New solar panel creates power from rain, as well as sunlight

With an upcoming data tsunami expected to absorb up to 20 percent of global electricity by 2025, according to some experts, data center energy sources are a hot talking point — the photovoltaic solar panel being one of the hottest and most viable fossil fuel alternatives.However, there’s an obvious problem with the solar panel as electricity source: When sunlight drops off on cloudy or rainy days, so does power output.Chinese scientists, though, think they have a solution, and that’s to develop a generalized hybrid panel that also harnesses the power of rain. It compensates for lack of sun on iffy days and at night.To read this article in full, please click here

New solar panel creates power from rain, as well as sunlight

With an upcoming data tsunami expected to absorb up to 20 percent of global electricity by 2025, according to some experts, data center energy sources are a hot talking point — the photovoltaic solar panel being one of the hottest and most viable fossil fuel alternatives.However, there’s an obvious problem with the solar panel as electricity source: When sunlight drops off on cloudy or rainy days, so does power output.Chinese scientists, though, think they have a solution, and that’s to develop a generalized hybrid panel that also harnesses the power of rain. It compensates for lack of sun on iffy days and at night.To read this article in full, please click here

Check Out Our New Certified Wireless Security Professional (CWSP) Course!

This course covers WLAN Security Basics, Wifi Attack Vectors, 802.11 Security Design Considerations, and 802.11 Authentication.

 

Instructor: Steve Evans

Course Duration: 2hr 44min


What You’ll learn:

The first module discusses the need for Wi-Fi security and provides the background of decision and standards making bodies. It also discusses 802.11 in the Enterprise. In the second module, you will learn typical modes of attack on Wi-fi implementations and how different attack methods expose the vulnerability of the Wi-Fi network. Module 3 describes the need for performing a risk assessment, as well as establishing a security policy. It also discusses management and monitoring of the enterprise Wi-fi network. The last module details the different 802.11 authentication methods used from password based to enterprise based. It provides details on the complexities of more stringent authentication methods.

Ready To Watch? Click here to view on our streaming site. Don’t have an All Access Pass? No problem, you can also purchase this course at ine.com.

DHL Gets Logical – And Logistical – About Machine Learning

For the past several years, machine learning as evolved by the hyperscalers has been trickling down from on high, through frameworks and services, into enterprises.

Machine learning is becoming a regular technique underpinning applications in a growing number of industries like manufacturing, energy, telecommunications and engineering, where companies see it as a way to not only reduce the costs and improve the efficiencies in their operations but also to more quickly detect patterns in and gain insights from the huge amounts of data they are generating. The goal is to making better and faster business decisions, and to …

DHL Gets Logical – And Logistical – About Machine Learning was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: IoT in agriculture: farming gets ‘smart’

We continue our theme of looking at different industry verticals, big and small, that are getting the IoT treatment. Previously we have looked at the largest IoT deployment, the Smart Electric Grid, as well as some innovative IoT implementations that are transforming healthcare. Today, it is time to look at Agriculture. While it might not seem to be a ‘cool enough’ vertical to get the ‘Smart Treatment’, this couldn’t be further from the truth.Why is it vital to even implement Smart Farming? Two reasons – carbon dioxide and human population growth. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere leads to lower production, while the steady growth in human population leads to increased demand. Many predict that unless we increase our food production, we are very close to a global food shortage. Since it is not easy to dramatically increase arable land size, one way to achieve our goal is to improve the yield per unit area (or lower waste). Here is where IoT comes in.To read this article in full, please click here

New Space Race Could Beam Broadband Everywhere

A new space race is developing, bringing with it the potential to spread broadband to unserved areas of the world.

A handful of satellite companies, including SpaceX, are planning to deploy large-scale, low-orbit constellations that could bring high-speed broadband service to wide geographic areas. SpaceX’s main competitor is one-time partner OneWeb, which like its rival, is planning a huge network of satellites that could blanket most of the Earth with high-speed broadband service.

Other companies are competing as well. While SpaceX and OneWeb plan to launch thousands of satellites in the coming years, Canadian firm Telesat is also planning to offer global coverage through a polar-orbit constellation of just 117. Space Norway plans to cover the Arctic area, and LeoSat plans to specialize in high-speed encrypted services for large businesses.

These proposed services would be in addition to incumbent satellite Internet providers like HughesNet and Exede Internet, which focus on serving the United States.

Proponents of the proposals say they have the potential to offer broadband at speeds that rival wired fiber service. The new providers could achieve faster speeds and lower latency than current generation satellite Internet service using a combination of low orbits, a large number Continue reading

Datanauts 130: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of The VAR Life

If you work for a Value Added Reseller (VAR) as an engineer, the value being added is YOU.

What is VAR life? Projects, customer meetings, deadlines, bills of materials, RFP responses, and trying to turn the promises of sales unicorns into an actual design you can install for the customer.

We’ve worked for VARs at one time or another, as has our guest Eric Gullickson, who is now Enterprise Architect at Vortex Optics. We thought we d run down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the VAR life on this episode of the Datanauts podcast.

We start the show by distinguishing the different roles a VAR can have. Then we dive into the good, which includes access to new technology, paid certifications, a flexible work schedule, and exposure to a wide variety of businesses and operating environments.

For the bad, the Datanauts and Eric discuss the blunt reality that you have to generate profit, and you may find yourself having to navigate the competing interests of manufacturers, sales, distributors, and customers.

On the ugly side, we swap stories about greasy salespeople, bad project management, and other nightmares.

Show Links:

Eric Gullickson.com

Eric Gullickson on Twitter

The Continue reading

Episode 26 – Networking War Stories Part Deux

To celebrate the first anniversary of Network Collective, we invite a stellar panel of guests to share their networking war stories.  We discuss challenging outages, difficult problems, and what we’ve learned along the way.

Terry Slattery
Guest
Ethan Banks
Guest

Jordan Martin
Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Host
Russ White
Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post Episode 26 – Networking War Stories Part Deux appeared first on Network Collective.

City & Guilds Group deploys SD-WAN to improve Office 365 performance

There are many reasons to deploy a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), including saving a boatload of money, improving network agility, and increasing WAN resiliency. However, those all pale in comparison to the ROI that a business would see by making its employees more productive.One of the biggest drags on worker productivity is poor application response time. In 2016, ZK Research conducted a study that found on average, workers were 14 percent less productive than their optimal state because of poor application performance. (Note: I am an employee of ZK Research.) There’s nothing that frustrates a worker more than clicking on an icon and sitting around waiting for it to open or update, but that’s exactly what happens to global organizations that need to access resources over a long distance.To read this article in full, please click here

City & Guilds Group deploys SD-WAN to improve Office 365 performance

There are many reasons to deploy a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), including saving a boatload of money, improving network agility, and increasing WAN resiliency. However, those all pale in comparison to the ROI that a business would see by making its employees more productive.One of the biggest drags on worker productivity is poor application response time. In 2016, ZK Research conducted a study that found on average, workers were 14 percent less productive than their optimal state because of poor application performance. (Note: I am an employee of ZK Research.) There’s nothing that frustrates a worker more than clicking on an icon and sitting around waiting for it to open or update, but that’s exactly what happens to global organizations that need to access resources over a long distance.To read this article in full, please click here

The Renaissance of Quechua Language in Cyberspace

Half of the world’s languages are expected to disappear by the end of the century. This is a huge cultural loss to humanity. When we think about endangered languages, we usually consider them as part of traditions that link us to the past. From a forward-looking perspective, they mean more than cultural heritage. When a language dies, a unique vision of the world is gone forever.

Does the language we speak online matter? Studies show that it deeply affects people’s experience of the Internet. It determines how much information we can access, who we choose to connect with and how we behave in our community. Keeping languages alive is essential to shape our future. The Internet offers the greatest chance to have a public voice in response to cultural globalization, a languages renaissance.

UNESCO is convinced that multilingualism on the Internet has a key role to play in fostering pluralistic, open and inclusive knowledge societies.

A project called Siminchikkunarayku, supported by The Internet Society Peru Chapter and the Beyond the Net Funding Programme, aims to build the linguistic corpus of the southern Quechua language by collecting and digitizing 10,000 hours of speeches. The Quechua is a family Continue reading

Containing the Complexity of the Long Tail

HPC software evolves continuously. Those now finding themselves on the frontlines of HPC support are having to invent and build new technologies just to keep up with deluge of layers and layers of software on top of software and software is only part of the bigger picture.

We have talked in the past about computational balance and the challenges of unplanned data, these are both real and tangible issues. However, now in addition to all of that, those in support roles living at the sharp end of having to support research are also faced by what is increasingly turning …

Containing the Complexity of the Long Tail was written by James Cuff at The Next Platform.

Announcing Cumulus NetQ 1.3 — now with Kubernetes!

Today, we are thrilled to announce the availability of Cumulus NetQ 1.3. With this release, Cumulus extends its leadership in container networking insight by integrating NetQ with Kubernetes, along with our previously supported integration with Docker Swarm.

This announcement aligns perfectly with Cumulus’ mission of driving web-scale networks for the digital age with automation and agility by implementing networking with S.O.U.L. Simple. Open. Untethered. Linux. NetQ is woven deep into that S.O.U.L. strategy, which we’ll get to later in a separate blog post. For now, there is a lot to dig into here with this Kubernetes integration with NetQ, so let’s begin.

The growth & challenges with containers

Container technology is all the rage in the CD/DevOps world. Nearly 70% of the companies queried in a Portworx 2017 container adoption survey invested financially in containers at some level in 2017, leaping from 52% in 2016. 451 Research predicts containers will grow to become a $2.7BN market by 2020. That’s 3.5 times greater than the $762 million container market in 2016, with a CAGR of 40%.

The popularity of these Linux-based containers stems from their ability to dramatically improve flexibility when running Continue reading

List of Kubernetes Folks on Twitter

Earlier this morning, I asked on Twitter about good individuals to follow on Twitter for Kubernetes information. I received quite a few good responses (thank you!), and I though it might be useful to share the list of the folks that were recommended across all those responses.

The list I’ve compiled is clearly incomplete! If you think someone should be added to this list, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and let me know. Alternately, feel free to submit a pull request (PR) that adds them to this list. I’m not going to “vet” the list, so I’ll add any and all recommendations (unless they are clearly not related to Kubernetes, such as a news anchorman someone recommended to me—not sure about that one!).

Without further ado, here is the list I compiled from the responses to my tweet, in no particular order (I’ve included full name and employer, where that information is available):

  • Kelsey Hightower (Google) - @kelseyhightower
  • Jessie Frazelle (Microsoft) - @jessfraz
  • Alex Ellis (VMware) - @alexellisuk
  • Michael Hausenblas (Red Hat) - @mhausenblas
  • Ahmet Alp Balkan (Google) - @ahmetb
  • AdNaN Abdulhussein (Bitnami) - @prydonius
  • Tim Hockin (Google) - @thockin
  • Joe Beda (Heptio) - @jbeda
  • Continue reading
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