DockerCon 2017: Moby’s Cool Hack sessions

Every year at DockerCon, we expand the bounds of what Docker can do with new features and products. And every day, we see great new apps that are built on top of Docker. And yet, there’s always a few that stand out not just for being cool apps, but for pushing the bounds of what you can do with Docker.

This year we had two great apps that we featured in the Docker Cool Hacks closing keynote. Both hacks came from members of our Docker Captains program, a group of people from the Docker community who are recognized by Docker as very knowledgeable about Docker, and contribute quite a bit to the community.

Play with Docker

The first Cool Hack was Play with Docker by Marcos Nils and Jonathan Leibiusky. Marcos and Jonathan actually were featured in the Cool Hacks session at DockerCon EU in 2015 for their work on a Container Migration Tool.

Play with Docker is a Docker playground that you can run in your browser.

Play with Docker

Play with Docker’s architecture is a Swarm of Swarms, running Docker in Docker instances.

Play with Docker

Running on pretty beefy hosts r3.4xlarge on AWS – Play with Docker is able to run Continue reading

Cisco issues 7 “high priority” security advisories; Firepower, IOS and ASA issues among them

Cisco had a pretty large dump of security advisories today – seven “high priority” and one “critical” – impacting a variety of products many with the threat allowing a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.First up this week Cisco said a vulnerability in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) UDP throttling process of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM) software could let an unauthenticated, remote attacker cause a denial of service (DoS) attack.+More on Network World: Cisco certifications target business professionals eyeing software roles+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker Completes Its Platform With DIY Linux

It all started with a new twist on an old idea, that of a lightweight software container running inside Linux that would house applications and make them portable. And now Docker is coming full circle and completing its eponymous platform by opening up the tools to allow users to create their own minimalist Linux operating system that is containerized and modular above the kernel and that only gives applications precisely what they need to run.

The new LinuxKit is not so much a variant of Linux as a means of creating them. The toolkit for making Linuxes, which was unveiled

Docker Completes Its Platform With DIY Linux was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Humans are (still) the weakest cybersecurity link

Humans remain the weak link in corporate data protection, but you might be surprised hat it isn't only rank-and-file employees duped by phishing scams who pose risks. Some companies are lulled into a false sense of cybersecurity by vendors. You read that right:Some enterprises believe the shiny new technologies they've acquired will protect them from anything.Just ask Theodore Kobus, leader of BakerHostetler’s Privacy and Data Protection team. BakerHostetler Theodore Kobus, BakerHostetler’s Privacy and Data Protection team.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco certifications target business professionals eyeing software roles

Trying to keep business professionals ahead of the rapidly changing technology environment, Cisco this week rolled out new business certificate and training packages.The package includes a certification-level offering for what’s known as a client advocate or a Customer Success Manager. The other certification has to do with helping business professionals learn how to build and transform corporations into the digital environment.+More on Network World: DHS warns on immigration spoofing scam+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A vigilante hacker may have built a computer worm to protect the IoT

Is a vigilante hacker trying to secure your IoT device from malware? The mysterious developer behind a growing computer worm wants people to think so. The worm, known as Hajime, has infected tens of thousands of easy-to-hack products such as DVRs, internet cameras, and routers. However, the program so far hasn't done anything malicious.Instead, the worm has been preventing a notorious malware known as Mirai from infecting the same devices. It's also been carrying a message written from its developer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

RESPONSE: 3 Hidden Lessons Behind Top Podcasts to Help Yours Stand Out

Thoughts from the Content Marketing Institute for budding podcasters were shared here. Here’s my response to the points that stood out to me.

CMI’s big idea #1.

“At first, format trumps talent.” And then later…“Avoid the race to the bottom of simply booking the biggest guests in your niche and meandering through an unplanned episode. Instead, find your format.”

Response. To record an effective show people will listen to, you need a plan, agreed. However, the article cites an example of a 15 minute long episode carved into blocks of minutes and seconds.

Perhaps that’s what you need when working against an ultra-tight timeline. However, an outline that provides structure should be adequate. Overly structuring a podcast is burdensome and can serve to stifle interesting conversation. Freedom is one of the benefits of podcasting.

Podcasting is NOT a digital regurgitation of radio, although many try to shoehorn podcasts into a radio format, because the radio business is what they understand. However, podcast content is different. Distribution is different. Listener consumption is different. Monetization is different.

And perhaps most importantly, timelines are fluid. 15 minute long podcasts are being created under an artificial time constraint that begs the question…why?

On the other hand, Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Unite and conquer your storage silos

If you’re a storage admin, it might seem like there’s a new flash storage system being pitched at your inbox every week. Maybe a few times a week, in fact. Perhaps you’re also investigating the cloud, and whether your enterprise would want to go with a hybrid, private or public cloud implementation. Chances are you already have a lot of storage in your infrastructure from past purchases, and when you add it all up, you could be sitting on quite a diverse collection of resources—and those resources may be significantly underutilized today.The diversity of storage types presents many options, which creates a real challenge for admins—but only because all those different resources could not be seamlessly connected until now. With storage solutions that deliver ultra-fast performance, such as all-flash arrays, some that save with low cost, cloud capacity for cold (inactive) data, and numerous other shared storage resources, most enterprise IT teams have the right resources to serve a wide variety of different data demands. The challenge is knowing what data needs which resource, then continually aligning data to the right resource as its needs change over time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, Continue reading

Machine Learning Gets An InfiniBand Boost With Caffe2

Scaling the performance of machine learning frameworks so they can train larger neural networks – or so the same training a lot faster – has meant that the hyperscalers of the world who are essentially creating this technology have had to rely on increasingly beefy compute nodes, these days almost universally augmented with GPUs.

There is a healthy rivalry between the hyperscalers over who has the best machine learning framework and the co-designed iron to take the best advantage of its capabilities. At its F8 developer conference, Facebook not only rolled out a significantly tweaked variant of the open source

Machine Learning Gets An InfiniBand Boost With Caffe2 was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

5 ways to keep virtual assistants from sharing your company’s secrets

Virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now have the potential to make enterprise workers more productive. But do “always listening” assistants pose a serious threat to security and privacy, too?Nineteen percent of organizations are already using intelligent digital assistants, such as Siri and Cortana, for work-related tasks, according to Spiceworks’ October 2016 survey of 566 IT professionals in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The survey also found that 46 percent of organizations plan to adopt intelligent assistants within five years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 ways to keep virtual assistants from sharing your company’s secrets

Virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now have the potential to make enterprise workers more productive. But do “always listening” assistants pose a serious threat to security and privacy, too?Nineteen percent of organizations are already using intelligent digital assistants, such as Siri and Cortana, for work-related tasks, according to Spiceworks’ October 2016 survey of 566 IT professionals in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The survey also found that 46 percent of organizations plan to adopt intelligent assistants within five years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here