Microsoft expands HoloLens in six new global markets

Microsoft announced plans to offer its well-hyped HoloLens virtual reality headset in six new markets outside North America after what Microsoft calls "tremendous excitement and interest from developers and commercial customers and partners around the globe."Alex Kipman, technical fellow in the Windows and Devices group, made the announcement in a blog post that the company has opened pre-orders today in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. The headset will begin shipping in those markets in late November. Interest in augmented reality (AR) and VR products has exploded this year thanks to the shipments of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, among many others. Microsoft is late to the market, but the buzz on HoloLens has been enormous. IDC predicts global revenues for the mixed reality (MR) market will grow from $5.2 billion this year to $162 billion in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WTF Yahoo/FISA search in kernel?

A surprising detail in the Yahoo/FISA email search scandal is that they do it with a kernel module. I thought I’d write up some (rambling) notes.

What the government was searching for

As described in the previoius blog post, we’ll assume the government is searching for the following string, and possibly other strings like it within emails:

### Begin ASRAR El Mojahedeen v2.0 Encrypted Message ###

I point this out because it’s simple search identifying things. It’s not natural language processing. It’s not searching for phrases like “bomb president”.

Also, it's not AV/spam/childporn processing. Those look at different things. For example, filtering message containing childporn involves calculating a SHA2 hash of email attachments and looking up the hashes in a table of known bad content (or even more in-depth analysis). This is quite different from searching.


The Kernel vs. User Space

Operating systems have two parts, the kernel and user space. The kernel is the operating system proper (e.g. the “Linux kernel”). The software we run is in user space, such as browsers, word processors, games, web servers, databases, GNU utilities [sic], and so on.

The kernel has raw access to the machine, memory, network devices, graphics Continue reading

Worth Reading: Why I care about Segment Routing

As a WAN guy by chance and opportunity, and a service provider engineer and architect by choice (and also chance and opportunity), segment routing (SR) is one of those wonderful new technologies that keeps rearing its head over and over in recent days – and it’s already playing in the big leagues. SR is supported by many of the large network equipment providers including Cisco, Juniper, and Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent), and as I have just learned, Arista. Why is this a notable tech you may want to pay attention to? —Forwarding Plane

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Reality, Virtually sets record for largest AR/VR hackathon

More than 400 participants, mentors, workshop speakers, judges and sponsors convened at the Reality, Virtually AR/VR hackathon sponsored by the MIT Media Lab last weekend, setting a hackathon record with 75 open-source project submissions.The winners were KidCity VR and Waypoint Rx.KidCity VR, built by Anish Dhesikan, Jacqueline Assar, Theji Jayaratne, Emily Pascual and Kachina Stude, is an HTC Vive educational application for children and parents to play together in virtual reality (VR). The team won $5,000 from Samsung’s Global Innovation Center for the best VR applicationTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The truth about cybersecurity certifications

It’s a common trait amongst cybersecurity professionals. When they meet each other, discuss their qualifications with prospective employers, or print their business cards, there is often an alphabet soup of initials by their names, specifying the many certifications they’ve achieved.Now, some of these certifications are certainly worthwhile, but over the last few years, the entire industry has gone gaga with dozens of new cybersecurity certifications offered by for-profit organizations. This has led to a marketing push with a consistent message that more certifications equate to more money, knowledge and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Truth About Cybersecurity Certifications

It’s a common trait amongst cybersecurity professionals.  When they meet each other, discuss their qualifications with prospective employers, or print their business cards, there is often an alphabet soup of initials by their names, specifying the many certifications they’ve achieved.Now some of these certifications are certainly worthwhile but over the last few years, the entire industry has gone gaga with dozens of new cybersecurity certifications offered by for-profit organizations.  This has led to a marketing push with a consistent message that more certifications equate to more money, knowledge, and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Truth About Cybersecurity Certifications

It’s a common trait amongst cybersecurity professionals.  When they meet each other, discuss their qualifications with prospective employers, or print their business cards, there is often an alphabet soup of initials by their names, specifying the many certifications they’ve achieved.Now some of these certifications are certainly worthwhile but over the last few years, the entire industry has gone gaga with dozens of new cybersecurity certifications offered by for-profit organizations.  This has led to a marketing push with a consistent message that more certifications equate to more money, knowledge, and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The ultimate data center throne

What happens when fans of the Game of Thrones TV series work at a company that makes power equipment?This: Eaton The Eaton ePDU G3 Throne Behold the Eaton ePDU G3 Throne. Compare it to the original Iron throne, pictured here. Eaton commissioned a North Carolina artists to design the chair and then workers constructed it out of 35 rack power distribution unit. It has a total of 821 outlet receptacles. Now that’s a throne with some power capacity. Check out a slideshow of how the Throne was built here. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The ultimate data center throne

What happens when fans of the Game of Thrones TV series work at a company that makes power equipment?This: Eaton The Eaton ePDU G3 Throne Behold the Eaton ePDU G3 Throne. Compare it to the original Iron throne, pictured here. Eaton commissioned a North Carolina artists to design the chair and then workers constructed it out of 35 rack power distribution unit. It has a total of 821 outlet receptacles. Now that’s a throne with some power capacity. Check out a slideshow of how the Throne was built here. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Datanauts 055: All About Scaling Out

The Datanauts delve into the nitty-gritty of how scale-out works for servers, networking, and storage; what it means for application design and operations; and how vendors, open source projects, and cloud services are positioning themselves in a scale-out world. The post Datanauts 055: All About Scaling Out appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Legacy TLS cipher support in Firefox

After upgrading Firefox recently, I noticed that I could no longer access certain embedded devices via HTTPS. It seems that recent versions of Firefox and Chrome no longer support certain TLS ciphers due to recently discovered vulnerabilities. That's all well and good, except the error returned offers no recourse if you need to connect anyway.

firefox_error.png

Firefox returns the error SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP with no option to temporarily allow connectivity. (Chrome reports a similar error named ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.) Presumably, this choice was made by the developers with the intention of forcing people to upgrade outdated devices. Unfortunately, in order to upgrade an out-of-date device, we typically must first be able to connect to it. I wasted a fair bit of time digging up a solution, so I figured I'd document the workaround here for when I inevitably run into this problem again a year from now and have forgotten what I did.

Continue reading · 12 comments

Legacy TLS cipher support in Firefox

After upgrading Firefox recently, I noticed that I could no longer access certain embedded devices via HTTPS. It seems that recent versions of Firefox and Chrome no longer support certain TLS ciphers due to recently discovered vulnerabilities. That's all well and good, except the error returned offers no recourse if you need to connect anyway.

firefox_error.png

Firefox returns the error SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP with no option to temporarily allow connectivity. (Chrome reports a similar error named ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.) Presumably, this choice was made by the developers with the intention of forcing people to upgrade outdated devices. Unfortunately, in order to upgrade an out-of-date device, we typically must first be able to connect to it. I wasted a fair bit of time digging up a solution, so I figured I'd document the workaround here for when I inevitably run into this problem again a year from now and have forgotten what I did.

Continue reading · 16 comments

Legacy TLS cipher support in Firefox

After upgrading Firefox recently, I noticed that I could no longer access certain embedded devices via HTTPS. It seems that recent versions of Firefox and Chrome no longer support certain TLS ciphers due to recently discovered vulnerabilities. That's all well and good, except the error returned offers no recourse if you need to connect anyway.

firefox_error.png

Firefox returns the error SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP with no option to temporarily allow connectivity. (Chrome reports a similar error named ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.) Presumably, this choice was made by the developers with the intention of forcing people to upgrade outdated devices. Unfortunately, in order to upgrade an out-of-date device, we typically must first be able to connect to it. I wasted a fair bit of time digging up a solution, so I figured I'd document the workaround here for when I inevitably run into this problem again a year from now and have forgotten what I did.

Continue reading · 2 comments

5 affordable MDM options for small businesses

Affordable MDM options for small businessesImage by ThinkstockSmall and medium sized businesses (SMBs) have embraced BYOD. In a study of SMBs from the IT community, Spiceworks, 61 percent of respondents said they have a BYOD policy in place. However, the same study found that 56 percent of that group also said they had not implemented any mobile device management (MDM) strategies and didn't have plans to do so within the next six months. While BYOD might allow these smaller businesses to save on hardware costs, it does open up unique risks for IT. With employees running on varying operating systems and hardware, it becomes difficult to implement secure solutions across the board, leaving sensitive data at risk. If just one employee's tablet falls into the wrong hands, you're going to wish you had some way to remotely wipe data on that device. But small businesses also have small IT departments -- sometimes consisting of only one person -- so a BYOD management strategy needs be straightforward, affordable and low-maintenance. Just because your business doesn't have a big budget or a large staff doesn't mean you can't ensure that all your corporate data remains secure, no matter where Continue reading

How Anaplan makes dynamic strategic planning a reality

Anaplan doesn’t come up in many conversations about unicorns – you know, the Ubers, Airbnbs and SnapChats of the world. But if your company is struggling with strategic planning, Anaplan is one unicorn you’ll want to learn more about. San Francisco-headquartered Anaplan’s cloud-based platform replaces spreadsheet mania as a way to handle large-scale strategic planning in real time. Companies such as HP, Intel and Morgan Stanley are streamlining sales management, forecasting and a variety of other applications using Anaplan, which simplifies life for everyone from senior managers to model builders and end users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IDG Contributor Network: 8 tech ‘megatrends’ that are about to change business

An assemblage of technological breakthroughs are rapidly morphing to create massive changes in how businesses operate.Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) are just three of eight crucial “megatrends” that strategy consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says is going to significantly distort business.Those new forces should clearly be planned for. And although the consulting firm's advice is aimed at generalized CEOs, it's IT and technical teams that will have to lay the groundwork.Robots, augmented reality (AR), 3D printing, drones and virtual reality (VR) are also among PwC’s pick of “essential eight technologies” that the firm says in its report (PDF) (released during the summer) need to be considered by company chiefs to move their operations forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lawmakers want UK to set example on transparency in AI decision making

British lawmakers want more transparency and less bias in decision-making -- not their own, of course, but in decisions made by AI systems.As more and more software systems and connected devices employ artificial intelligence technologies to make decisions for their owners, the lawmakers want to know what's behind their thinking. The U.K. Parliament's Science and Technology Committee has been studying the need for more regulation in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.Recent advances in AI technology raise a host of social, ethical and legal questions, the committee's members said in a report published Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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