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Category Archives for "Network World SDN"

Huawei’s P10 camera-phone comes in more colors than the rainbow

Huawei Technologies calls the P10 a smartphone, but its CEO doesn't have much to say about its communication capabilities.Richard Yu, CEO of the company's consumer business group, might instead have been talking about a new camera when he boasted of the device's Leica-style portraiture and, in fact, like its predecessor it was "co-engineered" with camera-maker Leica.The device runs Android 7.0 on a Huawei Kirin 960 processor with four 2.4GHz ARM Cortex A73 cores and four 1.8GHz ARM Cortex A53 cores and has 4GB of RAM and 32, 64 or 128GB of flash depending on the model.It has a 5.1-inch Full-HD screen and a 3,200 mAh battery with USB-C charging. It measures 145.3 millimeters by 69.3 mm by 6.98 mm, and weighs about 145 grams.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attacks targeted hundreds of MySQL databases

Hundreds of MySQL databases were hit in ransomware attacks, which were described as “an evolution of the MongoDB ransomware attacks;” in January, there were tens of thousands of MongoDB installs erased and replaced with ransom demands. In the new attacks, targeted MySQL databases are erased and replaced with a ransom demand for 0.2 bitcoin, which is currently equal to about $234.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

71% off Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3 PLUS Wireless Bluetooth Speaker – Deal Alert

Designed and Engineered by Cambridge SoundWorks to deliver richer fuller bass; the PLUS delivers surprising bass from such a small speaker, excellent bass performance across each type of music genre.  The PLUS battery technology and power saving design allows this speaker to play up to 30 hours from a full charge with volume set up to 2/3 of maximum playing volume.  IPX5 water resistance makes the unit splashproof, rainproof, dustproof, and sandproof.  Check out the dramatically discounted OontZ Angle 3 PLUS from Cambridge Soundworks now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

35% off Razor Hovertrax 2.0 Hoverboard Self-Balancing Smart Scooter – Deal Alert

Step on the deck and go with Razor Hovertrax 2.0, the world’s smartest self-balancing electric scooter. Intelligently-engineered with EverBalance technology, Hovertrax 2.0 is the only board that auto-levels for a safer, easier mount and a smoother ride. Whether you’re coasting, racing, or commuting, Hovertrax 2.0 is always in balance. Indoors or out, Hovertrax 2.0 does the work so you can enjoy the journey. Hovertrax 2.0: technology so advanced, it’s simple. Once you learn how to ride, it becomes second nature.  Razor was also the first U.S. brand to receive the UL 2272 listing for safety, ensuring that the Hovertrax 2.0 meets or exceeds the highest fire and electrical safety standards. The HoverTrax 2.0 has a list price of $459.99 has been reduced 35% to just 298.00. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google snafu signs users out of accounts, wreaks havoc on OnHub and Wifi routers

The good thing and the bad thing about the cloud is, well, the cloud. The latter part of that trueism was brought home late Thursday when some Google users were suddenly signed out of their accounts and devices.The problem affected Google Wifi mesh routers, Google’s OnHub router, other devices like the Chromecast, and even some plain old Google Accounts.The impact on you at home: If this problem affected you last night and you were suddenly signed out of all your accounts, don’t worry. Malcious hackers hadn’t suddenly taken over all your devices. Google says it was just a snafu with the Google Account engine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T grows, testing on tap from UNH lab

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: AppDirect’s survey rings true, albeit self-serving

I quite like Henry Ford's approach toward choice: You can have any color you like so long as it's black. Too much choice makes for (in my case, at least) increased stress as choices from a bewildering array of automobile options become ever more difficult.And this situation of consumers being spoiled for choice occurs in our own sector: technology.When I started out on this tech commentary lark over a decade ago, it was still the early days of SaaS. Only a few vendors -- Salesforce and NetSuite among them -- existed at that time. At the small and midsize business (SMB) end of town, there was a similarly limited choice of tools. Indeed, the start of my blogging journey coincided almost exactly with Rod Drury founding Xero, a SaaS company offering accounting for SMBs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch Series 3 Rumor Rollup: New display, more energy & watchOS beta 3.2

iPhone 8 rumormongers don't get to have all the fun: Speculation has started to swirl about the Apple Watch Series 3, expected to arrive around the same time as the 10th anniversary Apple smartphone in the fall.The next Apple smart watch, which competes with products from LG, Samsung and others, is expected to boast performance and battery life improvements. The Series 2 watch came with improved performance, a brighter display, better water resistance, a built-in GPS and more. (Apple Watches start in under-$300 range and rise in price into the thousands, depending on model, and are available from Apple as well as retail partners like Best Buy and Walmart.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Six common DevOps myths busted

Even though the DevOps movement has begun to take hold, plenty of misperceptions about DevOps still exist. Is DevOps a set of absolute beliefs? A miracle cure for anything that ails an organization? Does it require particular software tools? Can only the unicorns of the world get it right? Because it can be hard to pin down, some people mistrust the benefits of solid DevOps methodologies. And they forget that at its heart, DevOps is about responding more quickly to business and customer needs. It’s about continual learning and improvement rather than an end state. A new Puppet ebook, DevOps Mythbusting, sets the record straight, and shows how you can benefit from DevOps practices, even if you think you don't have the time or resources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon ranks tops in wireless coverage and reliability by RootMetrics

Verizon was named the "undisputed leader" for U.S. wireless coverage and network reliability for the second half of 2016 at the city, state and national levels, based on millions of field tests conducted by RootMetrics.Verizon benefited from its LTE-Advanced service started in summer of 2016, which provided a significant boost to Verizon's download speeds, RootMetrics said in a report released Thursday.Separately, Verizon announced on Wednesday that it will deliver 5G wireless service to pilot customers in 11 cities by mid-2017. Those cities include Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Seattle and Washington.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell EMC brings hyperconverged infrastructure to hybrid clouds

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has been red hot over the past few years as more customers look for turnkey solutions to simplify the deployment of technology in its software defined data centers. The converged infrastructure group at Dell EMC, formerly known as VCE, was a late entrant into the market, but with Usain Bolt-like speed, the company has caught up to the field and is well on its way to becoming the market leader and de facto standard. RELATED: Hyperconvergence: What’s all the hype about? The value proposition for Dell EMC is as simple as its products are to deploy. It’s HCI solutions, VxRack and VxRail, are kept in lockstep with VMware’s vSphere and VSAN roadmaps. Businesses that want to run VMware on HCI will almost certainly get a superior experience with VxRack and/or VxRail than they will with any other solution. The VMware install base is obviously huge, and Dell EMC has parlayed this into the following momentum in about a year: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to scrub your private data from ‘people finder’ sites

It doesn’t matter what you do online: The internet knows a ton about you, and that information is a mouse click away.Search any people finder site—Spokeo, PeekYou, Whitepages, to name a few—and odds are you’ll find a page listing your full name, date of birth, names of family members, current address, and phone number. Depending on the site's aggressiveness, it may offer (for a low membership fee or the price of registering an account) additional details such as past addresses, social media profiles, marital status, employment history, education, court cases such as bankruptcies, hobbies, and even a photo of where you live.[ 18 surprising tips for security pros. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security Report newsletter. ] Forget the National Security Agency. Aggregator sites such as Intelius, Radaris, and PeopleFinder have data warehouses full of information about you, accessible to people without your permission, and used for purposes you know nothing about. While these sites ostensibly provide background checks and other public services, they also simplify identity theft, stalking, and doxxing (exposing personal information online to encourage harassment), which is both creepy and downright dangerous.To read this article in full or to leave Continue reading

Here’s why self-driving cars may never really be self-driving

It sounds like the beginning of a bar room joke.Two self-driving cars are headed down the highway when the lead car decides to   speed up to avoid being rear-ended by the second. That car, in turn, slows down to avoid hitting the first. Then a third car suddenly comes between the two, prompting  the slower car to change lanes to avoid and accident.The problem: There are cars in the lanes on either side of it.What's an autonomous car to do? The answer is no joke.The scenario is called "a ripple factor" and it's one of many researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are studying to understand how embedded software could  address a myriad number of unexpected situations that could cause accidents as self-driving vehicles speed toward reality.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPad smackdown: Microsoft Office vs. Apple iWork vs. Google G Suite

The iPad makes a great laptop, and nowhere is that more obvious than in its productivity tools. Apple showed the way years ago with its iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), and Microsoft has validated the notion with its Office suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). Of course there's also Google G Suite (Docs, Sheets, and Slides), which includes mobile versions of the apps for iOS.iPad productivity smackdown: Word processing comparediPad productivity smackdown: Spreadsheets comparediPad productivity smackdown: Presentations comparediPad productivity smackdown: File collaboration comparedTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Why AMD had to change the Zen name to Ryzen for its new chip architecture

You know when AMD’s Ryzen is launching, how much it’ll cost, and you even have a pretty good idea of its performance. But you might not know why AMD dropped the original Zen name for Ryzen, so we asked. And it all begins with what AMD couldn’t do with the brand.As John Taylor, corporate vice president of marketing for AMD, describes it, AMD was between a rock and a hard place. Mike Clark, an engineering fellow at AMD who led the Zen architecture development, had dubbed the architecture “Zen” for the balance it struck between various aspects of the design. Fans who had followed Zen’s development would buttonhole AMD execs and rave about the Zen name: “‘I love Zen...there’s something about it I’m just connecting with,’ they’d say,” Taylor said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why DRaaS is a better defense against ransomware

Recovering from a ransomware attack doesn’t have to take daysImage by Eric E CastroIt’s one thing for a user’s files to get infected with ransomware, it’s quite another to have a production database or mission-critical application infected. But, restoring these databases and apps from a traditional backup solution (appliance, cloud or tape) will take hours or even days which can cost a business tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dean Nicolls, vice president of marketing at Infrascale, shares some tangible ways disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) can pay big dividends and quickly restore systems in the wake of a ransomware attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are you afraid your car will be taken over?

In 2013 Charlie Miller and Chris Valesek showed how easy it was to take over a connected car. It was a monumental moment that made the auto industry stand up and take notice of the vulnerability of the connected cars they manufactured.Miller and Valesek were not maliciously running cars off the road, but they did give demonstrations so that the auto industry would begin to take security seriously. As seen in this video, the two researchers had the capability through their laptops to shut down the vehicle's engine on the highway or spew window washing fluid onto the windshield, which could startle an unsuspecting driver to perhaps jerk the wheel and hit another car. They identified more than seven major categories of remote attack surfaces, based on their study of 20 models (2014 to 2015) from different car manufacturers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MWC 17: What’s coming, what’s not, and what we really want to see

After reading leaks, rumors, and tea leaves for months, Mobile World Congress is finally almost here. In just about a week, we’ll get a look at some of the most anticipated phones of the year; all of them vying for our attention with their dual cameras, skinny bezels, and big, beautiful screens.And even with Samsung making us wait a little longer for the Galaxy S8, there will still be loads of phones, tablets, watches, and gadgets on display in Barcelona. But if you can’t wait until the big event, we’ve got everything you need to know right here.What’s we know is coming LG G6 LG swung and missed with its modular-minded G5, so it’s no surprise that it’s gone back to the drawing board with the G6. And from the looks of it, they got it right this time. While we’ll be losing one of the last phone lines that still had a removable battery, LG has opted to put a premium on design, with a glass-and-metal frame, tiny bezels, and a 5.7-inch Full Vision” Quad HD LCD screen. It’ll also be waterproof, come with a dual camera system, and feature a Quad digital-to-analog converter like Continue reading

Police arrest man suspected of building million-router German botnet

Last year, someone turned a German internet service provider into a million-router botnet. German police think they will soon have the culprit.The U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) made an arrest on Wednesday in connection with the November 2016 hack on Deutsche Telekom. The agency said it arrested a 29-year-old man at Luton airport, acting on a European Arrest Warrant issued by the public prosecutor's office in Cologne, Germany.The German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA), which led the investigation, said it had worked with British law enforcement officials to arrest the man, a Briton.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amid cyberattacks, ISPs try to clean up the internet

If your computer’s been hacked, Dale Drew might actually know something about that.He's CSO (chief security officer) at Level 3 Communications, a major internet backbone provider that's routinely on the lookout for cyberattacks on the network level. The company has linked more than 150 million IP addresses to malicious activity worldwide.That means all of those IP addresses have computers behind them that are probably involved in distributed denial-of-service attacks, email spam, or breaches of company servers, Drew said.Hackers have managed to hijack those computers to "cause harm to the internet," but the owners don't always know that, Drew said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here