Trump nominee suggests IRS cybersecurity and staffing boosts

Cybersecurity and staffing upgrades at the Internal Revenue Service appear to be in store, assuming Steven Mnuchin is confirmed as Treasury Secretary in the new Trump Administration.Mnuchin, a former CIO and executive vice president for Goldman Sachs, told senators in a five-hour confirmation hearing on Thursday that he is "very concerned about the lack of first-rate technology at the IRS" as well as staff cuts in recent years. Mnuchin is expected to be confirmed, and would likely work with Trump to pick the next IRS director.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Half of work activities could be automated by 2055

Fears that accelerating automation is going to eat its lion's share of jobs continue to plague corporate sectors. However, new research from McKinsey Global Institute may talk folks afflicted with automation phobias down from the ledge.The research group says that although half of today’s work activities could be automated, it may not happen until 2055. Or 2035. Or even 2075. Where the statistic falls along the S curve depends on various factors, such as breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and economic conditions, says Michael Chui, a McKinsey Global Institute partner and an author of the report. Chuiand other researchers analyzed 800 occupations and 2,000 job tasks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spanish police nab suspected hacker behind Neverquest banking malware

Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer suspected of developing the Neverquest banking Trojan, a malware targeting financial institutions across the world.The 32-year-old Russian citizen known as Lisov SV was arrested at the Barcelona airport, Spain's law enforcement agency Guardia Civil said on Friday.The FBI had been working with Spanish authorities to track down the suspect through an international arrest warrant, according to a statement from the agency. The FBI, however, declined to comment on the man's arrest.Neverquest is designed to steal username and password information from banking customers. Once it infects a PC, the malware can do this by injecting fake online forms into legitimate banking websites to log any information typed in. It can also take screenshots and video from the PC's desktop and steal any passwords stored locally.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spanish police nab suspected hacker behind Neverquest banking malware

Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer suspected of developing the Neverquest banking Trojan, a malware targeting financial institutions across the world.The 32-year-old Russian citizen known as Lisov SV was arrested at the Barcelona airport, Spain's law enforcement agency Guardia Civil said on Friday.The FBI had been working with Spanish authorities to track down the suspect through an international arrest warrant, according to a statement from the agency. The FBI, however, declined to comment on the man's arrest.Neverquest is designed to steal username and password information from banking customers. Once it infects a PC, the malware can do this by injecting fake online forms into legitimate banking websites to log any information typed in. It can also take screenshots and video from the PC's desktop and steal any passwords stored locally.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CPU Management in Docker 1.13

Resource management for containers is a huge requirement for production users. Being able to run multiple containers on a single host and ensure that one container does not starve the others in terms of cpu, memory, io, or networking in an efficient way is why I like working with containers. However, cpu management for containers is still not as straightforward as what I would like. There are many different options when it comes to dealing with restricting the cpu usage for a container. With things like memory, its is very easy for people to think that , --memory 512m gives the container up to 512mb. With CPU, it’s hard for people to understand a container’s limit with the current options.

In Docker 1.13 we added a --cpus flag, which is the best tech for limiting cpu usage of a container with a sane UX that the majority of users can understand. Let’s take a look at a couple of the options in 1.12 to show why this is necessary.

There are various ways to set a cpu limit for a container. Cpu shares, cpuset, cfs quota and period are the three most common ways. We can just go Continue reading

The New IBM Glass Is Almost Half Full

It takes an incredible amount of resilience for any company to make it decades, much less more than a century, in any industry. IBM has taken big risks to create new markets, first with time clocks and meat slicers and tabulating machines early in the last century, and some decades later it created the modern computer industry with the System/360 mainframe. It survived a near-death experience in the middle 1990s when the IT industry was changing faster than it was, and now it is trying to find its footing in cognitive computing and public and private clouds as its legacy

The New IBM Glass Is Almost Half Full was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Users greet Avaya bankruptcy with shrugs

The news that sprawling networking company Avaya has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is being greeted with nonchalance by at least some of its customers, for whom the saga of the firm’s financial troubles has been a reality for some time.Avaya’s a big company with several focus areas – some lines, like networking products, are performing well. Others, including unified communications and phone systems, are not, and it’s these that have dragged the company into Chapter 11.+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: Avaya says bankruptcy is a step toward software and services + Verizon, volunteer firefighters make peace; T-Mobile’s Legere can stand downTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Users greet Avaya bankruptcy with shrugs

The news that sprawling networking company Avaya has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is being greeted with nonchalance by at least some of its customers, for whom the saga of the firm’s financial troubles has been a reality for some time.Avaya’s a big company with several focus areas – some lines, like networking products, are performing well. Others, including unified communications and phone systems, are not, and it’s these that have dragged the company into Chapter 11.+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: Avaya says bankruptcy is a step toward software and services + Verizon, volunteer firefighters make peace; T-Mobile’s Legere can stand downTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open letter to Avaya management: Don’t sell the networking business

The fate of Avaya has finally been determined. It’s not being broken up, shut down or having parts stripped off it in a fire sale. Instead, Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to help shed the $6 billion debt load that is weighing the company down.The question for the company now is what happens next? Obviously the business will be restructured. I believe the management team will keep the call center and UC businesses intact, as they go together like “rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.” But what happens to the networking business? Post restructuring the networking division might be a more attractive asset to buy because many of the things weighing it down, such as pensions and debt, won’t be an issue. Avaya could sell it, then use the money to make an acquisition that could bolster its UC and CC business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open letter to Avaya management: Don’t sell the networking business

The fate of Avaya has finally been determined. It’s not being broken up, shut down or having parts stripped off it in a fire sale. Instead, Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to help shed the $6 billion debt load that is weighing the company down.The question for the company now is what happens next? Obviously the business will be restructured. I believe the management team will keep the call center and UC businesses intact, as they go together like “rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.” But what happens to the networking business? Post restructuring the networking division might be a more attractive asset to buy because many of the things weighing it down, such as pensions and debt, won’t be an issue. Avaya could sell it, then use the money to make an acquisition that could bolster its UC and CC business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For January 20th, 2017

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

Absolutely. Do we agree that the cerebellum is amazingly beautiful? (@PeppeGanga)

If you like this sort of Stuff then please support me on Patreon.

  • 900 GB: data stolen in Cellebrite hack; 99.24%: users identified by cross-browser fingerprinting; 72%: intend to migrate to a hybrid cloud; 90%: Google & Facebook ad traffic is useless; 5.2 terabytes per second: data from Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder; 10 billion: searches on DuckDuckGo in 2016; $330m: Amazon's loss on Alexa; 

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @brucel: Breaking: Programmer accused of writing unreadable code refuses to comment.
    • @asymco: Remember Android first? App Annie believes the Apple’s App Store produced about twice as much revenue as Google Play
    • @bridgetkromhout: Describing your old-timer ranting as "greybeard" just makes me want to fight you with sed & awk at twenty paces. Be there tomorrow at dawn.
    • @StevenShorrock: Root Cause Analysis is: * Acceptable for simple systems * Inappropriate for complicated systems * Ludicrous for complex systems
    • @swardley: Five years ago Amazon was worth about half of Walmart, today Walmart is worth about half of Amazon.
    • Eric Raymond: In practice, I found Rust painful to Continue reading

46% off ZeroLemon ToughJuice USB-C 30000mAh Power Bank, Dual Layer Rugged External Battery/Portable Charger for Apple MacBook, iPhone, Google Pixel XL, Samsung & More – Deal Alert

ZeroLemon describes their ToughJuice power bank as the world's toughest external battery pack, with 30000mAh capacity and a rugged anti-shock exterior. With enough juice to get you up and running again and again on a single charge, ToughJuice provides up to ten charges to a smartphone, two charges to a tablet or multiple charges to nearly any other device. It features four USB ports (1 QuickCharge 2.0 port, with legacy 5V/2A support and 3 Ports for 1A charging) but more importantly it features USB-C/Type-C Compatibility: the USB-C/Type-C port makes the battery pack compatible with the new MacBook, charging at 5V/2.5A and other USB-C powered devices. The device averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 200 people (read reviews), and its list price is currently discounted to $69.99. See the discounted ZeroLemon ToughJuice power bank now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

46% off ZeroLemon ToughJuice USB-C 30000mAh Power Bank, Dual Layer Rugged External Battery/Portable Charger for Apple MacBook, iPhone, Google Pixel XL, Samsung & More

ZeroLemon describes their ToughJuice power bank as the world's toughest external battery pack, with 30000mAh capacity and a rugged anti-shock exterior. With enough juice to get you up and running again and again on a single charge, ToughJuice provides up to ten charges to a smartphone, two charges to a tablet or multiple charges to nearly any other device. It features four USB ports (1 QuickCharge 2.0 port, with legacy 5V/2A support and 3 Ports for 1A charging) but more importantly it features USB-C/Type-C Compatibility: the USB-C/Type-C port makes the battery pack compatible with the new MacBook, charging at 5V/2.5A and other USB-C powered devices. The device averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 200 people (read reviews), and its list price is currently discounted to $69.99. See the discounted ZeroLemon ToughJuice power bank now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here