The National Science Foundation will devote $35 million in research funding over the next five years to accelerate the safe, intelligent, design and control of unmanned aircraft applications.+More on Network World: Hot stuff: The coolest drones+The announcement was part of a wide-ranging White House Office of Science and Technology Policy proclamation to, as it said, promote the safe integration and innovative adoption of unmanned aircraft systems across the United States.The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is today hosting a workshop on “Drones and the Future of Aviation.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With an eye towards better handling bandwidth-ravenous video streaming and data center to data center traffic, Juniper today said it would buy fabless photonics manufacturer Aurrion for an undisclosed price.“We expect that Aurrion’s breakthrough technology will result in fundamental and permanent improvements in cost per bit-per-second, power per bit-per-second, bandwidth density, and flexibility of networking systems,” said Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and CTO of Juniper Networks wrote in a blog announcing the acquisition.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With an eye towards better handling bandwidth-ravenous video streaming and data center to data center traffic, Juniper today said it would buy fabless photonics manufacturer Aurrion for an undisclosed price.“We expect that Aurrion’s breakthrough technology will result in fundamental and permanent improvements in cost per bit-per-second, power per bit-per-second, bandwidth density, and flexibility of networking systems,” said Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and CTO of Juniper Networks wrote in a blog announcing the acquisition.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With an eye towards better handling bandwidth-ravenous video streaming and data center to data center traffic, Juniper today said it would buy fabless photonics manufacturer Aurrion for an undisclosed price.“We expect that Aurrion’s breakthrough technology will result in fundamental and permanent improvements in cost per bit-per-second, power per bit-per-second, bandwidth density, and flexibility of networking systems,” said Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and CTO of Juniper Networks wrote in a blog announcing the acquisition.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There was an interesting exchange between IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant and VCE President Chad Sakac in an interview Network World published today. In it, Gallant asked Sakac about the company’s converged infrastructure partnership with Cisco in light of VCE presumably soon becoming part of the merged Dell/EMC. After all, Cisco (the “C” in VCE) sold off its stake in the venture some time ago and will likely find itself competing more directly with EMC once it combines with Dell.+More on Network World: Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There was an interesting exchange between IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant and VCE President Chad Sakac in an interview Network World published today. In it, Gallant asked Sakac about the company’s converged infrastructure partnership with Cisco in light of VCE presumably soon becoming part of the merged Dell/EMC. After all, Cisco (the “C” in VCE) sold off its stake in the venture some time ago and will likely find itself competing more directly with EMC once it combines with Dell.+More on Network World: Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There was an interesting exchange between IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant and VCE President Chad Sakac in an interview Network World published today. In it, Gallant asked Sakac about the company’s converged infrastructure partnership with Cisco in light of VCE presumably soon becoming part of the merged Dell/EMC. After all, Cisco (the “C” in VCE) sold off its stake in the venture some time ago and will likely find itself competing more directly with EMC once it combines with Dell.+More on Network World: Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wacky storiesImage by Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Beck Diefenbach/Stephen LamYes it's that time again…Time to search the old news-feed and find some of the most interesting and sometimes weird and wacky high-tech stories of the year. This time out we feature a look at everything from fireworks displays in space to Starship Enterprise remakes and mermaid robots – just to name a few cool stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wacky storiesImage by Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Beck Diefenbach/Stephen LamYes it's that time again…Time to search the old news-feed and find some of the most interesting and sometimes weird and wacky high-tech stories of the year. This time out we feature a look at everything from fireworks displays in space to Starship Enterprise remakes and mermaid robots – just to name a few cool stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits – nearly $34 million annually according to Cisco’s Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week.Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target.+More on Network World: Security was the HOT topic at Cisco Live+“Defenders are not protecting systems in a way that matches how attackers do their work. Although defenders have evolved their strategies and tools for fighting online criminals, attackers are still permitted far too much unconstrained time to operate,” Cisco wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The White House last week launched a number of steps it hopes will spur the development and further adoption of electric vehicles – including $4.5 billion to help build-out the country’s electric charging grid.“In the past eight years the number of plug-in electric vehicle models increased from one to more than 20, battery costs have decreased 70%, and we have increased the number of electric vehicle charging stations from less than 500 in 2008 to more than 16,000 today – a 40 fold increase,” the DOE stated.+More on Network World: What’s hot in driverless cars?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The White House last week launched a number of steps it hopes will spur the development and further adoption of electric vehicles – including $4.5 billion to help build-out the country’s electric charging grid.“In the past eight years the number of plug-in electric vehicle models increased from one to more than 20, battery costs have decreased 70%, and we have increased the number of electric vehicle charging stations from less than 500 in 2008 to more than 16,000 today – a 40 fold increase,” the DOE stated.+More on Network World: What’s hot in driverless cars?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hand-in-hand with the forthcoming adoption of a low-speed Ethernet standard by the IEEE, proponents of the technology will hold an interoperability plugfest in October to tout the readiness of 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T products.The new specification -- IEEE P802.3bz – defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, significantly boosting the speed of traditional Ethernet without requiring the tearing out of current cabling.+More on Network World: Ethernet everywhere!+Perhaps most significantly 2.5GbE and 5GbE will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hand-in-hand with the forthcoming adoption of a low-speed Ethernet standard by the IEEE, proponents of the technology will hold an interoperability plugfest in October to tout the readiness of 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T products.The new specification -- IEEE P802.3bz – defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, significantly boosting the speed of traditional Ethernet without requiring the tearing out of current cabling.+More on Network World: Ethernet everywhere!+Perhaps most significantly 2.5GbE and 5GbE will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI needs to identify and categorize cyber threats more quickly than it currently does in an effort to stay out in front of current and emerging cyber threats.+More on Network World: FBI: The top 3 ways Congress could help fight tenacious cyber threats+That was the general observation of a report out this week from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General which found that while the FBI has an annual process, known as Threat Review andPrioritization (TRP), to identify the most severe and substantial threats and direct resources to them, the process employs subjective terminology that is open to interpretation, and as such does not prioritize cyber threats in an objective, data-driven, reproducible, and auditable manner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI needs to identify and categorize cyber threats more quickly than it currently does in an effort to stay out in front of current and emerging cyber threats.+More on Network World: FBI: The top 3 ways Congress could help fight tenacious cyber threats+That was the general observation of a report out this week from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General which found that while the FBI has an annual process, known as Threat Review andPrioritization (TRP), to identify the most severe and substantial threats and direct resources to them, the process employs subjective terminology that is open to interpretation, and as such does not prioritize cyber threats in an objective, data-driven, reproducible, and auditable manner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco has patched what it called a critical vulnerability in its Unified Computing System (UCS) Performance Manager software that could let an authenticated, remote attacker execute commands.+More on Network World: Quick look: Cisco Tetration Analytics+Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.0 and prior are affected and the problem is resolved in Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.1 and later. UCS Performance Manager collects information about UCS servers, network, storage, and virtual machines.According to Cisco the vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation performed on parameters that are passed via an HTTP GET request. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP GET requests to an affected system. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the root user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco has patched what it called a critical vulnerability in its Unified Computing System (UCS) Performance Manager software that could let an authenticated, remote attacker execute commands.+More on Network World: Quick look: Cisco Tetration Analytics+Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.0 and prior are affected and the problem is resolved in Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.1 and later. UCS Performance Manager collects information about UCS servers, network, storage, and virtual machines.According to Cisco the vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation performed on parameters that are passed via an HTTP GET request. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP GET requests to an affected system. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the root user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco has patched what it called a critical vulnerability in its Unified Computing System (UCS) Performance Manager software that could let an authenticated, remote attacker execute commands.+More on Network World: Quick look: Cisco Tetration Analytics+Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.0 and prior are affected and the problem is resolved in Cisco UCS Performance Manager versions 2.0.1 and later. UCS Performance Manager collects information about UCS servers, network, storage, and virtual machines.According to Cisco the vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation performed on parameters that are passed via an HTTP GET request. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP GET requests to an affected system. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the root user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Is it possible to develop chip technology that combines the high-performance characteristics of ASICS with the speedy, low-cost features of printed circuit boards?Scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this week said they were looking for information on how to build interface standards that would enable modular design and practical circuit blocks that could be reused to greatly shorten electronics development time and cost.+More on Network World: DARPA: Researchers develop chip part that could double wireless frequency capacity+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Michael Cooney