Starting in however many more minutes it takes me to post this and continuing until Tuesday, Sept. 8, I will be on vacation and therefore failing to blog. Unless I feel like it.No, I don’t fish.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Four successive lightning strikes on a local utility grid in Europe caused a data loss at Google's Belgium data center. For Google, a company with a self-described "appetite for accuracy" in its data center operations, admitting an unrecoverable data loss as small as 0.000001% -- as it did -- likely came with a little bit of pain.The lightning strikes occurred Aug. 13 and the resulting storage system problems weren't fully resolved for five days. Google's post mortem found room for improvement in both hardware upgrades and in the engineering response to the problem.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today, organizations need to analyze data from multiple sources and, to stay competitive, they need to do it when the data is fresh off the wire. But installing the software to take on this task can be onerous.Open source software vendor Mesosphere plans to release a stack of integrated open source software that would make it easy for enterprises to capture data in real time and analyze it on the fly.The stack, called Mesosphere Infinity, is based on Apache Mesos open source software for managing clusters of servers. Mesosphere offers a commercial edition of this open source software called the Mesosphere Data Center Operating System, which is used in this package.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’ve paid any attention to Intel’s developer event in San Francisco this week, you’ve probably gathered already that there’s almost no chip news at the show. Intel has moved up the food chain, so to speak, and is showing developers what they can build with its technologies rather than focusing on new components.It makes sense, since with PCs on the wane Intel needs developers to get creative with its products. It can no longer flash a faster Core i7 chip and expect them to go do something interesting with it, because PCs nowadays just aren’t that interesting. Instead, it needs to show them what else they can do with its latest chips.+ ALSO FROM THE SHOW: IDF 2015's coolest demos | Intel’s big plan to seed the private cloud market +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The best of Intel Developer Forum 2015Image by Mark HachmanEach year, Intel holds its Developer Forum to lead the PC industry into the direction Intel wants it to go: powerful new PCs, connected devices, touchscreens, and the like. Well, a bunch of stale PowerPoint foils won’t do the job. So Intel and its partners seed IDF with some amazing, awe-inspiring demos, all in a bid to get the developer community behind this year’s technological focus. What sort of demos, you ask? We have some of the best in the following pages. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Are there places in your home or office where your Wi-Fi signal doesn't reach? You're not alone. Because of Wi-Fi's limited range -- and old-school building construction techniques like thick plaster, brick or masonry walls -- even the best Wi-Fi networks have dead zones. If you have that problem, you have several options.You can start drilling holes in your walls so you can run network cabling. You can try a Wi-Fi range extender (which might help, depending on the strength of your Wi-Fi and the efficiency of the extender). Or you can use a powerline kit, which routes data over your electric cables by piggybacking the data on top of the electrical current's 60-hertz wave and then extracting the data at the other end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data centers don't just suck down energy. They guzzle it. According to the National Resources Defense Council, data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. In 2013, U.S. data centers used 91 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power New York City households twice. The NRDC expects that demand to grow to 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020.While companies like Amazon have been a target of campaigns from nonprofits like Green America, the NRDC says that larger server farms operated by well-known Internet companies are paragons of ultra-efficiency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alibaba Group's cloud business is targeting the Southeast Asian market with a new data center that will go online in Singapore this September. The Singapore facility is Alibaba's second data center built outside China. The company has been pushing aggressively into cloud computing, with an eye toward international markets, including the U.S. Last month, Alibaba announced a US$1 billion investment to speed up those efforts. Other data centers are being planned for Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA
DARPA’s Circuit Realization At Faster Timescales (CRAFT) program aims to make it easier, faster and cheaper to design custom circuits akin to this one, which was specially designed to provide a range of voltages and currents for testing an infrared sensor device that had been a candidate for an orbiting telescope.
Heavyweight 3D imagery and complex unmanned aircraft systems are just two applications that beg for the low power, high performance custom integrated circuits the researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are looking to build.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Absolute Data and Device Security adds Microsoft SCCM and SIEM integrationKey features: Absolute has introduced new security functionality that extends IT oversight to include Microsoft SCCM and SIEM integration. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A computer glitch that disrupted airline traffic in some parts of the U.S. over the weekend was possibly the result of a software upgrade, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday.The agency, which had earlier described a problem in its “automation system” as the cause of the disruption, said the problem could be possibly traced to a recent software upgrade at a high-altitude radar facility in Leesburg, Virginia.The upgrade was designed to provide additional tools for controllers, the agency said. While the FAA and its system contractor complete their assessment, the new features have been disabled.The agency said that there was no indication that the disruption was related to any inherent problems with the En Route Automation Modernization system, which it claims has had a greater than 99.99 availability rate since it was completed nationwide earlier this year. ERAM replaced the 40-year-old En Route Host computer and backup system used at 20 FAA Air Route Traffic Control Centers nationwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Microsoft announced that it would be offering consumers a free upgrade to Windows 10, it got a lot of people talking. After all, the company charged $199 per license for consumers to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional just six years ago. So clearly, a free upgrade to a new OS would have to have a big impact on Microsoft’s business, right?Not so much, according to Katherine Egbert, a managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. She said in an email that because most people get a new version of Windows when they buy a new computer, the decision to offer free upgrades will have “no financial impact” on Microsoft. The company will still make money from PC manufacturers who have to license Windows 10 for the new hardware that they sell.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With Google restructuring its business and moving under the umbrella of new parent company Alphabet, executives may be trying to get back some of their old start-up swagger.The restructuring will bring a lot of changes to what is easily one of the world's most well-known companies. But company officials haven't offered any information about the move since co-founder Larry Page offered up a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The deadly explosion that rocked the Chinese city of Tianjin has caused the country to shut down a nearby supercomputer, also one of the fastest in the world.The supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, was housed in a facility just a kilometer away from Wednesday’s explosion. The warehouse blast was so massive it killed 50 people and sent 701 people to the hospital, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.The Tianhe-1A, however, managed to continue running smoothly, following the blast, Xinhua said on Thursday. The machine is housed in a protected room, and its database also remains unharmed.As a security precaution, staff at the facility decided to manually shut down Tianhe-1A thirty minutes after the blast had occurred, according to Xinhua.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple and Intel are both making progress in their efforts to hire more women and minorities, according to figures released by the companies this week.In the first six months of the year, more than 43 percent of Intel’s hires in the U.S. were women and minorities, up from 32 percent at the end of 2014, the company reported in its first mid-year diversity report.At 43 percent, Intel said it was surpassing the 40 percent diversity hiring goal it set for itself for the full year.Apple, meanwhile, boosted its hiring of women by 65 percent globally over the past year, to 11,000, the company said in its second annual report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alibaba Group’s cloud computing and mobile businesses are surging, but its reported revenue in the second quarter missed analysts’ estimates, amid a slowing Chinese economy.In the quarter ended June 30, Alibaba generated over $3.2 billion in revenue, up 28 percent year over year, but short of the $3.39 billion consensus expectation from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.The e-commerce giant raked in a net profit of US$4.9 billion, for a 150 percent increase, but the huge profit increase largely came from its film production arm, Alibaba Pictures. In June, the company reduced its stake in Alibaba Pictures, and “deconsolidated” it from the financial results. This resulted in a major gain for Alibaba’s investment income.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Struggling HTC is cutting 15 percent of its work force in an attempt to cut costs and revive its ailing smartphone business.The Taiwanese company announced the lay offs on Thursday, after its second quarter earnings took a dive, for a NT$8 billion (US$257 million) loss.HTC declined to mention the exact number of layoffs. But as of March 31, the company had 15,685 employees, according to its most recent annual report. This means a 15 percent reduction could end up cutting 2,300 jobs.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: HTC is dead in the water +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The announcement Monday that saw Google reorganize under the banner of new holding company Alphabet was Big News, we all seem to agree, but it’s much less clear exactly what kind of Big News it is.It’s going to keep investors happy by segmenting some of Google’s wilder moonshot projects out of the main earnings figures, according to the Verge. Or maybe, says the Guardian, Google wants to make itself a smaller target for the European regulators it’s currently battling.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Installing rogue firmware on embedded devices has long been a concern for security researchers, and it seems that such attacks have started to gain ground with hackers.In an advisory Tuesday, Cisco Systems warned customers that it is aware of a limited number of cases where attackers have replaced the boot firmware on devices running its IOS operating system. IOS runs on most Cisco routers and switches and provides a complex set of networking tools and features.MEET CISCO'S NEW CEO: The Real Chuck RobbinsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the wake of lackluster earnings, Lenovo said it is working towards pumping out products faster from its newly acquired Motorola Mobility division.Lenovo wants the Motorola team to shorten its product development time, CEO Yang Yuanqing said in an earnings conference call Thursday. “By the end of the life cycle the product is not competitive, particularly the Moto G, the Moto X,” he said.Yang wants the company to update its smartphones and add new models every six months. “In the future we will improve our product development cycle. So in every moment our product will be competitive,” he said.Following a streamlining of the business, Lenovo will also create a simpler handset portfolio, with fewer models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here