The Linux Migration: Virtualization Provider

As part of my migration to Linux as my primary laptop OS, I needed to revisit my choice of virtualization provider. Long-time readers probably know that I was an early adopter of VMware Fusion, starting way back in 2006 with the very first “friends and family” release (before it was even publicly available). Obviously I can’t use Fusion on Linux, but do I use VMware Workstation for Linux? VirtualBox? Or something else? That’s what I set out to determine, and in this post I’ll share what I selected and the reasoning behind my selection.

So what were the options to consider? While there may be some other solutions, these are the three I primarily assessed:

  • VMware Workstation for Linux 12.5.2
  • VirtualBox 5.1.14
  • “Native” Linux KVM, supplemented by Libvirt and a GUI like GNOME Boxes (installed by default in Fedora 25)

Since I have been using Vagrant quite a bit over the last few years, whatever solution I selected needed to work reasonably well with Vagrant.

I’m pretty familiar with KVM and Libvirt, so I started there. Given that KVM and Libvirt are “native” to Linux, it felt like it would be a clean solution. While Continue reading

Write your own terminal emulator

I was an happy user of rxvt-unicode until I got a laptop with an HiDPI display. Switching from a LoDPI to a HiDPI screen and back was a pain: I had to manually adjust the font size on all terminals or restart them.

VTE is a library to build a terminal emulator using the GTK+ toolkit, which handles DPI changes. It is used by many terminal emulators, like GNOME Terminal, evilvte, sakura, termit and ROXTerm. The library is quite straightforward and writing a terminal doesn’t take much time if you don’t need many features.

Let’s see how to write a simple one.

A simple terminal

Let’s start small with a terminal with the default settings. We’ll write that in C. Another supported option is Vala.

#include <vte/vte.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    GtkWidget *window, *terminal;

    /* Initialise GTK, the window and the terminal */
    gtk_init(&argc, &argv);
    terminal = vte_terminal_new();
    window = gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
    gtk_window_set_title(GTK_WINDOW(window), "myterm");

    /* Start a new shell */
    gchar **envp = g_get_environ();
    gchar **command = (gchar * Continue reading

The Case For IBM Buying Nvidia, Xilinx, And Mellanox

We spend a lot of time contemplating what technologies will be deployed at the heart of servers, storage, and networks and thereby form the foundation of the next successive generations of platforms in the datacenter for running applications old and new. While technology is inherently interesting, we are cognizant of the fact that the companies producing technology need global reach and a certain critical mass.

It is with this in mind, and as more of a thought experiment than a desire, that we consider the fate of International Business Machines in the datacenter. In many ways, other companies have long …

The Case For IBM Buying Nvidia, Xilinx, And Mellanox was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

As IoT sales surge, consumers still lead the way

The internet of things will have nearly one-third more devices by the end of this year, though many of them won’t exactly be exotic.There will be 8.4 billion IoT devices in use at the end of 2017, up 31 percent from the end of 2016, Gartner estimated on Tuesday. That's slightly faster than the growth rate last year. The number will keep growing at about the same pace until 2020, when there will be just over 20 billion devices, the research company says.Nearly two-thirds of the connected objects in use this year will be consumer products, especially smart TVs, set-top boxes, and in-car devices such as entertainment systems and sensors that help insurance companies monitor driving. Home IoT gadgets like connected door locks and lightbulbs are still popular mostly among tech-focused early adopters, analysts say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

27% off HAVIT 3-Fan USB Powered Laptop Cooling Pad – Deal Alert

With a thin body and light weight design, the USB-powered Havit HV-F2056 cooling pad allows you to take it wherever you go and cool your laptop anytime you want. Three ultra-quiet fans create a noise-free environment, and a high-quality multi-directional metal mesh provides your laptop with a wear-resistant and stable laptop carrying surface. A built-in dual-USB hub allows for connecting more USB devices. The cooling pad from HAVIT averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 3,500 people on Amazon (read reviews). Its typical list price of $29.49 has been reduced 27% to $21.49. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung Galaxy S7 hardware will come to the DragonBoard 820c computer

Meet DragonBoard 820c, a supercharged board computer that will make Raspberry Pi 3 look like a turtle.The computer can be used as an Android OS computer and is based on components in premium smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy S7.The board is now listed on the website of Arrow Electronics but isn't commercially available so far. The price isn't yet available. The board has Qualcomm's 820 chip, which is used some premium smartphones today. Qualcomm recently announced the Snapdragon 835, which succeeds the 820 and 821 chips, and next round of premium smartphones with the new chip will be announced in the coming months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BlackBerry offers secure mobile communications platform for developers

BlackBerry on Tuesday announced a new line of business to provide developers with a secure, cloud-based, mobile communications platform for texting, voice, video and file sharing.Developers can insert these capabilities into their existing custom apps and services using the new BBM Enterprise SDK (software developer kit), BlackBerry said. The SDK will be sold as a per-user license on a subscription basis to developers, including those employed at enterprises, and to independent software vendors (ISVs).BlackBerry didn’t say what the licenses would cost, but did say the cost would be affordable, especially compared to communications products from competitors that usually charge on a usage basis for texts, voice and video calls. The SDK will be available worlwide later in February for apps running on iOS and Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump reviews right of H-1B spouses to work

For H-1B workers, one of the most hated and frustrating parts of working in the U.S. is this: Their spouses were idled, unable to work under law. That changed in 2014, when President Obama signed a regulation that allowed some spouses to get a job. But the future of this rule may be in doubt under the new administration.President Donald Trump's administration, which is broadly repealing Obama-era regulations, is reviewing the H-1B spouse rule as well, according to a new court filing.The Obama rule change affected H-1B holders who were seeking green cards or permanent residency. It allowed their spouses to get work authorization. There may have been as many as 180,000 spouses eligible, according to a lawsuit that's challenging this rule.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pushing MPI into the Deep Learning Training Stack

We have written much about large-scale deep learning implementations over the last couple of years, but one question that is being posed with increasing frequency is how these workloads (training in particular) will scale to many nodes. While different companies, including Baidu and others, have managed to get their deep learning training clusters to scale across many GPU-laden nodes, for the non-hyperscale companies with their own development teams, this scalability is a sticking point.

The answer to deep learning framework scalability can be found in the world of supercomputing. For the many nodes required for large-scale jobs, the de facto …

Pushing MPI into the Deep Learning Training Stack was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Mac malware, possibly made in Iran, targets US defense industry

Just because you’re using a Mac doesn’t mean you’re safe from hackers. That’s what two security researchers are warning, after finding a Mac-based malware that may be an attempt by Iranian hackers to target the U.S. defense industry.The malware, called MacDownloader, was found on a website impersonating the U.S. aerospace firm United Technologies, according to a report from Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson, who are researching Iranian cyberespionage threats.The fake site was previously used in a spear phishing email attack to spread Windows malware and is believed to be maintained by Iranian hackers, the researchers claimed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mac malware, possibly made in Iran, targets US defense industry

Just because you’re using a Mac doesn’t mean you’re safe from hackers. That’s what two security researchers are warning, after finding a Mac-based malware that may be an attempt by Iranian hackers to target the U.S. defense industry.The malware, called MacDownloader, was found on a website impersonating the U.S. aerospace firm United Technologies, according to a report from Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson, who are researching Iranian cyberespionage threats.The fake site was previously used in a spear phishing email attack to spread Windows malware and is believed to be maintained by Iranian hackers, the researchers claimed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Toyota funds AI research to build autonomous cars

Toyota is partnering with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to research artificial intelligence and robotics in order to bring greater autonomy to Toyota cars.The car maker will contribute US$50 million over five years to two research centers that are being set up at Stanford and MIT.However, don't expect a computer to completely drive your Camry any time soon.Toyota will always assume a person will be at the wheel, said Gill Pratt, who oversaw the DARPA Robotics Challenge and is now joining Toyota as an executive technical adviser.Toyota will focus on creating "human-centric systems" that are supplemented by technology, Pratt said Friday at a press conference in Palo Alto, California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Addressing in 2016

The process of exhausting the remaining pools of IPv4 addresses in each of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) is continuing. Yet, despite this hiatus in the supply of IPv4 addresses, the Internet continues to grow. The reasons for this growth are changing, however. Personal computers have gone the way of mainframes and are no longer the staple of the consumer IT market. It looks as if laptops are now also feeling the pinch as the mainstream computer industry continues to focus on the smart device market. But even in the personal device sector, we see a market that is no longer expanding at massive rates. —APNIC

The post Worth Reading: Addressing in 2016 appeared first on 'net work.

Flaw in Intel Atom chip could crash servers, networking gear

A flaw in an old Intel chip could crash servers and networking equipment, and the chipmaker is working to fix the issue. The issue is in the Atom C2000 chips, which started shipping in 2013. The problem was first reported by The Register. In January, Intel added an erratum to the Atom C2000 documentation, stating systems with the chip "may experience [an] inability to boot or may cease operation."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flaw in Intel Atom chip could crash servers, networking gear

A flaw in an old Intel chip could crash servers and networking equipment, and the chipmaker is working to fix the issue. The issue is in the Atom C2000 chips, which started shipping in 2013. The problem was first reported by The Register. In January, Intel added an erratum to the Atom C2000 documentation, stating systems with the chip "may experience [an] inability to boot or may cease operation."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rise of China, Real-World Benchmarks Top Supercomputing Agenda

The United States for years was the dominant player in the high-performance computing world, with more than half of the systems on the Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers being housed in the country. At the same time, most HPC systems around the globe were powered by technologies from such major US tech companies as Intel, IBM, AMD, Cray and Nvidia.

That has changed rapidly over the last several years, as the Chinese government has invested tens of billions of dollars to expand the capabilities of the country’s own technology community and with a promise to spend even more …

Rise of China, Real-World Benchmarks Top Supercomputing Agenda was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

3 ways AI assistants improve enterprise productivity

For today’s knowledge workers, heavy workloads and slow productivity growth is a major challenge. Some products and services emphasize processes and systems such as continuous improvement and removing wasteful steps. Others emphasize the human aspects of productivity — a manager training a junior employee to take over a task, for example. AI assistants offer another approach to the workplace productivity challenge, but are they ready for “prime time” use in the enterprise?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

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