Microsoft announces multiple location-based services deals

Microsoft announced a series of partnerships with location-based services in the hopes of creating what it calls a "world graph," covering all kinds of locations and objects and how they work together. The first was a multi-year deal to use HERE mapping data across a number of its own services, such as Cortana and Bing Maps. Audi, BMW and Daimler purchased HERE from Nokia last year for €2.8 billion and use it in their GPS systems. Microsoft also announced a partnership with a number of mapping technology leaders, including HERE, TomTom and EsriI, to create what it describes as a "world graph" that details "a new data index of physical places, objects and devices and their interconnectivity." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT could be our downfall

The internet of things (IoT) is all about connecting devices to the internet so that they can talk to each other and to us, to make life more convenient. That might mean turning on the lights when we get up, or allowing us to use our phones to see who’s at the front door, even when we're at the office. The potential applications are endless. There are already more than 6 billion connected "things," and that's set to rise to more than 20 billion by 2020, according to Gartner. But the enthusiasm for all things IoT has blinded us to the potential risks. Too many companies, keen to gain a foothold in the market, have rushed out products that lack basic security protocols. The risks here are enormous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT could be our downfall

The internet of things (IoT) is all about connecting devices to the internet so that they can talk to each other and to us, to make life more convenient. That might mean turning on the lights when we get up, or allowing us to use our phones to see who’s at the front door, even when we're at the office. The potential applications are endless. There are already more than 6 billion connected "things," and that's set to rise to more than 20 billion by 2020, according to Gartner. But the enthusiasm for all things IoT has blinded us to the potential risks. Too many companies, keen to gain a foothold in the market, have rushed out products that lack basic security protocols. The risks here are enormous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to tell if the Trump administration is serious about tech innovation

Last week’s tech news cycle was dominated by coverage of the high-profile meeting between the incoming Trump administration and a star-studded roster of tech leaders. Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Alphabet’s (Google)’s Larry Page, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Oracle’s Sasha Catz,, IBM’s Ginny Rommety and others were summoned to Trump Tower for a heavily hyped sitdown that provided some amazing optics. (Who can forget the meme of Bezos, Page, and Sandberg looking incredibly glum at the table?) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to get more from your security budget

Infosec budgets. They are small, they largely come from IT, and CISOs/CSOs often complain they are not nearly big enough.It’s a constant subject of debate and rightly so; a security budget will indirectly influence how well a CISO protects their business and its assets - and frankly, how well they do their job (which, in turn, will determine how long they stay in it).This isn’t meant to be all doom and gloom however; clever CISOs/CSOs and CIOs understand they have to resource more carefully in today’s economically challenging times. For CISOs, that involves using money effectively, and making do with solutions they already have, in order to protect the assets they truly care about. It can also involve upskilling staff, and rolling out cost effective security awareness campaigns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How to get more from your security budget

Infosec budgets. They are small, they largely come from IT, and CISOs/CSOs often complain they are not nearly big enough.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

CI Please Build—How to build your oVirt project on-demand

All projects in oVirt CI are built today post merge, using the 'build-artifacts' stage from oVirt's CI standards. This ensures that all oVirt projects are built and deployed to oVirt repositories and can be consumed by CI jobs, developers or oVirt users.

However, on some occasions a developer might need to build his project from an open patch. Developers need this capability in order to to examine the effects of their changes on a full oVirt installation before merging those changes. On some cases developers may even want to hand over packages based on un-merged patches to the QE team to verify that a given change will fix some complex issue or to preview a new feature on its early stages of development.

The Current Build Option

Until now, to build rpms from a patch, a developer needed to use a custom Jenkins job, which was only available to ovirt-engine and only for master branch. Another option was to try and build it locally using standard CI 'mock runner.sh' script which will use the same configuration as in CI. For full documentation on how to use 'mock-runner', checkout the Standard CI page.

The New Build Option

To ease Continue reading

Python for Networking Engineers

One of my readers sent me a simple question: “Do you plan to have a Python for Networking Engineers webinar?”

Short answer: no immediate plans.

Here are just a few reasons:

Privacy groups complain to FTC over Google’s ‘deceptive’ policy change

Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally-identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.The complaint by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House alleged that Google has created “super-profiles” as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of smartphones worldwide, "and from any website that uses Google Analytics, hosts YouTube videos, or displays ads served by DoubleClick or AdSense."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Privacy groups complain to FTC over Google’s ‘deceptive’ policy change

Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally-identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.The complaint by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House alleged that Google has created “super-profiles” as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of smartphones worldwide, "and from any website that uses Google Analytics, hosts YouTube videos, or displays ads served by DoubleClick or AdSense."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FLAT Networks in VIRL Require Promiscuous Mode

So I’m sure this is in the documentation somewhere. But for anyone else out there who is getting inconsistent results with FLAT interfaces in VIRL, Promiscuous Mode support in ESXi seems to be a requirement. Definitely something to check…

The post FLAT Networks in VIRL Require Promiscuous Mode appeared first on PacketU.

BrandPost: In the Age of Digital Transformation, Why SD-WAN Plays a Key Role in the Transition

Organizations are rapidly jumping on the digital transformation bandwagon. Those that don’t or delay too long will most likely suffer in the long run. The means to leverage technology and processes to transform the business and user experience are critical for the survival of organizations. In the last few years, we’ve seen several businesses cease or struggle to exist due to fierce competition, changing business model, user behavior and lack of digital transformation. The journey to digital transformation may not look exactly the same for each business, but the collaboration between Lines of Business (LoBs) and IT must be tighter than ever before. This is simply because LoBs needs to move at a much faster pace in delivering business value and outcomes, and IT plays a key role in enabling them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Understanding Docker Networking Drivers and their use cases

Applications requirements and networking environments are diverse and sometimes opposing forces. In between applications and the network sits Docker networking, affectionately called the Container Network Model or CNM. It’s CNM that brokers connectivity for your Docker containers and also what abstracts away the diversity and complexity so common in networking. The result is portability and it comes from CNM’s powerful network drivers. These are pluggable interfaces for the Docker Engine, Swarm, and UCP that provide special capabilities like multi-host networking, network layer encryption, and service discovery.

Naturally, the next question is which network driver should I use? Each driver offers tradeoffs and has different advantages depending on the use case. There are built-in network drivers that come included with Docker Engine and there are also plug-in network drivers offered by networking vendors and the community. The most commonly used built-in network drivers are bridge, overlay and macvlan. Together they cover a very broad list of networking use cases and environments. For a more in depth comparison and discussion of even more network drivers, check out the Docker Network Reference Architecture.

Bridge Network Driver

The bridge networking driver is the first driver on our list. It’s simple to understand, Continue reading

15% off Zeceen Metal USB Lightning Cable, Virtually Indestructible and Weather Resistant – Deal Alert

Unparalleled speed and strength. If that's what you're looking for in your next USB Lightning cable, then consider this one from Zeceen which is made with a sturdy Zinc alloy Connector and a high-strength yet fully flexible stainless steel jacket spring wire – a design that promises not to disintegrate even under extreme conditions like bad weather or rough handling. Zeceen also promises a 12-month satisfaction guarantee. Its typical list price of $19.99 on Amazon has been reduced 15% to $16.97 for this virtually unbreakable 3.3-foot cable. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

15% off Zeceen Metal USB Lightning Cable, Virtually Indestructible and Weather Resistant – Deal Alert

Unparalleled speed and strength. If that's what you're looking for in your next USB Lightning cable, then consider this one from Zeceen which is made with a sturdy Zinc alloy Connector and a high-strength yet fully flexible stainless steel jacket spring wire – a design that promises not to disintegrate even under extreme conditions like bad weather or rough handling. Zeceen also promises a 12-month satisfaction guarantee. Its typical list price of $19.99 on Amazon has been reduced 15% to $16.97 for this virtually unbreakable 3.3-foot cable. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking Past The Cloud Computing Era

Presentation from Peter Levine at A16z on the theme of edge computing will see a return to distributed computing the in the years ahead. The amount of data collected/created at the network edge is vast You must process locally and then upload summaries. Device complexity and capability is increasing rapidly e.g. Cars, Smartphones. This supports […]

The post Looking Past The Cloud Computing Era appeared first on EtherealMind.

Stingray use could be unconstitutional, finds House report

Use of cellphone spying technology has become widespread among U.S. law enforcement agencies and should be better regulated, according to a new congressional report.Not only is the FBI deploying the technology, commonly called "Stingray" after one product made by Harris Corp., but so are state and local police. And there are concerns that some law enforcement agencies have used Stingrays without securing search warrants, said the report from House Committee on Oversight and Reform, published on Monday.“Absent proper oversight and safeguards, the domestic use of (Stingrays) may well infringe upon the constitutional rights of citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stingray use could be unconstitutional, finds House report

Use of cellphone spying technology has become widespread among U.S. law enforcement agencies and should be better regulated, according to a new congressional report.Not only is the FBI deploying the technology, commonly called "Stingray" after one product made by Harris Corp., but so are state and local police. And there are concerns that some law enforcement agencies have used Stingrays without securing search warrants, said the report from House Committee on Oversight and Reform, published on Monday.“Absent proper oversight and safeguards, the domestic use of (Stingrays) may well infringe upon the constitutional rights of citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung upgrades Notebook 9 laptops with Kaby Lake chips

Samsung has upgraded laptops in its Notebook 9 series with Intel's latest Kaby Lake chips, jumping ahead of rivals expected to announce new PCs at CES.The Notebook 9 laptops, which have 13.3- and 15-inch screens, are lightweight laptops with full HD displays. Samsung didn't share specifics of chips in the laptops, which will be unveiled by Intel at January's CES.Nonetheless, there are some things you can expect. The new laptops will be faster than older models and also have better graphics. PC makers are measuring a performance improvement of about 5 percent to 15 percent improvement in Kaby Lake performance compared to the predecessor Skylake. Integrated graphics will be able to handle video beyond 1080p resolution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The canary

Using a canary is no longer a nice-to-have capability for internet companies—it’s a necessity. The traditional operational models of software system development, qualification, deployment, and operation simply cannot keep up with the velocity of change required for an internet-based company to thrive. Put simply, when the minimum required velocity for change is high enough, you have no option but to take intelligent risks. —LinkedIn Engineering Blog

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