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Category Archives for "Networking"

Woman uses ‘Hey Siri’ feature to call an ambulance and help save her child’s life

When Apple released the iPhone 6s, it included a great new Siri feature which enables users to activate the intelligent assistant via voice. Dubbed 'Hey Siri', the feature is particularly convenient because the iPhone 6s' M9 motion coprocessor is 'always listening' and thereby lets users use 'Hey Siri' even when the device isn't connected to a power source.Recently, Stacey Gleeson of Australia used the 'Hey Siri' feature to successfully call an ambulance while she was tending to her daughter Giana who had stopped breathing."I picked her up and sat down with her on the floor,” Gleeson said in an interview. “And as I checked her airways, I looked over and remembered my phone.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Highly Rated, Dramatically Discounted Adapters – Deal Alert

Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter for Bluetooth StreamingTake just about any traditional set of speakers and make them Bluetooth enabled for streaming audio wirelessly from your favorite device. Currently discounted 30% to $28.HDMI Female to Female High Speed Gold Plated AdapterThis straightforward adapter couples two HDMI cables together for extended length. Currently discounted 46% to $6 for a pack of two.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mea culpa: Docker’s security tool and Black Duck’s Security Checker are NOT the same

It pays to look deeply, and I didn’t. I apologize. Some days, I make mistakes. Further education says Black Duck Software’s Security Checker and the Docker Cloud Security Scanning tool aren’t the same thing. Both check vulnerabilities with the CVE database—in a quest to match inflated Docker container problems—and rate containers based on the severity of vulnerabilities and the number found.These two tools (and there are others) are designed to load and parse Docker images and run a manifest against CVEs. Here’s where things largely diverge. Note also that there are other container security tools available, and I’ll get to them in a subsequent blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In IoT’s early days, challenges, opportunities revealed

In 2010, two entrepreneurs in Boston came up with the idea of turning shipping containers into miniature plantations, and Freight Farms was born.The company’s Leafy Green Machines, outfitted with LED lights and humidity-controlled ventilation systems, provide an ideal growing climate for up to 500 heads of lettuce per week, not to mention other crops such as herbs and micro-greens.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: The Most Powerful Internet of Things Companies +Since day one, the containers have been connected to the Internet so they can be monitored and managed remotely. “We’re able to improve the value of the container without customers even knowing it,” says Kyle Seaman, director of farm technology. Freight Farms remotely monitors crop production for each of its roughly 80 farms. Software updates are pushed to the Leafy Green Machines to more efficiently manage the crops, such as by adjusting temperature, humidity and lighting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This tool taps machine learning to take the guesswork out of content marketing

It's every marketer's goal to reach customers in the right place, at the right time, and with the right message, but the online world doesn't make that easy. A new tool announced Thursday uses machine learning to help.Called Lithium Reach, it aims to eliminate some of the guesswork inherent in marketers' jobs by recommending the best social content and the best time to publish it.The average consumer brand today has 55 social media accounts and nearly 45 employees managing them, according to Lithium Technologies, which acquired social-influence ranking site Klout back in 2014. The new Reach tool puts Klout's machine-learning algorithms to work in the hopes of making that process easier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Digital mesh: Continuous, hyper-connectivity for everyone

Hyper-connectivity is the way of the future. The world is going to become more electronic, and CEOs are banking on digital technology to grow their revenue.To make that a reality, IT services need to be involved, said Helen Huntley, a Gartner research vice president, speaking at Gartner’s Tech Growth and Innovation Conference in Los Angeles earlier this week.It calls for having a kind of device or digital mesh that produces hyper-connectivity for everyone. That, coupled with vast swaths of data and smart machines, will be a principal “strategic technology change” we’ll see, she said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My Cisco Live 2016 Schedule

Ever since my blog, CiscoLive 2016: ‘Summer Camp for Geeks’, I’ve been getting questions about what my personal CLUS schedule typically looks like for the week.  CiscoLive 2016 will be my 11th CiscoLive US (“#CLUS”) and my 13th CiscoLive in general.

It is my favorite work week of the ENTIRE year.  And I look forward to it a great deal.  At the same time…. it is not even one full week and one can miss so much they wished they hadn’t missed because the time flies by so quickly. And yes… I have learned this the hard way.

So… first things first – I came up with the list of things that are prioritizes to me for the week.

All that said…… Here ya go. My CiscoLive (CLUS) schedule for the week.

  • Teach
  • Recharge
  • Learn
  • Play and Have Fun

clus_fish

Who speaks for multi-vendor environments?

In 1980, the final episode of one my favorite TV shows, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, aired. In “Who Speaks for Earth?” Sagan summarized the mess that has become humanity and the impending doom that will befall Earth if things do not change. The episode also provides alternatives to that behavior and offers a way to save Earth but begs the big question of who actually speaks for Earth to enable the behavior change.This is not unlike what’s happening in the data center today. It’s been well documented on this site and others that the data center is currently a mess. Data centers are built on repeatable building blocks, but configuration is still done manually. In Cosmos, Sagan gave the planet only a minuscule percentage chance of surviving if humans didn’t change their ways. Similarly, organizations must change the way they operate data centers if they are to make it in an increasingly digital world where speed is everything. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Who speaks for multi-vendor environments?

In 1980, the final episode of one my favorite TV shows, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, aired. In “Who Speaks for Earth?” Sagan summarized the mess that has become humanity and the impending doom that will befall Earth if things do not change. The episode also provides alternatives to that behavior and offers a way to save Earth but begs the big question of who actually speaks for Earth to enable the behavior change.This is not unlike what’s happening in the data center today. It’s been well documented on this site and others that the data center is currently a mess. Data centers are built on repeatable building blocks, but configuration is still done manually. In Cosmos, Sagan gave the planet only a minuscule percentage chance of surviving if humans didn’t change their ways. Similarly, organizations must change the way they operate data centers if they are to make it in an increasingly digital world where speed is everything. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo’s Phab2 Pro will be the first Google Project Tango AR smartphone

Lenovo's new Phab2 Pro, developed with Google, brings augmented reality to smartphone screens without the need for a headset. The device, which has a 6.4-inch screen, pushes smartphone functionality to new heights. The giant display presents a wealth of information that changes how people interact with the physical world around them. The smartphone, based on Google's Project Tango computer vision technology, will ship worldwide in August for US $499, Lenovo announced Thursday. It's loaded with cutting-edge sensors, cameras, and a Snapdragon 652 processor from Qualcomm. The device can be used to measure distances, recognize items, map locations, and provide real-time indoor navigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

National Intelligence office wants to perfect the art of security deception

Sometimes a great offense is much better than a stout defense, especially when it comes to protecting enterprise assets.This week the advanced technology developers from the Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) office put out a Request For Information about how to best develop better denial and deception technologies – such as honeypots or deception servers for example -- that would bolster cyber security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

National Intelligence office wants to perfect the art of security deception

Sometimes a great offense is much better than a stout defense, especially when it comes to protecting enterprise assets.This week the advanced technology developers from the Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) office put out a Request For Information about how to best develop better denial and deception technologies – such as honeypots or deception servers for example -- that would bolster cyber security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Internet is like the Verrazano Bridge

No, the Internet has not become a series of bridges; it remains a series of tubes.The Internet is like the Verrazano Bridge in that there are moves afoot – ill-advised moves -- to change how each entity is represented through the written word.In the case of the Internet, the influential Associated Press and its indefatigable style disciples have already decreed that the word Internet should no longer be capitalized. Many news organizations and journalists are meekly complying by demoting the Internet to the internet. As you can see, I am refusing to fall in line.Meanwhile, in New York City, nitpicky petitioners are demanding that the Verrazano Bridge – North America’s longest such span – be renamed the Verrazzano Bridge. OK, fine, renaming may be oversating the case; they’re actually demanding the addition of a second “z” in Verrazano, despite the fact that it’s been spelled with only one since the bridge opened in 1964.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Internet is like the Verrazano Bridge

No, the Internet has not become a series of bridges; it remains a series of tubes.The Internet is like the Verrazano Bridge in that there are moves afoot – ill-advised moves -- to change how each entity is represented through the written word.In the case of the Internet, the influential Associated Press and its indefatigable style disciples have already decreed that the word Internet should no longer be capitalized. Many news organizations and journalists are meekly complying by demoting the Internet to the internet. As you can see, I am refusing to fall in line.Meanwhile, in New York City, nitpicky petitioners are demanding that the Verrazano Bridge – North America’s longest such span – be renamed the Verrazzano Bridge. OK, fine, renaming may be oversating the case; they’re actually demanding the addition of a second “z” in Verrazano, despite the fact that it’s been spelled with only one since the bridge opened in 1964.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reading List: 060916

A few of the papers, RFCs, and drafts I’m reading this week, along with a short description of each.

A Survey of Worldwide Censorship Techniques
draft-hall-censorship-tech-03

Censorship is a large problem on the Internet—but it’s often difficult to find any good description of the various ways censors can both find and block “offending” content. This draft is a short, readable overview of the various techniques actually seen in the wild, along with pointers to research about the techniques themselves, and instances where they’ve been used in the real world.

IPv6 Extension Headers and Packet Drops
draft-gont-v6ops-ipv6-ehs-in-real-world

One of the interesting features of IPv6 is its support for extension headers, which are variable length bits of information—metadata about the packet, for instance—that can be attached to a packet and processed by either the receiving host or forwarding devices along the way. Extension headers are useful, in that they allow IPv6 to be easily extended on the fly, rather than forcing the protocol designer to create a set of metadata “in stone.” Extension headers, however, are also controversial; how should an ASIC designer decide which ones to support in hardware, and how should extension headers that cannot be handled in hardware Continue reading

Communications of the Bolek Trojan

A few weeks ago CERT Polska released a short blog post introducing a new malware family now known as Bolek. PhishMe and Dr.Web have since added some additional insight into the family. Browsing through a memory dump of the malware, a Webinjects section sticks out. Webinjects usually imply banking malware, so it seems Bolek picks […]