Google becomes first foreign internet company to launch service in Cuba

Google servers inside Cuba are now live on the internet, marking a major milestone in the country's communications evolution and promising faster access to Google's services for Cuban users.The computers are part of Google's global network of caching servers, which store frequently requested content locally so it doesn't have to be accessed over long distances.That speeds up access in any country but is particularly important in a nation like Cuba, which has relatively low connectivity to the rest of the world.Cuba is connected to the rest of the internet almost exclusively via the ALBA-1 submarine cable, which runs from the island to Venezuela, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn Research. Dyn was first to spot the emergence of the Google caching servers on the internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: Don’t believe the non-programming hype – Paul’s blog

Paul Gear has a great response to a recent Packet Pushers Weekly episode on programming/automation and this particular view that I agree with: Programming isn’t hype; programming is a fundamental IT skill.  If you don’t understand the basics of computer architecture (e.g. CPU instruction pointers, registers, RAM, stacks, cache, etc.) and how to create instructions […]

The post Response: Don’t believe the non-programming hype – Paul’s blog appeared first on EtherealMind.

IDG Contributor Network: The hybrid evolution of IT

It’s a great time to be in information technology.While that statement is true, not everyone clearly understands why (or perhaps has the fortitude to make it so). In the face of a massive movement to public cloud—by 2020, 92 percent of world’s workloads will be in cloud, with 68 percent in public and 32 percent in private—many in IT feel their value in the workplace eroding along with their identity.That feeling doesn’t need to be reality. Businesses are changing the way they operate and are transforming to leverage IT more strategically. IT has a real opportunity to lead this transformation, not let the transformation happen to them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The hybrid evolution of IT

It’s a great time to be in information technology.While that statement is true, not everyone clearly understands why (or perhaps has the fortitude to make it so). In the face of a massive movement to public cloud—by 2020, 92 percent of world’s workloads will be in cloud, with 68 percent in public and 32 percent in private—many in IT feel their value in the workplace eroding along with their identity.That feeling doesn’t need to be reality. Businesses are changing the way they operate and are transforming to leverage IT more strategically. IT has a real opportunity to lead this transformation, not let the transformation happen to them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Surprisingly few tech insights in Steve Ballmer’s USAFacts data trove

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's USAFacts project, an ambitious and sometimes overwhelming repository of data about local to state to federal U.S. government spending and outcomes that was launched on Tax Day, is surprisingly light on technology-related data.Not that Ballmer is obligated to spend his post-Microsoft life focused on technology —indeed, he's mainly been known for his purchase of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers in recent years — but given his background I expected that I might find more tech-related nuggets in this graphically-pleasing data trove that's been three years in the making. Interested in the possibilities for data journalism stories spun from USAFacts, I made an inquiry to the outfit's media relations contact and will update this post if I hear back from them with any clarification on possible additions of such techie numbers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Save $51 on Samsung Gear S3 Frontier Smartwatch Right Now – Deal Alert

Gear S3 frontier in dark gray is a timeless smartwatch, combining style with the latest innovation in digital technology. It features an always-on 1.3” super AMOLED full color display, and a distinctive steel bezel that you rotate to access apps or text, call and other notifications. Make payments via Samsung Pay. Keep track of your activity or share your location with its built-in GPS. And much more. With military-grade performance, the Gear S3 resists water, dust, extreme temperatures and the occasional drop. Gear S3 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 900 customers on Amazon (read recent reviews here), where its typical list price of $349.99 is currently discounted down to $299, saving you 15%. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cyber crime as a service forces changes in information security

Cyber crime has been commercialized. Infecting computers with ransomware or using an advanced persistent threat to pilfer intellectual property no longer requires deep technical knowledge. Just use Google to learn how to access the Dark Web, and you can find hackers who, for a price, are more than happy to write malware, create highly effective spear phishing campaigns and develop bogus websites for harvesting login credentials.+ Also on Network World: DDoS-for-hire services thrive despite closure of major marketplace + Major companies (think Fortune 500 organizations) understand that cyber crime as a service has changed how they handle defense. But for organizations still maturing their defensive measures, here’s what the transformation of cyber crime into an industry means for how you approach information security.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cyber crime as a service forces changes in information security

Cyber crime has been commercialized. Infecting computers with ransomware or using an advanced persistent threat to pilfer intellectual property no longer requires deep technical knowledge. Just use Google to learn how to access the Dark Web, and you can find hackers who, for a price, are more than happy to write malware, create highly effective spear phishing campaigns and develop bogus websites for harvesting login credentials.+ Also on Network World: DDoS-for-hire services thrive despite closure of major marketplace + Major companies (think Fortune 500 organizations) understand that cyber crime as a service has changed how they handle defense. But for organizations still maturing their defensive measures, here’s what the transformation of cyber crime into an industry means for how you approach information security.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pushing A Trillion Row Database With GPU Acceleration

There is an arms race in the nascent market for GPU-accelerated databases, and the winner will be the one that can scale to the largest datasets while also providing the most compatibility with industry-standard SQL.

MapD and Kinetica are the leaders in this market, but BlazingDB, Blazegraph, and PG-Strom also in the field, and we think it won’t be long before the commercial relational database makers start adding GPU acceleration to their products, much as they have followed SAP HANA with in-memory processing.

MapD is newer than Kinetica, and it up until now, it has been content to allow clustering …

Pushing A Trillion Row Database With GPU Acceleration was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Just $59 for Roku 4 Streaming Media Player 4K UHD If You Buy Refurbished – Deal Alert

You can pick up the Roku 4 4K UHD player for far below list price, if you're comfortable buying refurbushed. Which you can be -- certified refurbished products are tested and certified to look and work like new, and come with 90-day warranties. Roku provides access to 3,500+ channels on demand, offering 350,000+ movies and TV episodes, and the ability to search across the top streaming channels. Follow movies, TV shows, actors, and directors and get automatic updates when new content is ready to stream. Roku 4 will automatically adapt and deliver the best picture quality your TV can display. Advanced upscaling ensures that your TV’s maximum resolution will be optimized, so whether you have an HD TV or a 4K Ultra HD TV, you’ll view the best picture possible. Gremlin hid your remote? Just press the button on top of your Roku 4 and your remote will tell you where it is. With a typical list price of well above $59, you're getting a solid deal if you decide to go refurbished. See the certified refurbished Roku 4 streaming media player on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Drunken man arrested for assaulting 300-lb. K5 security robot

So, you toss back a few drinks and decide now is the best time to “test” a 5-foot tall, 300-pound, egg-shaped security robot that is patrolling a Mountain View, California, parking lot. Although it might seem like a good idea when you are drunk, it probably isn't the best plan, considering it resulted in the arrest of 41-year-old man when he tried it.After Jason Sylvain assaulted Knightscope’s K5 Autonomous Data Machine in a parking lot, he was arrested and stands accused of “prowling and public intoxication.”Knightscope told ABC7, “It's a testament to the technology that police caught the aggressor and booked in him jail.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Drunken man arrested for assaulting 300-lb. K5 security robot

So, you toss back a few drinks and decide now is the best time to “test” a 5-foot tall, 300-pound, egg-shaped security robot that is patrolling a Mountain View, California, parking lot. Although it might seem like a good idea when you are drunk, it might not be the best plan, considering it resulted in the arrest of 41-year-old man when he tried it.After Jason Sylvain assaulted Knightscope’s K5 Autonomous Data Machine in a parking lot, he was arrested and stands accused of “prowling and public intoxication.”Knightscope told ABC7, “It's a testament to the technology that police caught the aggressor and booked in him jail.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building an app-centric Infrastructure Performance Monitoring system

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Applications are the lifeblood of any enterprise, but application performance can suffer without optimal support from the infrastructure teams. At the heart of this problem is the fact that application- and infrastructure-layer management stacks remain distinct entities across the IT environment.

Application performance management (APM) drills down into the behavioral characteristics of the app and its supporting runtime environments, and perhaps select pieces of the virtual servers, but it is blind below the virtual machine. The underlying physical and virtual resources are managed and controlled by an infrastructure performance monitoring (IPM) system, which can effectively maintain the health of physical and virtual resources but doesn’t know whether this is producing an effective application environment in terms of either cost or performance.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building an app-centric Infrastructure Performance Monitoring system

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Applications are the lifeblood of any enterprise, but application performance can suffer without optimal support from the infrastructure teams. At the heart of this problem is the fact that application- and infrastructure-layer management stacks remain distinct entities across the IT environment.Application performance management (APM) drills down into the behavioral characteristics of the app and its supporting runtime environments, and perhaps select pieces of the virtual servers, but it is blind below the virtual machine. The underlying physical and virtual resources are managed and controlled by an infrastructure performance monitoring (IPM) system, which can effectively maintain the health of physical and virtual resources but doesn’t know whether this is producing an effective application environment in terms of either cost or performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Will Artificial Intelligence Change The World For the Better? Or Worse? Read our new policy paper

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a concept that has a long standing tradition in the realm of science-fiction, popularized by Hollywood movies and iconic writers such as Isaac Asimov. However, AI has also received increased attention in recent years following news of progress in the field and the prospect of new, tangible, innovation such as self-driving cars. The Internet has played an important role in these developments, particularly as the platform for AI enabled services  – some with significant implications for the continued development of a trusted Internet. 

Ryan Polk
Carl Gahnberg

IDG Contributor Network: Zoomdata wants to scale out real-time data visualization

Zoomdata is a company that is all about helping organizations paint pretty pictures from their data. That might sound like a flippant description, but visualizations are actually an important part of surfacing insights and delivering them in a way that is actionable by the organization. Zoomdata is one of an increasing number of vendors that are filling a big gap in the marketplace.+ Also on Network World: Data visualization tools: The features users love and hate + You see, visualizations or data insights have historically been a product borne of the work of data analysts, utilizing data warehouses and rigid query approaches. This way of working was, arguably, OK in the past when organizational development cycles were slower and there was less of a critical imperative to innovate at speed. Today, however, time is of the essence, and these old-school approaches towards analysis simply don’t cut it any more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft to slash cloud-connection rights for stand-alone Office

Microsoft last week announced sweeping changes to Office's support rules, which will push more corporate customers to the Office 365 subscription model.The support policies introduced Thursday will cut in half the time that non-subscription versions of Office -- usually labeled "perpetual" as a nod to the licenses which, once purchased, let customers run the software as long as they want -- can connect to Microsoft cloud-based services. These include Microsoft-hosted Exchange email, the OneDrive for Business storage service and Skype for Business, the corporate edition of Microsoft's video-calling service.[ Further reading: Microsoft starts clock ticking on Office 2016's first upgrade ] Under the new rules, owners of perpetual-license versions of Office will be able to use those services only during the first half of their 10-year support lifecycle, the portion Microsoft dubs "mainstream." Currently, those customers may connect to cloud services such as Exchange mailboxes for the full decade of Microsoft's combined mainstream and "extended" support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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