Uncertainty clouds debate on Russia’s suspected role in election hacks

How do you prove Russia meddled with the presidential election?That's a question the U.S. government is facing, but may never fully answer, at least not publicly. Last week, the U.S. punished Russia, claiming the country's cyberspies hacked Democratic groups and figures during the election season.However, missing from last week’s announcement was any new evidence -- or a smoking gun -- proving the Kremlin’s involvement. This isn’t sitting well with everyone in the security industry, especially since identifying the culprit of any cyberattack is no easy matter.“Maybe Russia did do it, but until we have sufficient evidence, it’s a mistake to move forward,” said Jeffrey Carr, a cybersecurity consultant.   To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uncertainty clouds debate on Russia’s suspected role in election hacks

How do you prove Russia meddled with the presidential election?That's a question the U.S. government is facing, but may never fully answer, at least not publicly. Last week, the U.S. punished Russia, claiming the country's cyberspies hacked Democratic groups and figures during the election season.However, missing from last week’s announcement was any new evidence -- or a smoking gun -- proving the Kremlin’s involvement. This isn’t sitting well with everyone in the security industry, especially since identifying the culprit of any cyberattack is no easy matter.“Maybe Russia did do it, but until we have sufficient evidence, it’s a mistake to move forward,” said Jeffrey Carr, a cybersecurity consultant.   To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mous Limitless iPhone case: Fashionably sturdy & functional

When it comes to iPhone cases, I'm all about sturdiness. So when London-based "fashion technology company" Mous hit me up to take a look it its new Limitless iPhone case I said sure, but was expecting more style than substance.I have to admit though, this case is both good looking and a solid protector for your Apple smartphone.MORE: Bring on the iPhone 7 parody videosMous, which got its start a couple of years back making a funky and functional Musicase designed to contain your phone AND and earphones, funded its Limitless line in part through an Indiegogo campaign that raised more than $372K and that ends Jan. 8. The company pushes its use of premium materials, from marble to walnut, and dramatically shows how resilient its cases are via YouTube videos of encased phones being dropped from cranes or tossed around Apple stores.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot Off The Press: NSX Light Board Videos

At the start of 2016 we began a series of VMware NSX light board videos. The goal has been to highlight the use cases and capabilities driving the adoption of network virtualization today. Through the use of a light board, these NSX  experts quickly sketch out the technology and business drivers around network virtualization with NSX.

At the end of this year, the team published 20 additional light board videos across these NSX topics: Security and IT Automation as well as Features and Capabilities and OpenStack. And for 2017, more coming soon!

Here are the recently published videos:

ZigBee’s Dotdot language is the latest bid for IoT harmony

As consumers watch another wave of home IoT devices emerge from CES this week, they’ll still be waiting for one technology that can make all those products work together.The ZigBee Alliance, a group of more than 400 companies that make things with the ZigBee wireless protocol, made a bid to provide that unifying technology right before the annual consumer electronics gathering kicks off.On Tuesday, ZigBee announced Dotdot, which it calls a universal language for IoT. Even though ZigBee is best known as an open wireless communications protocol used in many home IoT products, Dotdot is intended for use with any wireless technology. It defines things like how devices tell each other what they are and what they can do, which is important for making different objects around a home do things together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ZigBee’s Dotdot language is the latest bid for IoT harmony

As consumers watch another wave of home IoT devices emerge from CES this week, they’ll still be waiting for one technology that can make all those products work together.The ZigBee Alliance, a group of more than 400 companies that make things with the ZigBee wireless protocol, made a bid to provide that unifying technology right before the annual consumer electronics gathering kicks off.On Tuesday, ZigBee announced Dotdot, which it calls a universal language for IoT. Even though ZigBee is best known as an open wireless communications protocol used in many home IoT products, Dotdot is intended for use with any wireless technology. It defines things like how devices tell each other what they are and what they can do, which is important for making different objects around a home do things together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AT&T Plans 5G New Radio Testing in Second Half of 2017

The 3GPP-based trials are intended to speed up the integration of 5G NR technologies into devices.

Cisco Exec Departs for IoT & Cloud Job at Microsoft

Nortel veteran Tony Shakib finds a new roost.

67% off Canon MG6821 Wireless All-In-One Printer, Scanner, and Copier With Airprint – Deal Alert

Canon's MG6821 all-in-one printer, scanner and copier features Airprint for convenient printing from your mobile device, and can print to Google Cloud as well. It features fast print speeds, sharp text, vivid colors, and can print 2-sided. It averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 500 customers on Amazon, where its list price has been reduced to just $49. If you're due for a new, more modern printer, see this deal on Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 dazzling smartphone improvements with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip

Unparalleled improvements will come to smartphones with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, a tiny chip with powerhouse features. Super-thin handsets will be as fast as PCs, LTE data transfers could be faster than a wired internet connection, and virtual reality will be in the palm of your hand. Top handsets like Samsung's Galaxy S8 are likely to end up using the new eight-core Snapdragon 835 chip. Here are seven improvements coming to handsets.Smartphones will be thinnerPhones are already thin, but will get even thinner with the Snapdragon 835. The chip -- which is smaller than a U.S. penny -- is 35 percent smaller than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 820, which powers the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. If smartphone sizes remain the same, device makers could pack in larger batteries and battery life. The chip will also occupy less circuit board space, allowing device makers to add more memory or other components.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ARM PCs with Windows 10 get a new start with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

Take your pick: whether you choose an Android smartphone, Windows 10 laptop or hybrid PC device, you'll be able to run Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835. That sums up the versatility of the new chip: designed primarily for Android smartphones, it has the horsepower to run a PC. In fact, the Snapdragon 835 will  bring never-before-seen features to Windows PCs. The chip, based on ARM architecture, will first arrive in smartphones later this quarter, with a good chance of appearing in new handsets from Samsung, HTC and LG. It will also appear in PCs running Windows 10 later this year. Microsoft and Qualcomm in December announced they were collaborating to bring the Snapdragon 835 to "cellular PCs," which are thin-and-light Windows 10 laptops with smartphone-like, always-on connectivity to the internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: A review of technical developments in cryptography

The biggest practical development in crypto for 2016 is Transport Layer Security version 1.3. TLS is the most important and widely used cryptographic protocol and is the backbone of secure Internet communication; you’re using it right now to read this blog! After years of work by hundreds of researchers and engineers, the new TLS design is now considered final from a cryptography standpoint. —EFF

The post Worth Reading: A review of technical developments in cryptography appeared first on 'net work.

The Rosie Pattern Language, a better way to mine your data

We’ve all been there: You’ve got tons of unstructured or semi-structured data to sift through and like any savvy nerd, you know that doing so handraulically is against all that is good and holy [queue “Mission Impossible” music]. Your problem, which you have to accept, is how to efficiently and effectively automate the extraction process. As an old hand on the digital ship you’ll probably turn to a tool you know well such as grep, that good ol’ workhorse that implements regular expressions. Say you want to find all of the IPv4 addresses in a text file. You might resort to using:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel unveils its Optane hyperfast memory

Intel today announced that its upcoming Optane non-volatile memory will ship in the second quarter of the year as 16GB and 32GB M.2 expansion cards.Optane memory will be available as an option for new Intel-based client platforms, including Intel 7th Gen Core (Kaby Lake), and as a standalone component. Platforms and motherboards supporting Intel Optane technology will be labeled "Optane Ready" to indicate their compatibility.Intel unveiled Intel Optane Memory along with sharing details about Intel 7th generation Core processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Zigbee Writes a Universal Language for IoT

The Zigbee dotdot language could help with IoT fragmentation.

Top 10 Ethical Dilemmas & Policy Issues in Science & Tech

You think you have problems? Sure you do, but pity those in science and technology tasked with advancing artificial intelligence, drones and healthcare methods that are fraught with peril despite potentially huge benefits.The University of Notre Dame's John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values has issued its fourth annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in science and technology, and it contains some doozies. It might have seemed tough to top some of 2016's issues, from lethal cyberweapons to bone conduction for marketing, but no sweat. Of course the Notre Dame center's researchers hope to be able help address some of these new concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 10 Ethical Dilemmas & Policy Issues in Science & Tech

You think you have problems? Sure you do, but pity those in science and technology tasked with advancing artificial intelligence, drones and healthcare methods that are fraught with peril despite potentially huge benefits.The University of Notre Dame's John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values has issued its fourth annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in science and technology, and it contains some doozies. It might have seemed tough to top some of 2016's issues, from lethal cyberweapons to bone conduction for marketing, but no sweat. Of course the Notre Dame center's researchers hope to be able help address some of these new concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Study shows 802.11ac wave 2 APs gaining sales ground

Shipments of 802.11ac wave 2 access points doubled in volume in the third quarter of 2016, as the newer wireless technology begins to reach further into the mainstream.According to statistics from IHS Markit, the new tech accounted for about 10% of all wireless access points shipped during the third quarter, up from 5% in the previous quarter. That’s more than half a million wave 2 access points sold during those months.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Facebook gets 2017 tech industry Year in Apologies rolling + Donald Trump offers cybersecurity warning: 'No computer is safe'To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Now its a Microblog

The transition to Packet Pushers is complete.  My long-form technical and analytical writing is published there.

Etherealmind will become a “microblog”:

1. I want to share links, thoughts, references, observations that I collect from reading and research.
2. Posts with just a few sentences and link to the source.
3. Its not practical to publish to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc individually. Nor do I want to, I own this content.

The post Now its a Microblog appeared first on EtherealMind.

IDG Contributor Network: How mainframes prevent data breaches

2016 was a strange year marked by everything from election surprises to a seemingly endless spate of celebrity deaths. But when historians look back at this mirum anno—weird year—it may end up being known as the year of the data breach. Of course, this sort of thing isn’t restricted to 2016, but its impact on the world was hard to ignore. Among government organizations, the IRS and FBI suffered data breaches, and corporate victims included LinkedIn, Target, Verizon and Yahoo. Literally millions of people had their private information exposed to black hats, thieves and other ne’er-do-wells of the digital world. This epidemic of data theft calls upon security experts to get serious about creating new solutions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here