Is Serverless the New Visual Basic?

With Serverless hiring less experienced developers can work out better than hiring experienced cloud developers. That's an interesting point I haven't heard before and it was made by Paul Johnston, CTO of movivo, in The ServerlessCast #6 - Event-Driven Design Thinking.

The thought process goes something like this...

An experienced cloud developer will probably think procedurally, in terms of transactional systems, frameworks, and big fat containers that do lots of work. 

That's not how a Serverless developer needs to think. A Serverless developer needs to think in terms of small functions that do one thing linked together by events; and they need to grok asynchronous and distributed thinking.

So the idea is you don't need typical developer skills. Paul finds people with sysadmin skills have the right stuff. Someone with a sysadmin background is more likely than a framework developer to understand the distributed thinking that goes with building an entire system of events.

Paul also makes the point that once a system has built experienced developers will get bored because Serverless systems don't require the same amount of maintenance.

For example, they had good success hiring a person with two years of vo-tech on-the-job training because they didn't have Continue reading

It’s Up To Each Of Us: Why I WannaCry For Collaboration

WannaCry, or WannaCrypt, is one of the many names of the piece of ransomware that impacted the Internet last week, and will likely continue to make the rounds this week.

There are a number of takeaways and lessons to learn from the far-reaching attack that we witnessed. Let me tie those to voluntary cooperation and collaboration which together represent the foundation for the Internet’s development. The reason for making this connection is because they provide the way to get the global cyber threat under control. Not just to keep ourselves and our vital systems and services protected, but to reverse the erosion of trust in the Internet.

Mr. Olaf Kolkman

HPC to Deep Learning from an Asian Perspective

Big data, data science, machine learning, and now deep learning are all the rage and have tons of hype, for better—and in some ways, for worse. Advancements in AI such as language understanding, self-driving cars, automated claims, legal text processing, and even automated medical diagnostics are already here or will be here soon.

In Asia, several countries have made significant advancements and investments into AI, leveraging their historical work in HPC.

China now owns the top three positions in the Top500 with Sunway TaihuLight, Tianhe-2, and Tianhe, and while Tianhe-2 and Tianhe were designed for HPC style workloads, TaihuLight is

HPC to Deep Learning from an Asian Perspective was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Will Windows 10-on-ARM PCs support Mixed Reality headsets?

A Windows-on-ARM PC is getting closer to reality. Microsoft showed off a prototype mini-desktop with an ARM processor running Windows 10 at last week's Build conference, with the PC running applications like Office.The PC was shown in a video posted on the Channel 9 website. The presenters reinforced Microsoft's previous message saying that all x86 applications will work on Windows-on-ARM PCs.Microsoft has maintained that the experience on Windows 10-on-ARM PCs will be similar to x86 laptops, but many questions remain. One revolves around whether Windows 10-on-ARM PCs will support Windows Mixed Reality headsets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell-EMC updates HCI line to address changing market requirements

Last week Dell and EMC held its first joint customer event since the two tech giants merged. The not-so-originally named Dell-EMC World was a forum for the newly formed company to showcase how it can help its customers navigate the complex world of digital transformation.The final keynote of the event was by the always-entertaining and equally brilliant Chad Sakac, head of the Converged Platform group. He entertained the crowd by flying onto the stage dressed as Captain Canada, a superhero from the 1970s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell-EMC updates HCI line to address changing market requirements

Last week Dell and EMC held its first joint customer event since the two tech giants merged. The not-so-originally named Dell-EMC World was a forum for the newly formed company to showcase how it can help its customers navigate the complex world of digital transformation.The final keynote of the event was by the always-entertaining and equally brilliant Chad Sakac, head of the Converged Platform group. He entertained the crowd by flying onto the stage dressed as Captain Canada, a superhero from the 1970s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reporters dox WannaCry ransomware kill switch guy

It is sickening when people prove “no good deed goes unpunished” to be true. I’m looking at you, British tabloids, because it was mean, stupid and very irresponsible to dox the guy who discovered the first WannaCry ransomware kill switch and thereby stopped thousands of old Windows machines from becoming infected.He goes by MalwareTech on Twitter and has an avatar of a cat wearing sunglasses. If he wanted to use his real name and picture, then he would have. Clearly, he values privacy and tries to maintain at least some degree of anonymity.Yet after being hailed as a hero for discovering a kill switch as WannaCry ransomware swept across globe, shady journalists doxed him. They dug into everything they could find online about MalwareTech, including trying to pry information from his friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reporters dox WannaCry ransomware kill switch guy

It is sickening when people prove “no good deed goes unpunished” to be true. I’m looking at you, British tabloids, because it was mean, stupid and very irresponsible to dox the guy who discovered the first WannaCry ransomware kill switch and thereby stopped thousands of old Windows machines from becoming infected.He goes by MalwareTech on Twitter and has an avatar of a cat wearing sunglasses. If he wanted to use his real name and picture, then he would have. Clearly, he values privacy and tries to maintain at least some degree of anonymity.Yet after being hailed as a hero for discovering a kill switch as WannaCry ransomware swept across globe, shady journalists doxed him. They dug into everything they could find online about MalwareTech, including trying to pry information from his friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Itanic finally sinks

Intel has released the final versions of its Itanium RISC processor, the Itanium 9700 series, which are virtually unchanged from the last generation and uses a 5-year-old architecture. There are no new features or capabilities, just the most minor of clock speed bumps. In a reflection of how old the designs are, they come in four- and eight-core design with hyperthreading for twice the number of threads. Xeons are now coming with up to 22 cores. Clock speeds are 1.7Ghz to 2.66Ghz and the thermal package is 170 watts. A 3.4Ghz Xeon E7 with 22 cores runs at 165 watts. These things aren’t even remotely competitive, and Intel didn’t really try to address it. The quad core Itanium CPUs get a 133MHz speed bump, while the dual cores get no speed changes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Few Secrets of Successful Learning: Focus, Small Chunks, and Sleep

One of my readers sent me a few questions about the leaf-and-spine fabric architectures webinar because (in his own words)

We have some projects 100% matching these contents and it would be really useful this extra feedback, not just from consultants and manufacturer.

When I explained the details he followed up with:

Now, I expect in one or two weeks to find some days to be able to follow this webinar in a profitable way, not just between phone calls and emails.

That’s not how it works.

Read more ...

U.S. law allows low H-1B wages; just look at Apple

If you work at Apple's One Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino as a computer programmer on an H-1B visa, you can can be paid as little as $52,229. That's peanuts in Silicon Valley. Average wages for a programmer in Santa Clara County are more than $93,000 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.However, the U.S. government will approve visa applications for Silicon Valley programmers at $52,229 -- and, in fact, did so for hundreds of potential visa holders at Apple alone.To be clear, this doesn't mean there are hundreds of programmers at Apple working for that paltry sum. Apple submitted a form to the U.S. saying it was planning on hiring 150 computer programmers beginning June 14 at this wage. But it's not doing that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Incident response is like tracking down a perpetrator

What is incident response?Image by ThinkstockIncident response is like investigating a real burglary. You look for evidence of the intruder at the crime scene, find his targets and his getaway car, and repair any holes. Discover any cuts in your chain link fence. Take a few steps back for more perspective. Find the intruder’s targets. What assets are near the compromised fence? Investigate in both directions to find the intruder's target and getaway car. Fix the fence. Resolve any issues and patch vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Incident response is like tracking down a perpetrator

What is incident response?Image by ThinkstockIncident response is like investigating a real burglary. You look for evidence of the intruder at the crime scene, find his targets and his getaway car, and repair any holes. Discover any cuts in your chain link fence. Take a few steps back for more perspective. Find the intruder’s targets. What assets are near the compromised fence? Investigate in both directions to find the intruder's target and getaway car. Fix the fence. Resolve any issues and patch vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Incident response is like tracking down a perpetrator

What is incident response?Image by ThinkstockIncident response is like investigating a real burglary. You look for evidence of the intruder at the crime scene, find his targets and his getaway car, and repair any holes. Discover any cuts in your chain link fence. Take a few steps back for more perspective. Find the intruder’s targets. What assets are near the compromised fence? Investigate in both directions to find the intruder's target and getaway car. Fix the fence. Resolve any issues and patch vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here