WhatsApp reduces spam, despite end-to-end encryption

Can a spam filter work even without reading the content of your messages?WhatsApp thinks so. Since last April, the messenger app has been successfully fighting spam abuse, even as it’s been using end-to-end encryption.That encryption means that no one -- not even WhatsApp -- can read the content of your messages, except for the recipient.More privacy, however, can raise issues about spam detection. If WhatsApp can’t scan your messages for suspicious content, say for advertisements peddling cheap Viagra, then how can it effectively filter them out?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WhatsApp reduces spam, despite end-to-end encryption

Can a spam filter work even without reading the content of your messages?WhatsApp thinks so. Since last April, the messenger app has been successfully fighting spam abuse, even as it’s been using end-to-end encryption.That encryption means that no one -- not even WhatsApp -- can read the content of your messages, except for the recipient.More privacy, however, can raise issues about spam detection. If WhatsApp can’t scan your messages for suspicious content, say for advertisements peddling cheap Viagra, then how can it effectively filter them out?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD sets Ryzen up for a strong start as chip battle with Intel looms

As a pesky underdog, AMD challenged Intel in chip innovation until the mid-2000s. AMD churned out innovations like dual-core and 64-bit chips, which kept Intel on its toes.But some disastrous technological and management decisions cost AMD dearly, and over time, buyers began to consider its processors inferior to Intel's chips. Intel ran away with PC and server chip market share.AMD now is looking to rally its dwindling fan base with a series of Zen-based chips this year for desktops, servers, and laptops. The hyped-up Zen chips are expected to be good, and even Intel readily acknowledges the stiff competition coming its way.AMD promises that Zen chips will deliver a 40 percent improvement in instructions per cycle, an important metric for chip performance. That number is impressive, considering most chips based on a new architecture have typically boasted CPU improvements of up to 20 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

25% off Logitech Professional Presenter R800, Presentation Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer – Deal Alert

The Logitech Professional Presenter R800, with a brilliant green laser pointer, puts you in complete control of your presentation and makes it easy to direct your audience's attention to specific information from across the room - even on flat panel displays and in brightly lit rooms. To keep you focused on the crowd and not the clock, the Professional Presenter R800 provides an easy-to-set timer with silent, vibrating alerts. When you're moving around the room to engage your audience, at a range of up to 100 feet (30 meters), a reception - level indicator on the LCD keeps you from wandering too far. The intuitive slideshow controls help you find buttons easily by touch, and the compact design allows you to take it with you wherever you go.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper heads to the clouds with Unite

Not to state the obvious, but the cloud has been growing in popularity over the past decade. However, contrary to much of the rhetoric I hear about today, the cloud is not going to kill of private data centers any time soon. The explosion in data has driven growth in both private data centers and public clouds.Underscoring that point is that almost all the IT leaders I speak to plan to do some kind of hybrid cloud where they leverage the strengths of both.The cloud is a new compute model, but what’s different about it from other compute paradigms before it is that it is highly network centric. Everyone loves the cloud. It’s great, it’s elastic and a bunch of other things. But it won’t provide the results companies are looking for without the right network underneath it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper heads to the clouds with Unite

Not to state the obvious, but the cloud has been growing in popularity over the past decade. However, contrary to much of the rhetoric I hear about today, the cloud is not going to kill of private data centers any time soon. The explosion in data has driven growth in both private data centers and public clouds.Underscoring that point is that almost all the IT leaders I speak to plan to do some kind of hybrid cloud where they leverage the strengths of both.The cloud is a new compute model, but what’s different about it from other compute paradigms before it is that it is highly network centric. Everyone loves the cloud. It’s great, it’s elastic and a bunch of other things. But it won’t provide the results companies are looking for without the right network underneath it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker’s namespaces – See them in CentOS

In the Docker Networking Cookbook (I got my copy directly from Pact Publishing), Jon Langemak explains why the iproute2 utilities can't see Docker's network namespaces: Docker creates its namespace objects in /var/run/docker/netns, but iproute2 expects to find them in /var/run/netns.

Creating a symlink from /var/run/docker/netns to /var/run/netns is the obvious solution:

 $ sudo ls -l /var/run/docker/netns  
 total 0  
 -r--r--r--. 1 root root 0 Feb 1 11:16 1-6ledhvw0x2  
 -r--r--r--. 1 root root 0 Feb 1 11:16 ingress_sbox  
 $ sudo ip netns list  
 $ sudo ln -s /var/run/docker/netns /var/run/netns  
 $ sudo ip netns list  
 1-6ledhvw0x2 (id: 0)  
 ingress_sbox (id: 1)  
 $

But there's a problem. Look where this stuff is mounted:

 $ ls -l /var/run  
 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 6 Jan 26 20:22 /var/run -> ../run  
 $ df -k /run  
 Filesystem   1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on  
 tmpfs      16381984 16692 16365292  1% /run  
 $

The symlink won't survive a reboot because it lives in a memory-backed filesystem. My first instinct was to have a boot script (say /etc/rc.d/rc.local) create the symlink, but there's a much better way.

Fine, I'm starting to like systemd

Systemd's tmpfiles.d is a really elegant way of handling touch files, symlinks, empty Continue reading

Worth Reading: Massive networks of fake accounts on Twitter

Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research. The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics. —BBC

The post Worth Reading: Massive networks of fake accounts on Twitter appeared first on 'net work.

In treason case, Russia alleges security experts aided US

Two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and a cybercrime investigator from Kaspersky Lab have reportedly been charged with treason for helping U.S. intelligence services. The arrests of Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky, and Sergei Mikhailov, the deputy head of the Information Security Center at the FSB, happened in early December and were reported in the Russian media last week. Since then, the arrest of a third FSB officer named Dmitry Dokuchayev, who also worked for the agency's Information Security Center, came to light, and the investigation is said to have targeted even more people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In treason case, Russia alleges security experts aided US

Two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and a cybercrime investigator from Kaspersky Lab have reportedly been charged with treason for helping U.S. intelligence services. The arrests of Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky, and Sergei Mikhailov, the deputy head of the Information Security Center at the FSB, happened in early December and were reported in the Russian media last week. Since then, the arrest of a third FSB officer named Dmitry Dokuchayev, who also worked for the agency's Information Security Center, came to light, and the investigation is said to have targeted even more people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: If the cloud is so great, why are so many businesses unsatisfied?

Cloud computing has become common in enterprise IT, and the hype around it remains as adoption soars. Research by IDG shows that 70 percent of enterprises currently use at least one cloud application, and in 2018, organizations with cloud-only IT infrastructure will become the majority.The global market for cloud services was worth $148 billion in 2016, according to Synergy Research Group, and it is growing by 25 percent annually. Amazon Web Services (AWS) alone reached $3.23 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016, while Microsoft Azure, the second-largest cloud provider, announced Thursday that revenue has nearly doubled in the past year, giving it an annual run rate of $14 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: If the cloud is so great, why are so many businesses unsatisfied?

Cloud computing has become common in enterprise IT, and the hype around it remains as adoption soars. Research by IDG shows that 70 percent of enterprises currently use at least one cloud application, and in 2018, organizations with cloud-only IT infrastructure will become the majority.The global market for cloud services was worth $148 billion in 2016, according to Synergy Research Group, and it is growing by 25 percent annually. Amazon Web Services (AWS) alone reached $3.23 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016, while Microsoft Azure, the second-largest cloud provider, announced Thursday that revenue has nearly doubled in the past year, giving it an annual run rate of $14 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

13% off LOGITECH G430 Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset – Deal Alert

Powered by advanced Dolby technology, these 7.1 surround sound headphones position you in the center of an immersive 360-degree sound field. They let you hear every detail in every direction, just as the game developer intended. Enemy fire. Sirens. Your opponent’s footsteps. When you hear what you can’t see, you win. The headset averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 2,400 reviewers on Amazon (see reviews), where their typical list price of $45.75 has been reduced to $39.99. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

1984 is the new Bible in the age of Trump

In the age of Trump, Orwell's book 1984 is becoming the new Bible: a religious text which few read, but which many claim supports their beliefs. A good demonstration is this CNN op-ed, in which the author describes Trump as being Orwellian, but mostly just because Trump is a Republican.

Trump's populist attacks against our (classically) liberal world order is indeed cause for concern. His assault on the truth is indeed a bit Orwellian. But it's op-eds like this one at CNN that are part of the problem.

While the author of the op-ed spends much time talking about his dogs ("Winston", "Julia"), and how much he hates Trump, he spends little time on the core thesis "Orwellianism". When he does, it's mostly about old political disagreements. For example, the op-ed calls Trump's cabinet appointees Orwellian simply because they are Republicans:
He has provided us with Betsy DeVos, a secretary of education nominee who is widely believed to oppose public education, and who promotes the truly Orwellian-sounding concept of "school choice," a plan that seems well-intentioned but which critics complain actually siphons much-needed funds from public to private education institutions.
Calling school-choice "Orwellian" is absurd. Republicans want to Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: 3 ways to improve employee productivity

It’s the beginning of a new year, and like many of you, I find this is a great time to jump-start my resolve to accomplish more and better—whether that means de-cluttering my desk, better managing my inbox or taking a hike to re-focus.Of course, making a New Year’s resolution to improve productivity can be extremely beneficial in the workplace, as well. We all know employee productivity is essential for driving revenue, but the U.S. Department of Labor reported in August that labor productivity growth in the non-farm business sector is lower now than during any of the previous 10 business cycles.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘net: Getting to know…

Russ White is on LinkedIn’s Infrastructure Engineering team, working on next-generation network design and architecture. He has worked in networking since the late 1980s, and has a long history contributing knowledge back to the networking community. A short list of his contributions to the field include being a published author, having published several papers in the Internet Protocol Journal, and serving in the past as a an organizational council co-chair for the Internet Society. He is also a member of the IETF Routing Area Directorate. —LinkedIn Engineering Blog

The post On the ‘net: Getting to know… appeared first on 'net work.

Cisco amps-up Tetration platform with better security, reduced footprint, AWS cloud option

Cisco has rolled out a second release of its Tetration Analytics package with features such as a smaller footprint and a cloud service that will go a long way toward making the system alluring to more data center customers.Announced in June of last year, Cisco’s Tetration Analytics is a turnkey analytics package that gathers information from hardware and software sensors and analyzes the information using big data and machine learning.Tetration software sensors support Linux and Windows server hosts, while hardware sensors are embedded in Cisco network switch ASICS: Nexus 9200, Nexus 9300-EX and Nexus 9500-EX, to collect flow data at line rate from all the ports. Per Cisco once in place, the Tetration platform learns its enterprise environment and any policies IT has in place. From there it can learn which applications are dependent on each other throughout their data center and into the cloud. It can monitor server behavior patterns and group servers more efficiently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco amps-up Tetration platform with better security, reduced footprint, AWS cloud option

Cisco has rolled out a second release of its Tetration Analytics package with features such as a smaller footprint and a cloud service that will go a long way toward making the system alluring to more data center customers.Announced in June of last year, Cisco’s Tetration Analytics is a turnkey analytics package that gathers information from hardware and software sensors and analyzes the information using big data and machine learning.Tetration software sensors support Linux and Windows server hosts, while hardware sensors are embedded in Cisco network switch ASICS: Nexus 9200, Nexus 9300-EX and Nexus 9500-EX, to collect flow data at line rate from all the ports. Per Cisco once in place, the Tetration platform learns its enterprise environment and any policies IT has in place. From there it can learn which applications are dependent on each other throughout their data center and into the cloud. It can monitor server behavior patterns and group servers more efficiently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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