Virtual assistants, chatbots poised for mass adoption in 2017

Experimentation with voice-activated assistants and text-triggered chatbots blossomed in 2016, enabling users to order from Taco Bell using Slack’s messaging interface, check the status of UPS packages and order office supplies from Staples.In 2017, some of these tools won't make the cut while others will proliferate across consumer and enterprise sectors, creating new workflows, operational efficiencies and opportunities for improved customer service. The early signs that Amazon.com's Alexa, though positioned as a home product, is poised to become the go-to platform for voice-based assistants for consumers and businesses. Wynn Hotels plans to equip nearly 5,000 rooms with Amazon.com's Echo device, which will allow people to query Alexa for room and hotel information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook gets 2017 tech industry Year in Apologies rolling

No sooner had we put our list of 2016's Sorriest Tech Companies to bed than Facebook rang in the new year with a fresh apology -- for blocking an Italian writer from using a photo of a well-known statue of nude sea god Neptune found in Bologna.As Mashable relays, a writer/historian named Elisa Barbari used a photo of the 16th-century work to highlight her Facebook page titled "Stories, curiosities and views of Bologna." Innocent enough it would seem, but the photo got snared by the social network's photo police for violations of its advertising policies, which prohibit use of images or videos of nude bodies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 roadmaps to IT career success

(Insider Story)

Tier 1 carrier performance report card for the month of December, 2016

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Network Dictionary: oligopsony

Define "oligopsony"

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8 Skills Network Engineers Need In 2017

Fortinet’s Michael Xie: How to secure the cloud

Last month I wrote a post highlighting the differences between a security fabric and platform. Of all the security vendors, for which there are literally hundreds, no one has evangelized the topic and value of a fabric more than Fortinet.  One of the drivers of Fortinet’s security fabric has been to secure the cloud. To get a better understanding of what the challenges are and the role of the security fabric for cloud environments, I interviewed the founder, president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Fortinet, Michael Xie. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

oVirt System Tests to the Rescue!—How to Run End-to-End oVirt Tests on Your Patch

Today, when an oVirt developer pushes a patch to review on oVirt Gerrit, various validations are triggered in CI via the 'check-patch' job, as defined by the project maintainers. Usually these jobs includes 'unit-tests', 'db tests', static analysis checks, and even an occasional 'functional test'. While it might seem that it covers alot and gives a good indication that the patch is good to be merged, unfortunately it is not always the case.

The reason it's not enough lies in oVirt's complexity and the fact it's a Virtualization project, which means the only real way to know if your patch didn't break things is to install oVirt and try running a few basic commands, like 'adding host', 'adding vm', 'creating snapshots', and other tasks you can only do if you have a full oVirt system up and running. Here is where OST comes in!

oVirt System Tests

oVirt system tests is a testing framework written in Python, using 'python-nose' and oVirt Python SDK and runs on auto-generated VMs created by Lago. It is used by the oVirt CI to run post merge end-to-end testing that runs on a fully deployed oVirt environment and has been proven to detect multiple regressions Continue reading

Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X1 devices get sexier designs, faster chips

The venerable ThinkPad brand will turn 25 this year, and Lenovo's new ThinkPad X1 devices will kick off celebrations with a slew of upgrades including sexier designs, faster processors, and screens with thinner borders.The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop (starting at US$1,349), ThinkPad X1 Tablet (starting at $949) and ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2-in-1 (starting at $1,499) are smaller, thinner and lighter than ever before. In addition, the devices have much longer battery life.Many of the advances come thanks to the upgrade to Intel's 7th Generation Core processors code-named Kaby Lake. The integrated GPUs are faster and provide the capability to support 4K video processing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo primes to take on Microsoft’s next Surface tablet with Miix 720

The world is waiting for Microsoft's next Surface tablet, but when it ships, it'll have to contend with Lenovo's new Miix 720, a 12-inch Windows tablet loaded with cutting-edge features. The Miix 720 will start at US$999 and will ship in April. That's about $100 more than the starting price of the Surface Pro 4, but the Miix 720 has superior features. But the Surface could catch up with the Miix 720 soon. A new Surface Pro 5 could be out as soon as early this year and have features like faster processors and a higher resolution screen that could on par or better than the Miix 720. That's when the competition will get interesting. But for now, it's Miix 720 versus the Surface Pro 4. The Lenovo tablet runs on an Intel Core processor based on the latest Kaby Lake architecture and has an integrated graphics processor capable of supporting 4K video. Surface Pro 4 is a generation behind with Skylake chips, but the next Surface tablet will likely get Kaby Lake.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo crashes gaming party with new Legion line of laptops

Gaming enthusiasts are particular. They like colorful chassis, bright keyboard lights, cool-sounding brand names and scintillating performance in PCs.Those are ideals Lenovo has embraced with its new Legion line of gaming laptops and PCs. Introduced on Tuesday, Legion will feature some of the most loaded PCs offered by Lenovo.In a way, Legion is to Lenovo what Alienware is to Dell -- a product family that will help Lenovo cash in on PC gaming and virtual reality. Beyond PCs, the Legion brand could also include gaming monitors and accessories.Lenovo isn't known as a game PC maker, but it isn't stretching outside its comfort zone with Legion. It already offers Y-series and IdeaPad gaming PCs, and has partnered with Razer to build not only desktops, but keyboards with lighting effects and other gaming accessories. Lenovo hopes Legion -- a name coined after the large units in the armies of the Roman empire -- will resonate with gamers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My (Evolving) Multi-Platform Toolbelt

A few days ago I posted a tweet about a new tool I’d (re-)discovered called jrnl. Someone replied to that tweet, asking me to list my “multi-platform toolbelt.” While it’s still evolving (every day!), I thought it might make for a good blog post. So, here’s a list of my still-evolving multi-platform toolbelt.

• Sublime Text: Over the last few years, I’ve moved to creating the vast majority of my content in Markdown (MultiMarkdown, to be more specific). At first I was using OS X-specific text editors (first TextMate 1.x, then BBEdit), but last year I switched to Sublime Text. Sublime Text supports OS X, Linux, and Windows. I don’t have any Windows-based systems, so I only use it on OS X and Linux.

• Wire: My use of Wire is still a bit limited, but only because the reach of the platform is also still a bit limited (this is a classical example of network effect). I’m currently using Wire on Linux and OS X, with plans to extend to iOS and Android. (If you’re using Wire, feel free to look me up! My username is “scottslowe”).

• IMAP/SMTP: I’ve standardized on using IMAP/SMTP for all my e-mail Continue reading

Worth Reading: Monitoring in containers

Monitoring is the hidden hero inside container infrastructure. Much like driving a car, we don’t think about what’s happening under the hood until something goes wrong. We want to pivot away from being reactive with our infrastructure and container problems and move to a more proactive state of operation using monitoring insights to keep us up and running. —The New Stack

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A New Year’s Resolution for your Intranet: Do an IA Health Check!

I spent a lot of time in 2016 working on more information architecture (IA) projects than usual – from designing comprehensive information architectures as part of intranet migrations or upgrades to small IA usability engagements and everything in between. Here are six key lessons that I learned that can form the basis of your new year’s resolution to give your intranet IA a health check.The Information Architecture for your intranet provides the strategy and plan for information access. It informs how users will navigate through the solution and how information managed by the solution will be organized. A good intranet information architecture is 100% focused on the people who need to process, find, and interact with the content. We mostly think of IA as supporting the “browse” experience. But, given the fact that search depends on metadata, which is part of your IA, a good IA is also supports search. If you get it right, your information architecture will help users find content in three critical content-finding scenarios:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking Back, Looking Forward

On this, the first “real” post of 2017, I thought it would be useful to reflect on the year that has passed, and consider the year that is coming. First off, 2016 in numbers—

• Read 58 Books (15333 pages)
• 115,739 blog visits (according to WordPress)
• Wrote 110,000 words for blogs, technical papers, etc.
• Wrote 25,000 words for PhD seminars, etc.
• Created 850 slides
• Recorded 14 hours of videos/webinars

These are all conservative numbers for the most part… I’ve not included journal and blog reading, nor have I tried to accurately count my writing output, as I often find it more frustrating than worthwhile. In the coming year, I plan to finish a book with Pearson, record at least one more video series (potentially more), and continue apace with blogging and other writing.

In 2016, I think we started to see the future of the networking market actually take shape. There seem to be three prongs developing; either companies will move their processing to the cloud, they will move to more hyperconverged/vertical solutions (essentially outsourcing design and architecture to vendors and consulting firms), or move to disaggregation. The day of the router as an appliance is done; we are moving to Continue reading

Donald Trump offers cybersecurity warning: ‘No computer is safe’

Donald Trump showed off his IT security credentials at a New Year's Eve party, suggesting that the best way to keep secrets from hackers is a huge air gap."No computer is safe," he told journalists gathered at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, a warning many computer security professionals would probably endorse.Trump also shared his advice on managing data security risks. Forget switching to TLS or quantum key exchange: "If you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier," he said, according to a report from Associated Press.Trump's suggestion -- echoing his July 29 infosec advice for military commanders -- would put the biggest of airgaps around secret communications, ensuring that they could not be hacked into from afar. If he were to apply it to government communications, though, it would leave officials needing a veritable army of trustworthy little hands to carry messages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Donald Trump offers cybersecurity warning: ‘No computer is safe’

Donald Trump showed off his IT security credentials at a New Year's Eve party, suggesting that the best way to keep secrets from hackers is a huge air gap."No computer is safe," he told journalists gathered at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, a warning many computer security professionals would probably endorse.Trump also shared his advice on managing data security risks. Forget switching to TLS or quantum key exchange: "If you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier," he said, according to a report from Associated Press.Trump's suggestion -- echoing his July 29 infosec advice for military commanders -- would put the biggest of airgaps around secret communications, ensuring that they could not be hacked into from afar. If he were to apply it to government communications, though, it would leave officials needing a veritable army of trustworthy little hands to carry messages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Efficient storage: how we went down from 50 PB to 32 PB

As the Russian rouble exchange rate slumped two years ago, it drove us to think of cutting hardware and hosting costs for the Mail.Ru email service. To find ways of saving money, let’s first take a look at what emails consist of.

Indexes and bodies account for only 15% of the storage size, whereas 85% is taken up by files. So, files (that is attachments) are worth exploring in more detail in terms of optimization. At that time, we didn’t have file deduplication in place, but we estimated that it could shrink the total storage size by 36% since many users receive the same messages, such as price lists from online stores or newsletters from social networks containing images and so on. In this article, I’m going to describe how we implemented a deduplication system under the supervision of Albert Galimov.

Worth Reading: Getting started with coding

If you work with computers in any aspect of your life, being able to code can be a very powerful tool. All too often however, I hear people say things like “it’s too difficult” or “I’m not a developer” and they never take more than their first few steps. This post, the first in a series on getting started with coding, addresses both the fears of taking your first steps and the benefits of starting that journey. The remaining posts then give you all the help you need to overcome those perceived obstacles and have some fun along the way. —vegaskid

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50% off Bose SoundTrue around-ear headphones II – Deal Alert

Bose Sound True around-ear headphones II were engineered with advanced Bose technologies. They feature exclusive TriPort technology so your music sounds deep, clear and full of life. They don't just look good, they feel good, too. The headphones feature a softly padded headband that distributes weight evenly across your head, and memory foam creates a gentle cushion around your ears. So they stay light and comfortable--no matter how long your playlist is. The fold-flat ear cups and matching carrying case make them easy to put away anytime and take with you anywhere. The inline microphone and remote let you switch easily to calls on your iPhone, and provide control for select iPod, iPhone and iPad models. Included: Sound True around-ear headphones; inline remote and microphone cable (66"); carrying case.  The Bose SoundTrue headphones receive 4 out of 5 stars from over 700 customers (read reviews). Right now its list price has been reduced by 50% to just $90. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here