Prepare for a spike in SSD prices

SSD prices have been in a freefall for the last few years thanks to increased output by NAND flash memory makers and those vendors converting their production to 3D NAND, which offers increased density at a lower cost. That's why you are seeing so many 1TB SSDs on the market these days, but it's also why prices are going up.However, going into the busy fourth quarter, the industry has been hit with a double-whammy of lower production and increased demand, and at that point it's basic economics of supply and demand. The result could be a spike in prices in the coming months.A report in China's CTimes states that revenue is up considerably for NAND flash makers such as Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba because prices have risen recently. Part of the reason is the increasing demand of 3D NAND flash, which stacks the memory cells in layers to achieve greater density in a smaller space. Vendors are converting their fabrication plants to handle 3D, but it takes time and money. Lots of money. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenVPN will be audited for security flaws

The next major version of OpenVPN, one of the most widely used virtual private networking technologies, will be audited by a well-known cryptography expert.The audit will be fully funded by Private Internet Access (PIA), a popular VPN service provider that uses OpenVPN for its business. The company has contracted cryptography engineering expert Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to carry out the evaluation with the goal of identifying any vulnerabilities in the code.Green has experience in auditing encryption software, being one of the founders of the Open Crypto Audit Project, which organized a detailed analysis of TrueCrypt, a popular open-source full-disk encryption application. TrueCrypt has been abandoned by its original developers in 2014, but its code has since been forked and improved as part of other projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenVPN will be audited for security flaws

The next major version of OpenVPN, one of the most widely used virtual private networking technologies, will be audited by a well-known cryptography expert.The audit will be fully funded by Private Internet Access (PIA), a popular VPN service provider that uses OpenVPN for its business. The company has contracted cryptography engineering expert Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to carry out the evaluation with the goal of identifying any vulnerabilities in the code.Green has experience in auditing encryption software, being one of the founders of the Open Crypto Audit Project, which organized a detailed analysis of TrueCrypt, a popular open-source full-disk encryption application. TrueCrypt has been abandoned by its original developers in 2014, but its code has since been forked and improved as part of other projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD strengthens gaming and VR on Linux with graphics improvements

Windows is the indisputable platform of choice for gaming and VR, but Linux is catching up fast as graphics companies ramp up driver and hardware support for the OS.AMD is showing more love for Linux than ever before. The company on Thursday announced some hardware and driver updates that will strengthen gaming and VR on the OS.The biggest news is AMD's support for FreeSync on Linux PCs. FreeSync can improve the rendition of games and high-definition video by allowing GPUs to communicate directly with displays, reducing image stutter and lag time. Images are drawn up on the screen while they are being rendered in GPUs.This is the first time AMD is bringing FreeSync support to Linux. It was earlier available only on Windows PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Moore’s Law lives on with speedy 7-nm mobile chips coming in 2018

How do mobile devices keep get faster, thinner, and more power efficient? It's thanks to the quick advances in chip manufacturing, which help churn out smaller chips packed with new features.The next round of premium smartphones early next year could feature chips like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, made using the latest, 10-nanometer process.Continuing with the famous Moore's Law observation, it's likely that two years after that, smartphones will get even faster and smaller chips will be made using a 7-nanometer process.On Monday, ARM, with its chip designs in most smartphones, said it is working with prominent chip manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) to make 7-nm chips. ARM shared intellectual property for its 7-nm designs, allowing chips to be designed for manufacturing in TSMC's factories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Need for Speed—Coming Changes in oVirt’s CI Standards

oVirt's CI standards have been in use for a while in most oVirt projects and have largely been a success.

These standards have put the control of what the CI system does in the hands of the developers without them having to learn about Jenkins and the tooling around it. The way the standards were implemented, with the mock_runner.sh script, also enabled developers to easily emulate the CI system on their own machines to debug and diagnose issues.

From the oVirt infra team's point of view, the CI standards have removed the need to constantly maintain build dependencies on the Jenkins slaves and also eliminated most of the situations where jobs running on the same slave influenced one another.

The CI standards implementation we have has one shortcoming, it is not particularity fast.

We started seriously looking at this after one of the VDSM maintainers reported that the check_patch jobs for his project are running for far too long a time. In the end it turned out that a major reason for the delay was in the way the tests themselves worked, but still, we looked at mock_runner.sh and managed to speed it up quite a Continue reading

48% off Travel Cord Organizer – Electronics Accessories Case & Cable Organizer – Deal Alert

Designed to protect and safeguard your electronic gadgets and save time on the go by easily storing and finding everything you need. This travel organizer offers a secure storage space for cord management, laptop and computer accessories putting everything you need in one place. This organizer also gives you special space inside for credit cards, passports, also for boarding passes, smartphone, tickets and has many pockets where you can put coins, keys, USB, SIM card, earphones, and other small accessories. Give yourself or someone else the gift of stress-free travel.  The travel cord organizer's typical list price of $30.99 has been reduced 48% to $15.99. See the discounted Travel Cord Organizer now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Making Network Device Management Safe

DevOps And Code Management

U.S. and U.K. spy agencies have been intercepting in-flight phone calls for years

U.S. and U.K. spy agencies have been monitoring in-flight mobile phone users for years, according to new revelations from the trove of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.As early as 2012 the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was intercepting voice and data communications from commercial aircraft using the OnAir service to carry 2G mobile services over the Inmarsat satellite communications network. At the time, GCHQ did not have access to a rival in-flight mobile service provider, Aeromobile, French newspaper Le Monde reported Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. and U.K. spy agencies have been intercepting in-flight phone calls for years

U.S. and U.K. spy agencies have been monitoring in-flight mobile phone users for years, according to new revelations from the trove of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.As early as 2012 the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was intercepting voice and data communications from commercial aircraft using the OnAir service to carry 2G mobile services over the Inmarsat satellite communications network. At the time, GCHQ did not have access to a rival in-flight mobile service provider, Aeromobile, French newspaper Le Monde reported Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Buffers Sometimes Beat Bandwidth For Networks

Just like every kind of compute job cannot be handled by a single type of microprocessor, the diversity of networking tasks in the datacenters of the world require a variety of different switch and router ASICs to best manage those tasks.

As the volume leader in the switching arena, Broadcom comes under intense competitive pressure and has to keep on its toes to provide enough variety in its switch chips to keep its rivals at bay. One way that Broadcom does this is by having two distinct switch ASIC lines.

The StrataXGS line of chips have the famous and ubiquitous …

Buffers Sometimes Beat Bandwidth For Networks was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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

You Don’t Need Programming Skills to Build Network Automation Solutions

I got several questions along the lines of “Do I need programming skills to attend the Building Network Automation Solutions course?”

Short answer: No.

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