A satisfying tale of sleuthing, justice

Texas-born Christian Hascheck teaches computer science in Vienna, Austria when not working on his own projects, which include a novel grading system. In 2012, he won $500 worth of Apple gift cards for a funny sysadmin story about ferreting out a not terribly sophisticated rogue Wi-Fi operation.Then the move aboard. He tells the story on his blog: Since then I have repeatedly tried to use or sell (the cards) but since I'm not currently living in the US it wasn't possible for me.My last attempt to sell them was via reddit. I know there are a lot of scammers out there, so I thought Bitcoin would be the right choice since the scammer can't just reclaim their money after I gave them the card codes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bridge to the Ocean

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Hardware Slaves to the Master Algorithm

Over the long course of IT history, the burden has been on the software side to keep pace with rapid hardware advances—to exploit new capabilities and boldly go where no benchmarks have gone before. However, as we swiftly ride into a new age where machine learning and deep learning take the place of more static applications and software advances are far faster than chipmakers can tick and tock to, hardware device makers are scrambling.

That problem is profound enough on its own, and is an entirely different architectural dance than general purpose device have ever had to step to. Shrinking …

Hardware Slaves to the Master Algorithm was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

HPE Trims Back To The Core Enterprise Essentials

The Hewlett Packard that Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd created through aspiration and acquisition is hardly recognizable in the increasingly streamlined Hewlett Packard Enterprise that Meg Whitman is whittling.

We joked earlier this week that with its acquisition of VMware and EMC and the sales of its outsourcing and software businesses that the new Dell was stop trying to be the old IBM. Well, the same is true of the new HP. It is not clear when and if Oracle will get the same memo, but it seems content to build engineered systems, from top to bottom, and we …

HPE Trims Back To The Core Enterprise Essentials was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Do we still need OSPF areas?

When OSPF was created it used areas to minimize the size of the topology graph (and the time it took to run Dijkstra algorithm). In the meantime, the CPU speeds increased by orders of magnitude, and graph computation algorithms got a few optimization boosts (incremental SPF for example). —IPspace

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Open Networking Reveals Its Fractal Nature

An insider's view of open networking.

The 4 Biggest Questions About Docker from VMworld 2016

Simply incredible. We spent last week at VMworld speaking with thousands of enterprise security, infrastructure and virtualization pros. It was humbling to witness all of the curiosity and excitement around Docker at the show, and how Docker clearly made a strong impression on the attendees.

This curiosity around Docker and its use within enterprise environments is the reason why i’m writing this blog. We noticed that there were many of the same questions that arose, and we figured we should share them with you, as you start your journey towards adopting Docker containers and VMs.

Here are the most commonly asked questions from the conference.

1. What is Docker? Or even a container? Is it a lightweight VM? Can I use it with vSphere? What value do they provide?

Containers are really about applications, not servers. That’s why they aren’t VMs. @docker #VMWorld #TFD

— Karen Lopez (@datachick) August 29, 2016

A Docker container is a standard unit in which application code, binaries and libraries can be packaged and isolated. The Docker Engine is the runtime installed on your infrastructure of choice and is what executes commands to build and deploy containers. Many containers can be connected together to form a Continue reading

Today’s supercomputers will get blown away by these systems

The Department of Energy says the $40 million it is investing in nearly two dozen multi-year projects will result in exascale computing systems that perform calculations on data 50 to 100 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.The DoE Exascale Computing Project says such high-performance computing systems can make at least a billion billion calculations per second, and will be used to process data for applications such as energy security, economic security, scientific discovery, healthcare and climate/environmental science. The U.S. is shooting to attain such powerful systems by the mid-2020s and China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Today’s supercomputers will get blown away by these systems

The Department of Energy says the $40 million it is investing in nearly two dozen multi-year projects will result in exascale computing systems that perform calculations on data 50 to 100 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.The DoE Exascale Computing Project says such high-performance computing systems can make at least a billion billion calculations per second, and will be used to process data for applications such as energy security, economic security, scientific discovery, healthcare and climate/environmental science. The U.S. is shooting to attain such powerful systems by the mid-2020s and China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Today’s supercomputers will get blown away by these systems

The Department of Energy says the $40 million it is investing in nearly two dozen multi-year projects will result in exascale computing systems that perform calculations on data 50 to 100 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.The DoE Exascale Computing Project says such high-performance computing systems can make at least a billion billion calculations per second, and will be used to process data for applications such as energy security, economic security, scientific discovery, healthcare and climate/environmental science. The U.S. is shooting to attain such powerful systems by the mid-2020s and China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK police listened in to 9 percent more calls last year

The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK police listened in to 9 percent more calls last year

The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best iPhone 7 Cases & Protectors Discounted Now on Amazon – Deal Alert

While you wait for your new iPhone to come in, Amazon already has iPhone 7 cases and screen protectors in stock, and many of them are significantly discounted. Here are our picks for the best discounted iPhone 7 cases you should consider dropping in your cart right now, in various styles and colors. 73% off amFilm iPhone 7/6s/6 screen protector 74% off Maxboost 2 Pack Tempered Glass Screen Protector For Apple iPhone 7 & iPhone 6/6s [3D Touch Compatible] 0.2mm Screen Protection Case Fit 99% Touch Accurate 33% off Caseology [Envoy Series] Classic Rich Texture PU Leather [Carbon Fiber Black] for Apple iPhone 7 22% off Silk iPhone 7 Plus Wallet Case - Vault Slim Wallet for iPhone 7+ 21% off Caseology [Parallax Series] Modern Slim Geometric Design [Black / Deep Blue] [Textured Grip] for Apple iPhone 7 45% off Maxboost [Folio Style] Premium iPhone Wallet Cover with STAND Feature for Apple iPhone 7, Protective Leather Flip Cover with Card Slot + Magnetic Side Pocket 67% off Ringke [FUSION] Crystal Clear Bumper [Drop Protection/Shock Absorption Technology] with Raised Bezels 56% off Ringke [Onyx] [Resilient Strength] Flexible Durability, Durable Anti-Slip, TPU Defensive Case for Apple iPhone 7 45% off Spigen Continue reading

Microsoft’s all-in-one Surface PCs could debut next month

A few months back I reported on rumors of new Surface-branded all-in-one PCs from Microsoft that could target both other all-in-ones as well as Apple's languishing iMac line. Now new information says they are coming soon.Citing her usual deep bench of sources, Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet says there will be a hardware launch event in late October, one year after a New York City event at which Microsoft unveiled the Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Lumia 950 and 950 XL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The time Cisco’s Rob Soderbery hooped it up vs. NBA’s Kyrie Irving

Reading about Cisco exec Rob Soderbery's departure from the company, I couldn't help thinking back to the first time I came across the enterprise products muckety-muck: Back at Interop 2013 in Las Vegas, where Soderbery took on Cleveland Cavalier star Kyrie Irving in a basketball shooting contest in the name of IoT marketing.The Stanford- and Caltech-educated Soderbery was pumping up Cisco's vision for software-defined networking as well as the internet of things, and it is IoT where the Irving cameo came in.  Cisco was getting into the game of a much more connected pro sports world, where sensors in everything from basketball shoes to basketballs help teams better measure player and team performance and improve the fan experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

JBAS011469 Error in Junos Space

Just went onto a customer’s Junos Space/Security Director installation to discover that their SRX5800 was showing as ‘out of sync’.    I tried to do a ‘Resynchronize with Network’ from the Device Operations menu, but this failed with the following error:

Error while reading config from device: <devicename> javax.persistence. TransactionRequiredException: JBAS011469: Transaction is required to perform this operation (either use a transaction of extended persistence context)

JBAS011469 error in Space 15.2

Unfortunately (like most Space-related errors) there’s nothing about this in Juniper’s knowledgebase – the only hit I found on a Google search was a similar error, but with a different cause that had been fixed.   So I thought I’d put this here in case it helps anyone.  

The solution in the end was to update the DMI schema for the device. The SRX5800 had been upgraded from 12.1R3.5 to 12.3X48-D30.7 but the schema within Space had not.  I downloaded the appropriate schema, and now the device re-syncs just fine.

Xen Project patches serious virtual machine escape flaws

The Xen Project has fixed four vulnerabilities in its widely used virtualization software, two of which could allow malicious virtual machine administrators to take over host servers.Flaws that break the isolation layer between virtual machines are the most serious kind for a hypervisor like Xen, which allows users to run multiple VMs on the same underlying hardware in a secure manner.The Xen hypervisor is widely used by cloud computing providers and virtual private server hosting companies like Linode, which had to reboot some of its servers over the past few days to apply the new patches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Xen Project patches serious virtual machine escape flaws

The Xen Project has fixed four vulnerabilities in its widely used virtualization software, two of which could allow malicious virtual machine administrators to take over host servers.Flaws that break the isolation layer between virtual machines are the most serious kind for a hypervisor like Xen, which allows users to run multiple VMs on the same underlying hardware in a secure manner.The Xen hypervisor is widely used by cloud computing providers and virtual private server hosting companies like Linode, which had to reboot some of its servers over the past few days to apply the new patches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This USB stick will fry your unsecured computer

A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer, USBKill.com, has taken data security to the "Mission Impossible" extreme by creating a USB stick that uses an electrical discharge to fry an unauthorized computer into which it's plugged."When the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges -- all in the matter of seconds," the company said in a news release. USBKill.com The USB Kill 2.0 stick.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This USB stick will fry your unsecured computer

A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer, USBKill.com, has taken data security to the "Mission Impossible" extreme by creating a USB stick that uses an electrical discharge to fry an unauthorized computer into which it's plugged."When the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges -- all in the matter of seconds," the company said in a news release. USBKill.com The USB Kill 2.0 stick.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here