Apache Zeppelin open-source analytics startup reveals new name, fresh funding

The team behind the Apache Zeppelin open-source notebook for big data analytics visualization has renamed itself ZEPL and announced $4.1M in Series A funding.ZEPL, which swears a certain professional football organization had nothing to do with it ditching its former name (NFLabs), is one of numerous companies smelling blood in the water around Tableau, the $3.5 billion business intelligence and analytics software vendor that has stumbled financially in recent quarters and seen its stock price plummet accordingly.  The pitch from ZEPL entering my email inbox read: "Is Open Source project eating Tableau's lunch?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung still struggling with the recovery of Note7 phones from users

Samsung’s recall of Galaxy Note7 smartphones because of exploding batteries is far from complete with some users, for example, in Canada still not turning in their devices for a refund or exchange.The South Korean company has now decided to cut these phones from the network, adopting similar measures to those taken last month in New Zealand and earlier this month in Australia.The company said Wednesday that from Dec. 12 functional limitations on Note7 phones, including curbs on the battery charge, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disablement will be introduced in Canada.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft wants to enable cellular PCs, but will carriers bite?

Spending time traveling can be a frustrating exercise in trying to find Wi-Fi. So much modern work often requires an internet connection, and while it’s possible to tether smartphones to PCs to help bridge the connectivity gap, that’s a clunky solution.Microsoft is aiming to help with that by supporting the installation of non-removable programmable SIM cards and data radios in PCs and Windows tablets. In the company's vision, users will then be able to purchase cellular data for those cards through the Windows Store. The announcement was made Thursday at the company’s WinHEC conference for device manufacturers in Shenzhen, China.By enabling the new form of internet access, Microsoft could give users an easy way to get online right from their computer, and encourage manufacturers to build cellular-capable devices. Users would also get settings to help them better manage the use of data plans, so it’s easier for them to control how much data apps can suck up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bluetooth 5 is out: Now will home IoT take off?

Bluetooth is aiming straight for the internet of things as the fifth version of the wireless protocol arrives with twice as much speed for low-power applications. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which gains the most from the new Bluetooth 5 specification, can now go as fast as 2Mbps (bits per second) and typically can cover a whole house or a floor of a building, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) said Wednesday. Those features could help to make it the go-to network for smart homes and some enterprise sites. The home IoT field is pretty open right now because most people haven’t started buying things like connected thermostats and door locks, ABI Research analyst Avi Greengart said. Bluetooth starts out with an advantage over its competition because it’s built into most smartphones and tablets, he said. Alternatives like ZigBee and Z-Wave often aren’t.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bluetooth 5 is out: Now will home IoT take off?

Bluetooth is aiming straight for the internet of things as the fifth version of the wireless protocol arrives with twice as much speed for low-power applications. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which gains the most from the new Bluetooth 5 specification, can now go as fast as 2Mbps (bits per second) and typically can cover a whole house or a floor of a building, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) said Wednesday. Those features could help to make it the go-to network for smart homes and some enterprise sites. The home IoT field is pretty open right now because most people haven’t started buying things like connected thermostats and door locks, ABI Research analyst Avi Greengart said. Bluetooth starts out with an advantage over its competition because it’s built into most smartphones and tablets, he said. Alternatives like ZigBee and Z-Wave often aren’t.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Turkish hacker is giving out prizes for DDoS attacks

A hacker in Turkey has been trying to encourage distributed denial-of-attacks by making it into a game, featuring points and prizes for attempting to shut down political websites. The DDoS platform, translated as Surface Defense in English, has been prompting other hackers in Turkey to sign up and score points, according to security firm Forcepoint which uncovered it. Users that participate will be given a tool known as Balyoz, the Turkish word for Sledgehammer, that can be used to launch DDoS attacks against a select number of websites. For every ten minutes they attack a website, the users will be awarded a point, which can then be used to obtain rewards. These prizes include a more powerful DDoS attacking tool, access to bots designed to generate revenue from click fraud,  and a prank program that can infect a computer and scare the victim with sounds and images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Turkish hacker is giving out prizes for DDoS attacks

A hacker in Turkey has been trying to encourage distributed denial-of-attacks by making it into a game, featuring points and prizes for attempting to shut down political websites. The DDoS platform, translated as Surface Defense in English, has been prompting other hackers in Turkey to sign up and score points, according to security firm Forcepoint which uncovered it. Users that participate will be given a tool known as Balyoz, the Turkish word for Sledgehammer, that can be used to launch DDoS attacks against a select number of websites. For every ten minutes they attack a website, the users will be awarded a point, which can then be used to obtain rewards. These prizes include a more powerful DDoS attacking tool, access to bots designed to generate revenue from click fraud,  and a prank program that can infect a computer and scare the victim with sounds and images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Scoring the DNS Root Server System, Pt2 – A Sixth Star?

In November I wrote about some simple tests that I had undertaken on the DNS Root nameservers. The tests looked at the way the various servers responded when they presented a UDP DNS response that was larger than 1,280 octets. I awarded each of the name servers up to five stars depending on how that managed to serve such large responses in IPv4 and IPv6. I'd like to return to this topic by looking at one further aspect of DNS server behaviour, namely the way in which servers handle large UDP responses over IPv6.

Configuring the Future for FPGAs in Genomics

With the announcement of FPGA instances hitting the Amazon cloud and similar such news expected from FPGA experts Microsoft via Azure, among others, the lens was centered back on reconfigurable hardware and the path ahead. This has certainly been a year-plus of refocusing for the two main makers of such hardware, Altera and Xilinx, with the former being acquired by Intel and the latter picking up a range of new users, including AWS.

In addition to exploring what having a high-end Xilinx FPGA available in the cloud means for adoption, we talked to a couple of companies that have carved

Configuring the Future for FPGAs in Genomics was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Qualcomm’s new chip may be too late as ARM server market fades

After more than half a decade in the making, ARM server chips should have struck gold by now, but they haven't. ARM servers were projected to be approaching a double-digit server market share, but they still are virtually non-existent.Keeping market realities in mind, Qualcomm earlier this year said it would take a wait-and-watch approach before making a splash with its ARM server chips. While ARM servers adoption has been poor, Qualcomm decided to go ahead and launch the chips.In the making for two years, Qualcomm's Centriq 2400 server chips have 48 cores and are now being sent as samples to companies. Volume shipments of the chips will start in the second half next year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Orin’s flawed argument on IP address privacy

In the PlayPen cases, judges have ruled that if you use the Tor network, then you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's a silly demonstration of how the law is out of sync with reality, since the entire point of using Tor is privacy.

Law prof Orin Kerr has a post discussing it. His conclusion is correct, that when the FBI exploits 0day and runs malware on your computer, then it's a search under the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant upon probable cause.

However, his reasoning is partly flawed. The title of his piece, "Remotely accessing an IP address inside a target computer is a search", is factually wrong. The IP address in question is not inside a target computer. This may be meaningful.


First, let's discuss how the judge reasons that there's no expectation of privacy with Tor. This is a straightforward application if the Third Party Doctrine, that as soon as you give something to a third party, your privacy rights are lost. Since you give your IP address to Tor, you lose privacy rights over it. You don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy: yes, you have an expectation of privacy, Continue reading

Get all the Docker talks from Tech Field Day 12

Tech Field DayAs 2016 comes to a close, we are excited to have participated in a few of the Tech Field Day and inaugural Cloud Field Day events to share the Docker technology with the IT leaders and evangelists that Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth have cultivated into this fantastic group.  The final event was Tech Field Day 12 hosting in Silicon Valley.

In case you missed the live stream, check out videos of the sessions here.

Session 1: Introduction to Docker and Docker Datacenter

Session 2: Securing the Software Supply Chain with Docker

Session 3: Docker for Windows Server and Windows Containers

Session 4: Docker for AWS and Azure

Session 5: Docker Networking Fabric

These are great overviews of the Docker technology applied to enterprise app pipelines, operations, and  diverse operating systems and cloud environments. And most importantly, this was a great opportunity to meet some new people and get them excited about what we are excited about.

 

Visit the Tech Field Day site to watch more videos from previous events, read articles written by delegates or view the conversation online.


New #Docker videos from #TFD12 @TechFieldDay w/ @SFoskett @GestaltIT Continue reading

Democrats unveil bill to probe Russia’s role in alleged election hacks

U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a government probe into whether Russia may have interfered with the presidential election by hacking high-profile political targets.  On Wednesday, two Democratic representatives unveiled legislation that proposes to form a 12-member bipartisan commission to investigate the electronic means Russia may have used to influence the U.S. election."Regardless of whether you voted for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else, Russia’s attacks on our election are an attempt to degrade our democracy," said Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, one of the sponsors of the bill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Democrats unveil bill to probe Russia’s role in alleged election hacks

U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a government probe into whether Russia may have interfered with the presidential election by hacking high-profile political targets.   On Wednesday, two Democratic representatives unveiled legislation that proposes to form a 12-member bipartisan commission to investigate the electronic means Russia may have used to influence the U.S. election. "Regardless of whether you voted for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else, Russia’s attacks on our election are an attempt to degrade our democracy," said Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, one of the sponsors of the bill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Еxtension of iptables Rules on oVirt 4.0 Hosts

In one of my last articles I described the example of installing HP System Management Tools to the physical server HP ProLiant DL360 G5 with CentOS Linux 7.2. After a while, the same exact server was used as a virtualization host and the oVirt Hosted Engine components were deployed on it. The host was put into maintenance mode recently, all packages were upgraded from the online repository, including the HP tool pack installed on it.

After the installation, I decided to check the workability of the upgraded tools. I also tried to open the web page of HP System Management homepage, but I didn’t succeed, because the host was simply blocking TCP port 2381.

Firewalld service was stopped on the host and the iptables was loaded with a set of rules, which was typical for oVirt. Moreover, the rules on all oVirt hosts, which I was deploying with the oVirt Engine web console, were the same.

In order to edit the rules, which are shared and centralized to all hosts from the oVirt Engine, we need to use the engine-config tool within the Engine server.

The engine-config tool has a large set of keys, which set the oVirt infrastructure Continue reading