Mixed Signals From Server Land

With a new generation of Xeon processors coming out later this year from Intel and AMD trying to get back in the game with its own X86 server chips – they probably will not be called Opterons – it is not a surprise to us that server makers are having a bit of trouble making their numbers in recent months. But we are beginning to wonder if something else might be going on here than the usual pause before a big set of processor announcements.

In many ways, server spending is a leading indicator because when companies are willing to …

Mixed Signals From Server Land was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

8 ways to make Amazon’s Alexa even more awesome

I’ve been using an Amazon Echo for a while now, yet I still find myself amazed at how well its voice assistant technology works—at least within the relatively narrow confines it has set for itself. By sticking to what she can do well, Alexa mostly avoids the common trap of heavily hyped new technology delivering a disappointing experience in real life. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Relax: This phone measures your blood pressure

This Swiss electronics company is on a mission: to stop millions of people dying of ignorance each year.Worldwide, high blood pressure leads to around 9.4 million deaths annually according to figures from the World Health Organization. And yet, the condition is easily diagnosed and treated. In the Americas, the prevalence of high blood pressure fell from 31 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2014, but remains high in developing countries.Before high blood pressure can be controlled, though, it needs to be detected, and that's the part that Leman Micro Devices wants to make simpler. It is showing off its solution at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Some moon math

So "Brianna Wu" (famous for gamergate) is trending, and because I love punishment, I clicked on it to see why. Apparently she tweeted that Elon Musk's plan to go to the moon is bad, because once there he can drop rocks on the Earth with the power of 100s of nuclear bombs. People are mocking her for the stupidity of this.

But the math checks out.


First of all, she probably got the idea from Heinlein's book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where the rebel moon colonists do just that. I doubt she did her own math, and relied upon Heinlein to do it for her. But let's do the math ourselves.

Let's say that we want to stand at the height of the moon and drop a rock. How big a rock do we need to equal the energy of an atomic bomb. To make things simple, let's assume the size of bombs we want is that of the one dropped on Hiroshima.

As we know from high school physics, the energy of a dropped object (ignoring air) is:

energy = mass * gravity * height

Solving for mass, the equation is:

mass = energy/(gravity * height)

So Continue reading

This tiny chip could revolutionize smartphone and IOT security

Engineers at South Korea's SK Telecom have developed a tiny chip that could help secure communications on a myriad of portable electronics and IOT devices.The chip is just 5 millimeters square -- smaller than a fingernail -- and is capable of generating mathematically provable random numbers. Such numbers are the basis for highly-secure encryption systems and producing them in such a small package hasn't been possible until now.The chip, on show at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, could be in sample production as early as March this year and will cost a few dollars once in commercial production, said Sean Kwak, director at SK Telecom's quantum technology lab.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This tiny chip could revolutionize smartphone and IOT security

Engineers at South Korea's SK Telecom have developed a tiny chip that could help secure communications on a myriad of portable electronics and IOT devices.The chip is just 5 millimeters square -- smaller than a fingernail -- and is capable of generating mathematically provable random numbers. Such numbers are the basis for highly-secure encryption systems and producing them in such a small package hasn't been possible until now.The chip, on show at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, could be in sample production as early as March this year and will cost a few dollars once in commercial production, said Sean Kwak, director at SK Telecom's quantum technology lab.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Some notes on space heaters (GPU rigs)

So I carried my GPU rig up to my bedroom to act as a space heater. I thought I'd write some notes on it.

This is a "GPU rig", containing five graphics cards. Graphics cards have highly parallel processors (GPUs) with roughly 10 times the performance of a CPU -- but only for highly parallel problems.

Two such problems are password cracking [*] and cryptocurrency mining.


Password cracking is something cybersecurity professionals regularly need to do. When doing a pentest, or assessment, we'll get lists of passwords we need to crack. Having a desktop computer with a couple of graphics cards is a useful thing to have.

There are three popular cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ZCash. Everyone is using ASICs for Bitcoin, so you can't mine them on a GPU any more, but GPUs are still useful for Ethereum and ZCash.

The trick to building a rig with lots of GPU is to get a PCIe 1x extender, so that you can mount the card far away from the motherboard for better cooling. They cost around $10 each. You then need to buy a motherboard with lots of PCIe slots. One with lots of 1x slots will do Continue reading

Fabric Extension (FEX) Cheat Sheet Released

Here is the Cisco FEX Cheat Sheet on Nexus platform, Fabric Extender (FEX for short) is a companion to a Nexus 5K to 9K switch. The FEX, unlike a traditional switch, has no capability to store a forwarding table or run any control plane protocols. It relies on its parent 5K/6K/7K/9K to perform those functions. As the name implies, the FEX “extends” the fabric (ie, the network) out towards the edge devices that require network connectivity.

If you found a bug or want new content to be added, please report it!

Click here to download FEX Cheat Sheet

Fabric Extension (FEX) Cheat Sheet Released

Here is the Cisco FEX Cheat Sheet on Nexus platform, Fabric Extender (FEX for short) is a companion to a Nexus 5K to 9K switch. The FEX, unlike a traditional switch, has no capability to store a forwarding table or run any control plane protocols. It relies on its parent 5K/6K/7K/9K to perform those functions. As the name implies, the FEX “extends” the fabric (ie, the network) out towards the edge devices that require network connectivity.

If you found a bug or want new content to be added, please report it!

Click here to download FEX Cheat Sheet

Smart teddy bears involved in a contentious data breach

If you own a stuffed animal from CloudPets, then you better change your password to the product. The toys -- which can receive and send voice messages from children and parents -- have been involved in a data breach dealing with more than 800,000 user accounts.The breach, which grabbed headlines on Monday, is drawing concerns from security researchers because it may have given hackers access to voice recordings from the toy's customers. But the company behind the products, Spiral Toys, is denying that any customers were hacked. "Were voice recordings stolen? Absolutely not," said Mark Myers, CEO of the company.Security researcher Troy Hunt, who tracks data breaches, brought the incident to light on Monday. Hackers appear to have accessed an exposed CloudPets' database, which contained email addresses and hashed passwords, and they even sought to ransom the information back in January, he said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Smart teddy bears involved in a contentious data breach

If you own a stuffed animal from CloudPets, then you better change your password to the product. The toys -- which can receive and send voice messages from children and parents -- have been involved in a data breach dealing with more than 800,000 user accounts.The breach, which grabbed headlines on Monday, is drawing concerns from security researchers because it may have given hackers access to voice recordings from the toy's customers. But the company behind the products, Spiral Toys, is denying that any customers were hacked. "Were voice recordings stolen? Absolutely not," said Mark Myers, CEO of the company.Security researcher Troy Hunt, who tracks data breaches, brought the incident to light on Monday. Hackers appear to have accessed an exposed CloudPets' database, which contained email addresses and hashed passwords, and they even sought to ransom the information back in January, he said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm details plans for Windows 10 PCs with Snapdragon 835

Qualcomm has big plans to bring back ARM to Windows 10 PCs, and there is a chance that its Snapdragon 835 could support Windows Holographic for VR headsets.The company is already working with major PC makers for using Windows 10 with Snapdragon 835, its latest chip introduced in Sony's Xperia XZ smartphone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.The response to Windows 10 with Snapdragon 835 has been positive, and the grim memories of Windows RT -- a colossal failure in bringing ARM to PCs -- have remained in the past, said Keith Kressin, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies."The goal is to get something credible out, show people why it's different from RT. Show that it's Windows 10 -- there isn't a second version of Windows 10," Kressin said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five Functional Facts About OSPF

It's funny, in my experience, OSPF is the most widely used interior gateway protocol because it “just works” and it's an IETF standard which means it inter-ops between different vendors and platforms. However, if you really start to look at how OSPF works, you realize it's actually a highly complex protocol. So on the one hand you get a protocol that likely works across your whole environment, regardless of vendor/platform, but on the other you're implementing a lot of complexity in your control plane which may not be intuitive to troubleshoot.

This post isn't a judgement about OSPF or link-state protocols in general. Instead it will detail five functional aspects of OSPF in order to reveal-at least in part-how this protocol works, and indirectly, some of the complexity lying under the hood.

Starting a task at startup in Flask

Flask, run task at startup Flask includes a Python decorator which allows you to run a function before the first request from a user is processed. The problem I had is that the function doesn’t get run until after a user has visited a page for the first time. This article describes a way to solve that. If you haven’t heard of Flask before it’s a Python microframework for web applications. With Flask you can create small or large websites. While this article isn’t a getting started guide for Flask, it will include a complete working application. Continue reading

Space X to zoom two citizen astronauts to the moon

Space X today said two unnamed private citizens have paid the company a “significant deposit” to fly them to the moon and back to Earth.“We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results,” Space X stated.Space X said the mission will take place after the space company launches its unmanned Dragon (Version 2) spacecraft to the International Space Station later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Space X to zoom two citizen astronauts to the moon

Space X today said two unnamed private citizens have paid the company a “significant deposit” to fly them to the moon and back to Earth.“We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results,” Space X stated.Space X said the mission will take place after the space company launches its unmanned Dragon (Version 2) spacecraft to the International Space Station later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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