Apple to roll out “enhanced” version of Siri on next-gen iPhone

Ahead of the iPhone 8 launch later this year, a new report from Digitimes relays that Apple is currently working on a more "enhanced" version of Siri that may take advantage of Apple's ongoing research in the field of machine learning.While iOS 10 ushered in a number of improvements in this regard -- such as the ability to search for photos and people by name -- it's no secret the AI space is becoming more and more competitive with each passing month. As a quick example, Samsung with its upcoming Galaxy S8 will introduce a new AI personal assistant dubbed Bixby that will be built on technology the company picked up when it acquired Viv Labs. As a quick point of interest, Viv Labs is led by Dag Kittlaus who helped co-found Siri.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In PC comeback, ARM will battle Intel in Chromebooks and Windows 10

ARM tried to break into the PC market but had a disastrous outing starting with Linux-based smartbooks and then tablets with Windows RT.But ARM is launching a comeback in PCs, and the third time could be a charm. ARM chips could emerge as a threat to Intel's x86 as super thin laptops get smartphone-like usability with cellular connectivity and long battery life.The comeback for ARM is starting with Chromebooks, with more models hosting the chip architecture. Lenovo's new N23 Yoga Chromebook -- a 2-in-1 with an 11.6-screen -- has MediaTek's quad-core MT8173c chip, based on ARM.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GPG Suite updated for secure email on OSX Sierra

GPG Suite, an application that brings encrypted email to Mac OS, is now available in public beta for Sierra.The software package had been compatible up to El Capitan but wasn't working with Sierra, which was released by Apple in September. The new software can now be downloaded from the GPG Tools website.It adds support for the OpenPGP encryption standard, which is an open-source version of the PGP encryption package first developed in 1991.Four software apps are contained in the package:-- GPG Mail is a plugin for Apple Mail that allows users to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify mails sent using OpenPGP.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GPG Suite updated for secure email on OSX Sierra

GPG Suite, an application that brings encrypted email to Mac OS, is now available in public beta for Sierra.The software package had been compatible up to El Capitan but wasn't working with Sierra, which was released by Apple in September. The new software can now be downloaded from the GPG Tools website.It adds support for the OpenPGP encryption standard, which is an open-source version of the PGP encryption package first developed in 1991.Four software apps are contained in the package:-- GPG Mail is a plugin for Apple Mail that allows users to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify mails sent using OpenPGP.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BGP in 2016

Once more its time report on the experience with the inter-domain routing system over the past year, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection fabric of the Internet.

Boutique browser maker to Microsoft: ‘Stop stealing the default’ in Windows 10

The CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, the maker of a niche browser, today blasted Microsoft for forcing Edge, the default browser in Windows 10, onto users."I understand that Microsoft is concerned with the low usage of Edge, but instead of building a better browser, Microsoft is forcing its product onto people in the most unapologetic manner," said Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder and CEO of Norway-based Vivaldi.Vivaldi's same-named browser reached version 1.0 in April 2016, following more than a year of beta testing. The browser runs on Windows, OS X/macOS and Linux.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Clouds may not reign supreme

The funny thing about pendulums is that they love to swing. There are plenty of examples, from politics to nutrition, but computing cycles just might illustrate it best.The mainframe computer was a centralized model, with access through dumb terminals. PCs enabled distributed client/server computing. Now we are swinging back to centralized computing, with dumb smartphones connecting back to robust cloud-services. Enterprises are shuttering their data centers and moving to cloud services.Most of yesterday’s applications, such as CRM, ERP and UC, are moving toward the cloud. But the swing back to a distributed model is inevitable. If not for those applications, then something else. The Internet of Things (IoT) just may be the killer app that does it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech world not immune to fake news

Yes, the term “fake news” has already been politicized to the point of near-meaninglessness, but before it is relegated to the dustbin of our lexicon, allow me to note that the practice itself has been around for eons and is no stranger to the world of technology.Just ask the peddlers of eBay’s famously fake tale of being born out of a girlfriend’s love for Pez dispensers, a fib I fumed about in the former print edition of Network World way back in 2002.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn pumps water down to its server racks, uses an interesting spine and leaf network fabric

It takes a lot of horsepower to support LinkedIn’s 467 million members worldwide, especially when you consider that each member is getting a personalized experience, a web page that includes only their contacts. Supporting the load are some 100,000 servers spread across multiple data centers.  To learn more about how LinkedIn makes it all happen, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Sonu Nayyar, VP of Production Operations & IT, and Zaid Ali Kahn, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering. LinkedIn Sonu Nayyar, LinkedIn VP of Production Operations & ITTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn pumps water down to its server racks, uses an interesting spine and leaf network fabric

It takes a lot of horsepower to support LinkedIn’s 467 million members worldwide, especially when you consider that each member is getting a personalized experience, a web page that includes only their contacts. Supporting the load are some 100,000 servers spread across multiple data centers.  To learn more about how LinkedIn makes it all happen, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Sonu Nayyar, VP of Production Operations & IT, and Zaid Ali Kahn, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering. LinkedIn Sonu Nayyar, LinkedIn VP of Production Operations & ITTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Internet routing detours

In November 2013, the Internet intelligence company Renesys (now owned by Dyn, Oracle) published an online article detailing an attack they called Targeted Internet Traffic Misdirection. Using Traceroute data, they discovered three paths that suffered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. One path originated from, and was destined to, organizations in Denver, CO, after passing through Iceland, prompting concern and uncomfortable discussions with ISP customers. Are such detours only a result of an attack? —APNIC

The post Worth Reading: Internet routing detours appeared first on 'net work.

Lenovo tunes N23 Yoga Chromebook for Android apps with ARM processor

Some Chromebooks released this year will be able to run Android apps from the Google Play Store. Lenovo has tuned its new N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1 to effectively run Android mobile apps.PC makers are taking a page from smartphones and tablets and adding touchscreens to Chromebooks. Many new models can be interchangeably used as laptops or tablets.More Chromebooks are also getting ARM processors -- which dominate in smartphones and tablets -- to effectively run Android apps. Most Chromebooks today have Intel x86 chips, which dominate in PCs, but Android apps best run on ARM processors.Lenovo, for the first time, is using an ARM chip in the N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1, breaking its long-time reliance on x86 chips. The device has an 11.6-inch touchscreen, and it can be used as a tablet or laptop thanks to a hybrid design.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Resin.IO puts Linux and containers to work for IoT

Resin.IO is working to make the use of containers and microservices useful tools to developers of Linux-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.CEO Alexandros Marinos said the company has been working for three years to make mainstream containers attractive to developers of embedded workloads, such as those found in IoT applications. The company calls this the "Industrial Internet."What Resin.IO offers Resin.IO offers a development and deployment framework based upon Linux and containers (Docker) that is designed to facilitate control of the on-device environment, provision devices on the network, and manage of what the company calls a "fleet" of systems. These tools also make it possible to automate operations of "the fleet" and keep it secure through the use of encrypted communications to/from devices in "the fleet" that deploys two-factor authentication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Internet of Things Messaging, Part 2: The Mosquitto MQTT broker

MQTT is a messaging technology for machine-to-machine communication that’s lightweight and relatively simple to implement on pretty much any device. In my first post on MQTT I covered the basics and background of the protocol and threatened to follow up with a discussion of Mosquitto, a free, open source MQTT server (the MQTT developers no longer call them “brokers”) that’s one of the most widely used messaging platforms in the Internet of Things world. Being a man of my word, here goes …The Mosquitto broker (apparently the Mosquito developers and MQTT developers do not see eye-to-eye on terminology) is part of the Eclipse IoT Working Group, “an industry collaboration of companies who invest and promote an open source community for IoT.” Mosquito currently supports MQTT versions 3.1 and 3.1.1 and support for the proposed MQTT v5, which introduces scalability and protocol improvements is under way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: Full facial recognition, wireless charging letdown & slick concept video

iPhone 8 (or iPhone X?) security is indeed a touchy subject, though it could become less so if the latest rumors about the next great Apple smartphone prove true.Say Cheese! Apple Insider's Mikey Campbell has an excellent piece dissecting the latest research from Apple insider (small "i") and KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says to expect Apple to deliver full-face bio-recognition technology before long on the iPhone.First up, though, might be a Touch ID replacement based on optical fingerprint reading, technology that won't require an indented button as is the case on current models. Optical fingerprint readers would work with the sort of full-screen OLED display most expect Apple to bring forth with its next slew of iPhones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

vSphere 6.5 Security Encrypted vMotion

Interesting

Encrypted vMotion has been asked about for YEARS. It’s here now in vSphere 6.5! And, like VM Encryption, we’ve taken a different approach than you might think. We don’t actually encrypt the vMotion network. What we DO encrypt is the data going over the vMotion network. At the time of migration, a 256-bit key and 64-bit Nonce are created by vCenter. This is a one-time-use key and is not persisted!

Some thoughts:

  1. what is the impact of the encryption on vMotion performance, especially at load ? Since its symmetric encryption (OTP Key would suggest that) it should light on CPU but still.
  2. Joined up thinking between network and vm admins is key here. If the network already encrypts this would be silly to implement so “The best part is you don’t have to ask your network team to do anything!” would be doubling down on stupid.
  3. Network encryption should lower latency (hardware acceleration) and perform better (remember, don’t ask your network team anything)
  4. Security is a top down thing. If you are bothering to encrypt at all, everything should be encrypted not just the vMotion. Thats kind of pointless if all other data is in the clear.

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IDG Contributor Network: How to choose an IoT radio network

Cellular, short range Wi-Fi (good for WAN gateways) and Bluetooth (good for wearables) aren’t the only wireless technologies IoT development has available. Some newer networks are being developed specifically for the Internet of Things.Here’s what you need to know.Ultra-narrowband Sigfox, beginning its roll-out in the U.S., says its low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) has the lowest subscription costs (digging at expensive LTE) and that its communications proffer “radically lower energy consumption.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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