Meet a handheld server with a 13-terabyte SSD

Fixstars' Olive is like the Raspberry Pi of servers, but with a twist -- it packs 13TB of solid-state drive storage in a system that can be held in one hand.Olive could be viewed as a full-fledged computer crammed into a 2.5-inch SSD drive. The 13TB drive makes it one-of-a-kind in a market where compact computers are hungry for storage.Some unique features make the server better suited for businesses than homes. It is customizable, with an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), which can be reprogrammed for specific tasks. It can also be used as a portable server to dish out movies, or to collect, store and distribute data related to databases or the Internet of Things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Today Is A Big Day For Page Rules

Today we're releasing a whole suite of upgrades to page rules: API support, additional settings, pausing a page rule and a mobile-friendly design. Page Rules is the technology that allows you to configure your CloudFlare settings on a per-URL basis. It's often our most powerful feature, enabling CloudFlare domain owners to customize CloudFlare's functionality to exactly match their application's needs.

Announcing API Support For Page Rules

Page Rules are now fully programmable via API.

$ curl -X POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/${ZONE_TAG}/pagerules" 
    -H "X-Auth-Email: [email protected]" 
    -H "X-Auth-Key: 000000000000" 
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
    --data '{
        "targets":[{
            "target":"url",
            "constraint":{
                    "operator":"matches",
                    "value":"*example.com/images/*"
            }
        }],
        "actions":[{
            "id":"always_online",
            "value":"on"
        }],
        "priority":1,
        "status":"active"
    }'

Starting today, you can script the creation and modification of page rules. You can integrate page rules into your deployment process to bypass caching on every new API endpoint you ship, or to automatically sync your page rules across your domains on CloudFlare. Check out the page rules API docs and get started today. We can't wait to see what automations you build.

13 New Settings Now Available On Page Rules

Instead of the short list of settings you could previously toggle, we've added menus with almost every Continue reading

Worth Reading: 30 years later, where is the smart home?

…it is rather puzzling that now, 30 years later, our homes are not much smarter than those of the 1980s. Yes, we have more gadgets and devices but no integrated holistic smart home. Given this, I can’t see that the version we now have in mind regarding the design for the smart home of 2016 will see a sudden rapid deployment.

The post Worth Reading: 30 years later, where is the smart home? appeared first on 'net work.

NYPD hijacks #UnlockJustice to bash encryption, but its hashtag gets hijacked

A coalition including the New York Police Department and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance launched an anti-encryption campaign along with a hashtag of #UnlockJustice because “crime victims are entitled to stronger protections than criminals.”“The debate over encryption is often referred to in terms of privacy and security, with little regard for the impact on crime victims,” the press release stated. The Manhattan DA complained about the 230 inaccessible Apple devices running iOS 8 or higher that it can’t unlock and how unfair encryption and “warrant-proof” devices are to crime victims. Companies, according to Vance, should not be permitted “to provide criminals with unprecedented, evidence-free zones.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NYPD hijacks #UnlockJustice to bash encryption, but its hashtag gets hijacked

A coalition, including the New York Police Department and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, launched an anti-encryption campaign along with a hashtag of #UnlockJustice because “crime victims are entitled to stronger protections than criminals.”“The debate over encryption is often referred to in terms of privacy and security, with little regard for the impact on crime victims,” the press release stated. The Manhattan DA complained about the 230 inaccessible Apple devices running iOS 8 or higher that it can’t unlock and how unfair encryption and “warrant-proof” devices are to crime victims. Companies, according to Vance, should not be permitted “to provide criminals with unprecedented, evidence-free zones.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sorry, Boaty fans: The Internet can’t always get what it wants

No one laughed more than I did when the Internet stepped up and voted overwhelmingly to name a British research ship Boaty McBoatface. The suggested moniker still made me giggle days later.But now comes word that the officials tasked with actually naming the ship are not that big on Boaty. From a story in the Guardian: However, Jo Johnson, the science minister, signaled the government was preparing to activate its get-out clause. “The new royal research ship will be sailing into the world’s iciest waters to address global challenges that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including global warming, the melting of polar ice and rising sea levels,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sorry, Boaty fans: The Internet can’t always get what it wants

No one laughed more than I did when the Internet stepped up and voted overwhelmingly to name a British research ship Boaty McBoatface. The suggested moniker still made me giggle days later.But now comes word that the officials tasked with actually naming the ship are not that big on Boaty. From a story in the Guardian: However, Jo Johnson, the science minister, signaled the government was preparing to activate its get-out clause. “The new royal research ship will be sailing into the world’s iciest waters to address global challenges that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including global warming, the melting of polar ice and rising sea levels,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Don’t buy into hybrid cloud headache hype, GE’s cloud guru says

General Electric is on an aggressive pursuit of going embracing cloud services, the company's CTO – IT Chris Drumgoogle told me recently.GE has tens of thousands of apps; petabytes of storage and more than $100 billion in annual revenue. So it can’t rely on just a single vendor. Drumgoole says that GE’s highest value apps in the cloud straddle across at least two providers. Lower-priority apps can run in one cloud. Chris Drumgoole, CTO of IT, General Electric: Hybrid cloud hype is 'overblown'To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Viber follows WhatsApp in adding end-to-end encryption to its messaging service

Viber, a popular instant messaging and Voice-over-IP service provider with more than 700 million users, has implemented end-to-end encryption to protect its customers' communications against snooping.The move comes after Facebook-owned WhatsApp turned on full end-to-end encryption earlier this month, bringing secure and private instant messaging into the mainstream.The majority of IM apps have long encrypted the communications between users' devices and their own servers. However, in such a configuration, the service providers themselves can still read communications as they pass through their servers to get routed to the intended recipients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Viber follows WhatsApp in adding end-to-end encryption to its messaging service

Viber, a popular instant messaging and Voice-over-IP service provider with more than 700 million users, has implemented end-to-end encryption to protect its customers' communications against snooping.The move comes after Facebook-owned WhatsApp turned on full end-to-end encryption earlier this month, bringing secure and private instant messaging into the mainstream.The majority of IM apps have long encrypted the communications between users' devices and their own servers. However, in such a configuration, the service providers themselves can still read communications as they pass through their servers to get routed to the intended recipients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Cisco UCS Team Tackles Containers

A new breed of data problems needs a new breed of appliance, Diamanti figures.

39% off Sennheiser RS120 On-Ear Wireless RF Headphones – Deal Alert

Sennheiser, one of the world's leading manufacturers of headphones, microphones and wireless transmission systems, is currently offering their RS120 Wireless Heaphones at a 39% discount. With a regular price of $129, this unit can be purchased on Amazon now for just $78. The RS120 receives an average of 4 out of 5 stars from nearly 10,500 reviewers (read reviews).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple confirms WWDC June 13-17, opens registration for ticket lottery

After Siri provided a sneak peek at the dates for Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference, the Cupertino-based company confirmed the event by launching its WWDC 2016 website. WWDC starts on Monday, June 13, and runs throughout the week until Friday, June 17. WWDC actually takes place at two venues. Monday, the day of the keynote, will be at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The rest of the week will be at Moscone West, where WWDCs in recent past have been held. MORE: Siri says Apple WWDC is June 13-17To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More on Reading and Writing Books

Russ White wrote a great response to my “Do You Really Want to Write that Book?” blog post and I couldn’t agree more with what he wrote. Unfortunately, he seems to be a bit over-idealistic when analyzing why the market for high-end content is so small.

You know I usually have a cynical explanation handy, so here it is: too many people calling themselves engineers for no particular reason simply don’t care. It’s way easier to Google-and-paste your way around than to invest time in understanding the fundamentals.

IDG Contributor Network: Dome9 triple protects AWS infrastructure, but is it necessary?

A couple of years ago I wrote a story critiquing what I saw as some very emotive reporting. Essentially a technology vendor went bust as a direct result of their data being compromised while sited on Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers. The article in question essentially suggested that because of that particular incident, we should all be aware that the cloud isn't a safe place to store our data. As I said in my piece:“I’ve visited data centers that host cloud infrastructure. They have by far the highest level of physical and virtual security available. They are exemplars of due process. Compare this with the vast majority of organization’s IT resources. I’ve seen enough servers in cleaning cupboards or under desks to know what the norm is for organizations. To glibly suggest that penetrating a cloud platform is easier than a corporate data center is plain wrong.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT pros happy but open to new career opportunities

Today's workplace landscape is in a state of flux. Workers are still adjusting to a new normal in which job tenure is shorter and the hunt for a new position never stops. The annual Job Seeker Nation study from recruiting and hiring services company Jobvite shows that while 74 percent of the survey respondents say they're satisfied with their current job, that same percentage say they're also open to new opportunities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

19 open source GitHub projects for security pros

When it comes to performing ongoing maintenance, stomping out crises, or scoping new projects, most administrators either execute tasks manually or write a script to automate the process. But the really smart ones look for a capable tool to do the job.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

19 open source GitHub projects for security pros

When it comes to performing ongoing maintenance, stomping out crises, or scoping new projects, most administrators either execute tasks manually or write a script to automate the process. But the really smart ones look for a capable tool to do the job.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Containers in Windows Server 2016: What you need to know

In a story I wrote for Computerworld in January, which was a review of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4, I mentioned Windows Server's new support for Hyper-V containers that had been added to its support for Docker-style containers (present within the beta product since the previous beta milestone release).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Containers in Windows Server 2016: What you need to know

In a story I wrote for Computerworld in January, which was a review of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4, I mentioned Windows Server's new support for Hyper-V containers that had been added to its support for Docker-style containers (present within the beta product since the previous beta milestone release).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)