How to choose a prepaid mobile data plan

Data-only SIM cards can give you freedom from two-year contracts and high-priced smartphone hardware. They're also great if you're travelling internationally, or if you have an old smartphone or LTE-enabled tablet that you want to use off-contract.These seven pre-paid SIM cards will give you plenty of options, whether you're travelling internationally, looking for talk and text or just want monthly data.Things to know before you buy Compatibility can get confusing when you start considering pre-paid SIM cards, but the most important thing you'll need to know is whether your device is GSM or CDMA. If you aren't sure what the difference is, this article from DigitalTrends lays it out clearly. Some devices, including newer models of the iPhone, can operate on both GSM and CDMA -- but it can get complicated depending on your carrier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Experts: US needs a federal CISO

Last week, the Trump administration announced the appointment of a White House cybersecurity coordinator. That's a good first step, security experts say, but the government also needs to have a federal CISO."It's a big leadership vacancy," said Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder at cloud security vendor Netskope.The job of a federal CISO is very new -- it was only created last year and filled in September with the appointment of retired brigadier general Gregory Touhill. He was previously the deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Experts: US needs a federal CISO

Last week, the Trump administration announced the appointment of a White House cybersecurity coordinator. That's a good first step, security experts say, but the government also needs to have a federal CISO."It's a big leadership vacancy," said Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder at cloud security vendor Netskope.The job of a federal CISO is very new -- it was only created last year and filled in September with the appointment of retired brigadier general Gregory Touhill. He was previously the deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

KAUST Hackathon Shows OpenACC Global Appeal

OpenACC’s global attraction can be seen in the recent February 2017 OpenACC mini-hackathon and GPU conference at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science & Technology) in Saudi Arabia. OpenACC was created so programmers can insert pragmas to provide information to the compiler about parallelization opportunities and data movement operations to and from accelerators. Programmers use pragmas to work in concert with the compiler to create, tune and optimize parallel codes to achieve high performance.

Demand was so high to attend this mini-hackathon that the organizers had to scramble to find space for ten teams, even though the hackathon was originally …

KAUST Hackathon Shows OpenACC Global Appeal was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Windows 10 Creators Update: Microsoft removes, depreciates features specific to IT professionals

Microsoft is in the process of finalizing the Windows 10 Creators Update, preparing new builds for what will eventually become Release Candidates (RC). Windows Insiders could get the first RC as early as next week, while the final version is expected to roll out to all Windows 10 users starting in April. With the change in strategy, Microsoft is shipping much more ambitious new functionality in its updates. It is delivering the equivalent of what it used to call Service Packs, minus the cumulative bug fixes, at a rate of one to two every year. RELATED: 11 hidden tips and tweaks for Windows 10 The Creators Update, so named because it's targeting creative professionals above all, has a wide range of new features, such as: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Look before you leap: 4 hard truths about IoT

Most technologies go through a stage when everything seems possible. Personal computers in the early 1980s, the internet in the late 1990s and mobile apps around the beginning of this decade were like that.But so was the first unboxing of a Galaxy Note 7. In time, either suddenly or gradually, reality sets in.The internet of things still looks promising, with vendors and analysts forecasting billions of connected devices that will solve all sorts of problems in homes and enterprises. But the seams are starting to show on this one, too. As promising as the technology is, it has some shortcomings. Here are a few.BAD DATAIoT systems are only as good as the data they capture, and some of it is not great.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Look before you leap: 4 hard truths about IoT

Most technologies go through a stage when everything seems possible. Personal computers in the early 1980s, the internet in the late 1990s and mobile apps around the beginning of this decade were like that.But so was the first unboxing of a Galaxy Note 7. In time, either suddenly or gradually, reality sets in.The internet of things still looks promising, with vendors and analysts forecasting billions of connected devices that will solve all sorts of problems in homes and enterprises. But the seams are starting to show on this one, too. As promising as the technology is, it has some shortcomings. Here are a few.BAD DATAIoT systems are only as good as the data they capture, and some of it is not great.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Friends more than frenemies? Splunk and New Relic team up

Things were so simple in the old days when it was easy to place vendors. New Relic was firmly and squarely focused on performance monitoring. It helps organizations gain visibility into how their applications and infrastructure are working so that they can make decisions or take actions based on performance.Splunk was in an entirely different space and was all about allowing organizations to ingest a huge amount of their data in order to run analytics over that data. In doing so, Splunk promised to give organizations more visibility about what was going on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN: The ‘Quiet Revolution’

Google Cloud and the Network Engineer

The goal of a new machine

Not every computer owner would be as pleased as Andrew Wheeler that their new machine could run "all weekend" without crashing.But not everyone's machine is "The Machine," an attempt to redefine a relationship between memory and processor that has held since the earliest days of parallel computing.Wheeler is a vice president and deputy labs director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He's at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, to tell people about The Machine, a key part of which is on display in HPE's booth.Rather than have processors, surrounded by tiered RAM, flash and disks, communicating with one another to identify which of their neighbors has the freshest copy of the information they need, HPE's goal with The Machine is to build a large pool of persistent memory that application processors can just access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tapping the brakes on 802.11ac wave 2

802.11ac wave 2 is the splashy new kid in the wireless technology pool, but some experts caution that you might not want to let it play without lifeguards present just yet.Wave 2 access points are now available from major wireless vendors, and have started to make inroads into the enterprise. The technology has been gaining ground in sales statistics recently, to the point where it’s starting to undercut sales of first-gen 802.11ac gear.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Study shows 802.11ac wave 2 APs gaining sales ground + US lawmakers question police use of facial recognition techTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Updated: User Authentication in Ansible Network Modules

Ansible network modules (at least in the way they’re implemented in Ansible releases 2.1 and 2.2) were one of the more confusing aspects of my Building Network Automation Solutions online course (and based on what I’m seeing on various chat sites we weren’t the only ones).

I wrote an in-depth explanation of how you’re supposed to be using them a while ago and now updated it with user authentication information.

Apple acquires Workflow automation app, offers it free

Apple has acquired the Workflow automation app, which allows iOS users to trigger a sequence of tasks across apps with a single tap.A spokesman for Apple confirmed on Wednesday the company's acquisition of DeskConnect, the developer of the app, and the Workflow app, but did not provide further details.Workflow, developed for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, allows users to drag and drop combinations of actions to create workflows that interact with the apps and content on the device. It won an Apple design award in 2015 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.Some of the examples of tasks for which Workflow can be used are making animated GIFs, adding a home screen icon to call a loved one and tweeting a song the user has been listening to, according to a description of the app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 may include incredible augmented reality features

The truth is we really don't need more of a reason to get excited for Apple's iPhone 8. After all, Apple's next-gen iPhone will likely feature an OLED edgeless display, ushering in the first change to the iPhone form factor since 2014's iPhone 6.New display technologies aside, it's widely believed that the iPhone 8 will also feature facial recognition functionality, improved camera technology, improved internals and much more.+ Also on Network World: New iPhone 8 concept photos are jaw-dropping + That said, a new report via Bloomberg relays augmented reality (AR) may very well be one of the iPhone 8's defining features. Apple is said to have assembled an incredibly strong and diverse team with expertise across all facets of the AR user experience. What's more, Apple may eventually complement the iPhone 8 with a pair of AR-based eyeglasses, echoing a number of previous rumors we've seen over the past few months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 may include incredible Augmented Reality features

The truth is that we really don't need more of a reason to get excited for Apple's iPhone 8. After all, Apple's next-gen iPhone will likely feature an OLED edgeless display, ushering in the first change to the iPhone form factor since 2014's iPhone 6. New display technologies aside, it's widely believed that the iPhone 8 will also feature facial recognition functionality, improved camera technology, improved internals and much more.That said, a new report via Bloomberg relays that Augmented Reality may very well be one of the iPhone 8's defining features. Apple is said to have assembled an incredibly strong and diverse team with expertise across all facets of the AR user experience. What's more, Apple may eventually be planning to complement the iPhone 8 with a pair of Augmented Reality based eyeglasses, echoing a number of previous rumors we've seen over the past few months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Buongiorno, Roma! Cloudflare Data Center CV

CC-BY 2.0 image by Ilaria Giacomi

We’re excited to announce Cloudflare’s 105th data center in Rome. Visitors in Italy (and especially around the region of Lazio) to over 6 million Internet properties now benefit from reduced latency and increased security. As our global network grows in breadth and capacity, we are able to stop attacks (typically, outside of Italy!), while serving legitimate traffic from our nearest in-country data center. Rome serves as a point of redundancy to our existing data center in Milan, and expands Cloudflare’s Europe network to 29 cities, with at least five more cities already in the works.

Siamo orgogliosi di annunciare il 105esimo data center di Cloudflare a Roma. Utenti in tutta Italia (e specialmente nel Lazio e regioni limitrofe) insieme ad oltre 6 milioni di proprietà in rete beneficeranno di latenze ridotte e maggior sicurezza. Con la crescita della nostra rete sia in copertura che capacità, abbiamo la possibilità di fermare attacchi (tipicamente originati fuori del territorio Italiano!) e di servire traffico legittimo dal data center più vicino. Roma offre maggiore ridondanza nella rete in coppia con il data center di Milano ed espande la rete Europea di Cloudflare a 29 Continue reading

LastPass fixes serious password leak vulnerabilities

Developers of the popular LastPass password manager rushed to push out a fix to solve a serious vulnerability that could have allowed attackers to steal users' passwords or execute malicious code on their computers.The vulnerability was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy and was reported to LastPass on Monday. It affected the browser extensions installed by the service's users for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.According to a description in the Google Project Zero bug tracker, the vulnerability could have given attackers access to internal commands inside the LastPass extension. Those are the commands used by the extension to copy passwords or fill in web forms using information stored in the user's secure vault.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LastPass fixes serious password leak vulnerabilities

Developers of the popular LastPass password manager rushed to push out a fix to solve a serious vulnerability that could have allowed attackers to steal users' passwords or execute malicious code on their computers.The vulnerability was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy and was reported to LastPass on Monday. It affected the browser extensions installed by the service's users for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.According to a description in the Google Project Zero bug tracker, the vulnerability could have given attackers access to internal commands inside the LastPass extension. Those are the commands used by the extension to copy passwords or fill in web forms using information stored in the user's secure vault.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The anatomy of a powerful desktop with an ARM chip

When he was growing up, a dream of Linux pioneer Linus Torvalds was to acquire the Acorn Archimedes, a groundbreaking personal computer with the first ARM RISC chips.But in 1987, Archimedes wasn't available to Torvalds in Finland, so he settled for the Sinclair QL. In the meanwhile, the Archimedes failed and disappeared from the scene, killing any chance for ARM chips to dominate PCs.Since then, multiple attempts to put ARM chips in PCs have failed. Outside of a few Chromebooks, most PCs have x86 chips from Intel or AMD.The domination of x86 is a problem for Linaro, an industry organization that advocates ARM hardware and software. Many of its developers use x86 PCs to compile programs for ARM hardware. That's much like trying to write Windows programs on a Mac.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here