Looking Back: 2016 Project Report Card

As I’ve done for the last few years, in early 2016 I published a list of my planned personal projects for the year. In this post, I’d like to look back on that list of projects and grade myself on my progress (or lack of progress, if that is the case). Even though 2016 isn’t over yet, it’s close enough to the end of the year that things won’t change that much before 2017 is upon us.

For reference, here’s the list of planned 2016 projects:

  1. Complete a new book (again)
  2. Make more open source contributions
  3. Expand my knowledge and use of Python
  4. Expand my knowledge, use, and focus on public cloud services
  5. Complete a “wildcard project”

Let’s look at each of these planned projects and see how I fared.

  1. Complete a new book (again): Well—in the spirit of total honesty and transparency—this was a major failure. Not only did I fail to complete the network automation book I’ve been working on with Matt Oswalt and Jason Edelman, but the other book project I had planned also did not go anywhere. Granted, the circumstances preventing the second book project were outside my control, but the fact remains I still did Continue reading

“From Putin with Love” – a novel by the New York Times

In recent weeks, the New York Times has written many stories on Russia's hacking of the Trump election. This front page piece [*] alone takes up 9,000 words. Combined, the NYTimes coverage on this topic exceeds the length of a novel. Yet, for all this text, the number of verifiable facts also equals that of a novel, namely zero. There's no evidence this was anything other than an undirected, Anonymous-style op based on a phishing campaign.


The question that drives us

It's not that Russia isn't involved, it's that the exact nature of their involvement is complicated. Just because the hackers live in Russia doesn't automatically mean their attacks are directed by the government.

It's like the recent Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and America. Despite ISIS claiming credit, and the perpetrators crediting ISIS, we are loathe to actually blame the attacks directly on ISIS. Overwhelmingly, it's individuals who finance and plan their attacks, with no ISIS organizational involvement other than inspiration.

The same goes for Russian hacks. The Russian hacker community is complicated. There are lots of actors with various affiliations with the government. They are almost always nationalistic, almost always pro-Putin. There are many individuals and Continue reading

The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016

A significantly zany yearImage by Reuters/ Thomas PeterAs we close out the year and look at some of the, shall we say more interesting, stories of the year we find quite a tech collection. Everything from NASA’s poop challenge and the most significant advances in Ethernet’s illustrious history to the rise of robot doctor overlords. Take a look at 30 of the year's weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016

A significantly zany yearImage by Reuters/ Thomas PeterAs we close out the year and look at some of the, shall we say more interesting, stories of the year we find quite a tech collection. Everything from NASA’s poop challenge and the most significant advances in Ethernet’s illustrious history to the rise of robot doctor overlords. Take a look at 30 of the year's weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nokia and Apple trade accusations in patent lawsuits

An international patent dispute has broken out between Apple and Nokia over the Finnish mobile network vendor's licensing terms for the widely used H.264 video codec and other technologies.Nokia on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany and in the U.S., alleging that the smartphone giant has infringed 32 of its patents.Nokia's five lawsuits follow an Apple lawsuit filed in California Tuesday. The U.S. company accused Nokia of working with patent assertion firms Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively" from Apple and other smartphone makers. Nokia was not named as one of eight defendants in the Apple lawsuit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Need a holiday recipe? AllRecipes and Microsoft Azure cloud have you covered

Wondering what to have for Christmas dinner? AllRecipes.com will be a popular site to check this holiday season … and this year it’s using Microsoft Azure’s cloud.AllRecipes, founded in 1997 and owned by Meredith Corp., has undertaken a two-year migration to Azure, the IaaS public cloud. AllRecipes services 1.5 billion visitors each year who view an average of 95 recipes per second, 66% of which are done on mobile devices.The company’s load is cyclical: On a Sunday afternoon there is 60% more traffic on the website compared to a Monday morning. Just like a retailer, the holiday season is AllRecipe’s crunch time. Eight weeks in November and December including five days in particular – Christmas, Thanksgiving, the day before each and the Super Bowl – create the largest surge in traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Driverless infrastructure

It turns out machines can deploy software much better than humans can. Why? Because software deployment is a set of mechanical procedures that can be driven by a declarative language. It is a process primed for a systematic approach done right, and reproducibly. This is especially important as patches and security fixes are applied to software — a ritual that should be repeatable and seamless. —The New Stack

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New Cumulus Linux features: Snapshots & Rollback

Sometimes you really need a do over

This is the 2nd blog in a 4-part series highlighting many of the Cumulus Linux features in our 3.2 release. In this post, we’ll be detailing a feature exclusive to Cumulus Networks  —  Snapshots.

You know the feeling — you just ran your favorite Linux command with the –force option and typed “yes” to the question “Are you sure?”.

The command generates WAY more output than you were expecting. The back of your neck starts to tingle.  And it’s late Friday afternoon no less.  This can’t be good.  You really need a do over.

We hear you. In order to help you undo, fix and mitigate command errors, we created snapshots and rollbacks — the newest Cumulus Linux features, now available in our 3.2 release.

With Cumulus Networks, web-scale networking is easier and more powerful than ever. We incorporate the best technology from the Linux desktop and server ecosystems. When we come across a desktop application that works well, we bring it to network switches.

In the latest version of Cumulus Linux, we deploy the Btree File System (BTRFS) for the root file system. BTRFS brings a number of Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: #WirelessSucks: Where do we go from here?

“The Wi-Fi doesn’t work.” After speaking to hundreds of customers of all sizes, this is consistently one of the top help desk complaints that I hear. Not surprisingly, this creates a common perception about wireless that is unflattering to say the least.Some of the time, this is a fair complaint. Wireless is a pervasive technology, and it is difficult to deliver a consistent and reliable experience across the exploding stream of different devices and device types.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi troubleshooting remains a challenge for most organizations + Other times, however, the Wi-Fi network is just getting a bad rap. It is guilty by association—i.e an easy target for people to blame when other issues might be at play. In fact, all of the following issues could impact network connectivity, casting a pall over the wireless experience:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: #WirelessSucks: Where do we go from here?

“The Wi-Fi doesn’t work.” After speaking to hundreds of customers of all sizes, this is consistently one of the top help desk complaints that I hear. Not surprisingly, this creates a common perception about wireless that is unflattering to say the least.Some of the time, this is a fair complaint. Wireless is a pervasive technology, and it is difficult to deliver a consistent and reliable experience across the exploding stream of different devices and device types.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi troubleshooting remains a challenge for most organizations + Other times, however, the Wi-Fi network is just getting a bad rap. It is guilty by association—i.e an easy target for people to blame when other issues might be at play. In fact, all of the following issues could impact network connectivity, casting a pall over the wireless experience:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nokia accuses Apple of infringing 32 of its patents

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany in the U.S., alleging that the smartphone giant has infringed 32 of its patents, including the widely used H.264 video codec.The patent infringement lawsuits, filed with the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents related to displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets, and video coding, Nokia said Wednesday. Nokia is planning to file more lawsuits in other jurisdictions, the company said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Reshaping the project manager role for the digital age

Recent IT labor market analysis from CEB reveals that "IT project manager" is the most difficult-to-fill IT role globally. This comes as no surprise to IT and project management leaders who have consistently struggled to find the right talent to oversee their most critical projects and programs. As organizations strive to digitize, the challenge of finding skilled IT project managers will only increase. The type of work that supports the typical organization’s digitization ambitions—rapid, often iterative, and typically involving new technologies or processes—is the type of work that the average, process-focused project manager isn’t well equipped to handle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10% off Oster Cordless Electric Wine Bottle Opener with Foil Cutter – Deal Alert

This cordless electric wine opener from Oster removes the cork in seconds with one-button operation, and opens up to 30 bottles before needing to be recharged. It features a foil cutter for easily removing seals and a comfortable soft-grip handle. Currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 4,300 people (read reviews). It's discounted 10% on Amazon, so you can get it right now for just $17.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook delivers its state of the open source union

There’s no doubting Facebook’s commitment to open-source projects. The company has a portfolio of over 400 open-source projects with over a half million followers. A look at the top five projects gives a bird’s eye view of Facebook’s obsession with unifying and improving the effectiveness of its large internal developer community, automating the process of building software by continually deploying it, and operating at a scale matched by just a few other companies, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.The commit statistics below are a measure of the development activity of Facebook’s top five open-source projects that impact different parts of software development and execution. A commit is a revision or additional file usually containing software code that is saved to a GitHub repository. The commit is saved with a unique generated ID or hash and is time-stamped so that code contributions can be managed from creation through final release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016’s biggest social media stories

Social media had a big 2016. The medium and all of the leading social companies reached new heights of influence … but not without consequence. These are the stories that shaped the conversations and intrigue around social media during the past year.Social media and the 2016 presidential election The American public is still grappling with all the ways social media shaped the 2016 presidential campaign. However, CIO.com uncovered how social media brings out the darker side of digital introverts and often amplifies slanted views or political biases. During the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election it became quite clear that social could not be more powerful or dangerous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Has VMware found a cloud strategy savior in AWS?

Adversity makes strange bedfellows, and in the case of VMware — a company that has made its fortune selling server virtualization software — that bedfellow is Amazon Web Services (AWS), the  public cloud leviathan.Let's rewind to the middle of October, when Mark Lohmeyer, a VMware cloud business unit vice president,  announced that the company was forming a strategic partnership with AWS so that VMware's server virtualization and other software could be run in the AWS public cloud. The idea is that VMware customers using the company's software to run a private cloud in their own data centers will be able to expand into a similar VMware infrastructure run in AWS's public cloud, thereby forming a VMware-based hybrid cloud. The VMware software (called vCenter) used by company administrators to manage the private cloud will reach into the AWS cloud to manage the VMware software running there as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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