Microsoft to Acquire Deep Learning Startup Maluuba

The AI arms race continues.

Microsoft employees say monitoring disturbing content traumatized them

There is a very dark underbelly to the web that is not for the weak of stomach. You may be thinking of 4chan, but that place is just the starting point. Unfortunately, it falls to some people to monitor this garbage for law enforcement, and in the case of two Microsoft employees, it drove them over the edge. In a lawsuit filed against Microsoft, Henry Soto and Greg Blauert claim they were forced daily for months to view some of the most disturbing photos and videos you can find on the internet and that Microsoft did nothing as the constant viewing took its toll on them. They now claim to suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The two were part of Microsoft’s Online Safety Team, a group formed to investigate content being stored on Microsoft sites, like OneDrive, that should be taken down or reported to police. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Cloud Key Management Service could help more enterprises encrypt data

Attackers are increasingly able to penetrate perimeter defenses, compromise accounts and mine data without targets even being aware of the attack, as the Democratic National Committee breach proved. Encrypting data is the best defense.Strong encryption of complex data structures requires a Key Management System (KMS). But implementing a KMS can be challenging, especially for enterprises below the security poverty line that don’t have the budget to hire a multidisciplinary security team. Google may have a solution with its Cloud Key Management Service (CKMS) now in beta in select countries.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Cloud Key Management Service could help more enterprises encrypt data

Attackers are increasingly able to penetrate perimeter defenses, compromise accounts and mine data without targets even being aware of the attack, as the Democratic National Committee breach proved. Encrypting data is the best defense.Strong encryption of complex data structures requires a Key Management System (KMS). But implementing a KMS can be challenging, especially for enterprises below the security poverty line that don’t have the budget to hire a multidisciplinary security team. Google may have a solution with its Cloud Key Management Service (CKMS) now in beta in select countries.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report

As Noction continues to intelligently optimize routing for more and more networks around the world, we find ourselves in the unique position of having great insights into the general Internet performance as well as the performance of specific Internet carriers, when analyzing data collected by IRP Lite instances. Around 200 million successful probes performed by IRP instances over the previous weeks offered us plenty of data for analysis. The current report card covers the performance of major providers within the continental United States. —Noction

The post Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report appeared first on 'net work.

Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report

As Noction continues to intelligently optimize routing for more and more networks around the world, we find ourselves in the unique position of having great insights into the general Internet performance as well as the performance of specific Internet carriers, when analyzing data collected by IRP Lite instances. Around 200 million successful probes performed by IRP instances over the previous weeks offered us plenty of data for analysis. The current report card covers the performance of major providers within the continental United States. —Noction

The post Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report appeared first on 'net work.

44% off YETI Rambler 64oz Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Bottle with Cap – Deal Alert

With double-wall vacuum insulation, these over-engineered drink holders keep your favorite beverage as cold -- or hot -- as science allows. Over-the-nose wide mouth, anti-condensation, puncture and rust-resistant, no-leak cap, and a giant 64-oz capacity that can fit everything from a growler of beer to multiple bowls of soup. The Yeti Rambler is currently listed for the very low price of $49.99, a good deal considering its $89.99 list price. See the high-end, over-engineered Yeti bottle now on Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mellanox’s Infiniband Switches Give Machine Learning a Boost

Offloading GPU cycles could be a sharp idea.

SDxCentral Weekly News Roundup — January 13, 2017

Ericsson does CloudRAN R&D with China Mobile; Korean operator rolls out Juniper routers in advance of 5G.

Amdocs Will Contribute Modules to OpenECOMP

The Linux Foundation's new moniker for the project is OpenECOMP.

IDG Contributor Network: Infrastructure monitoring: Turn data into knowledge and minimize slowdowns

It’s 2 a.m., and a hospital’s system has slowed to a crawl. Lives are at stake. For the harried system admins looking for the source of the slowdown, time is of the essence.The hospital’s system has servers attached through a SAN to storage devices. But where’s the weak link? The administrator cannot afford to waste time analyzing server performance when the problem may be in a storage device or the SAN. He needs information that enables him to conduct his root cause analysis as quickly as possible.Perhaps you don’t have to worry about whether someone will live or die when your IT infrastructure fails. However, when it’s slow or down, it fails to deliver a satisfying user experience. Also, it’s likely that your company’s operations falter, costs increase, and your bottom line suffers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Infrastructure monitoring: Turn data into knowledge and minimize slowdowns

It’s 2 a.m., and a hospital’s system has slowed to a crawl. Lives are at stake. For the harried system admins looking for the source of the slowdown, time is of the essence.The hospital’s system has servers attached through a SAN to storage devices. But where’s the weak link? The administrator cannot afford to waste time analyzing server performance when the problem may be in a storage device or the SAN. He needs information that enables him to conduct his root cause analysis as quickly as possible.Perhaps you don’t have to worry about whether someone will live or die when your IT infrastructure fails. However, when it’s slow or down, it fails to deliver a satisfying user experience. Also, it’s likely that your company’s operations falter, costs increase, and your bottom line suffers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile Edge Computing Creates ‘Tiny Data Centers’ at the Edge

Vendors jump on MEC, and ETSI creates a working group.

Is this the year IoT standards will finally make sense?

A few brave souls predict IoT standards will start to gel this year, but making all those connected things work together still looks like a long shot.Two years ago, some industry analysts cautiously suggested that a vast array of IoT standards would merge into just a few beginning in 2017. If the internet of things in late 2014 was a cacophony of discordant musicians tuning up, it’s now reached the point where a few virtuosos are playing the same tune. But there’s still a lot of sheet music getting passed around.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is this the year IoT standards will finally make sense?

A few brave souls predict IoT standards will start to gel this year, but making all those connected things work together still looks like a long shot.Two years ago, some industry analysts cautiously suggested that a vast array of IoT standards would merge into just a few beginning in 2017. If the internet of things in late 2014 was a cacophony of discordant musicians tuning up, it’s now reached the point where a few virtuosos are playing the same tune. But there’s still a lot of sheet music getting passed around.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Roof Charms in Seoul

The post Roof Charms in Seoul appeared first on 'net work.

Roof Charms in Seoul

The post Roof Charms in Seoul appeared first on 'net work.

Stumbling And Fumbling Into Video Blogging

I’m used to writing and to podcasting. I know what the content creation and publication process looks like for written and audio media. The increasing popularity of video has had me and my business partner scratching our heads, wondering how we can best leverage the medium. Or if we even should.

And so, we’ve begun our video adventure the way we’ve always done things. Just go for it. Try it. Hit publish. It won’t be perfect, but that’s okay. Learn and improve.

My first video was a good bit of work, taking roughly eight hours to write, shoot, produce, and publish a ten minute video covering some tech industry news. That’s not scalable, but it was a learning experience. Here was my process.

Write

I get press releases from dozens of marketers and public relations firms, usually several per day. I chose some that I thought folks might be interested in. And then I wrote copy. I know from past projects that many written words translate to many spoken minutes. You have to keep copy tight if you’re writing to a time limit.

I managed to do that, writing just under a thousand words of copy. I did ad lib a bit, but Continue reading

Worth Reading: Class breaks

There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on that system’s software. Or a vulnerability in Internet-enabled digital video recorders and webcams that allow an attacker to recruit those devices into a massive botnet. —Schneier on Security

The post Worth Reading: Class breaks appeared first on 'net work.

Worth Reading: Class breaks

There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on that system’s software. Or a vulnerability in Internet-enabled digital video recorders and webcams that allow an attacker to recruit those devices into a massive botnet. —Schneier on Security

The post Worth Reading: Class breaks appeared first on 'net work.