. The ratings were based on the ACSI’s in-house analysis of survey responses from 14,000 Americans, which were collected during the first quarter of 2015.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Ransomware creator apologizes for 'sleeper' attack, releases decryption keys + Intel to buy Altera for $16.7B, eyes IoT market +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Android developer advocate: everyone’s doing networking wrong

Twitter Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis: “Bad networking costs your customers money.”  Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis said that Android apps, almost across the board, are not architected correctly for the best networking performance, during a talk he gave Friday at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco.“Networking performance is one of the most important things that every one of your apps does wrong,” he told the crowd.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google hypes Android M, Android Pay, Google Photos at I/O 2015

Google kicked off its annual I/O developer conference Thursday in San Francisco, showing off a new version of Android, a VR camera rig, numerous developer resources, and a lot more besides in an opening keynote that took up the better part of two hours.Senior vice president of product Sundar Pichai emceed the event, which Google says attracted 6,000-plus developers and featured presentations from engineering vice president David Burke, engineering vice president Jen Fitzgerald, Android Wear director David Singleton, director of product management Aparna Chennapragada, among others.Much of what had been rumored before the show did, indeed, appear on stage at the Moscone Center – including the aforementioned new Android version, Google Photos, Android Pay and more. But there were conspicuous absences, as well – Google didn’t mention its enterprise-focused products like Android and Apps for Work, nor the rumored Project Fi wireless service, or the Project Ara modular smartphone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how Android apps can track you without asking permission

Researchers in Denmark say that it’s child’s play to track your Android phone via Wi-Fi even if the Wi-Fi is nominally turned off – and even if you didn’t let an app track your location.Apps distributed via Google Play have to enumerate the precise permissions they require in order to function – something simple like a flashlight doesn’t (or shouldn’t, anyway) require anything more than access to the camera, so that it can use the flash. More complicated apps with deeper features might need more extensive permissions, including access to the phone’s location data, whether that’s obtained via GPS or Wi-Fi.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Seven best practices for cloud security | Richard Stallman: Windows OS is malware +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Watch Google I/O livestream here

Google I/O 2015 kicks off Wednesday, May 28, from the Moscone Center in San Francisco, at 9 a.m. PST (Noon EST.) So it’s just about smack-dab in the center of the working week, if you’re on the East Coast. That might well mean that you’re just sitting down to lunch, so you could do a lot worse than tune in right here for a live stream of the opening keynote. What, exactly, is going to be said, we don’t know, but the kickoff is generally where Google makes the biggest, splashiest announcements of the event. These may be big surprises, so make sure you’re not facing your monitor if you have to do a spit-take.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 7 things we’re looking for at Google I/O 2015

Don’t call it a developer conference… …when it’s really Google Prom. OK, it’s also a developer conference, but isn’t that what you picture if I say the words “Google Prom?” I/O generally features at least a couple fairly major announcements from Google, and the 2015 edition isn’t expected to disappoint. Here are the seven things we’re looking for this time around.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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