How to watch the 2016 Ig Nobels

If you can't make it to the annual Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard University on Thursday night to celebrate the most unusual and imaginative breakthroughs in science, you can follow along online instead.That includes right here, we're we've embedded code for the live webcast, which starts at 6pm, EST, Sept. 22. MORE: Why there's no Nobel Prize in ComputingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New legislation seeks to prevent US voting systems from being hacked

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced two bills to protect voting systems from hacking, amid fears that Russian cyber spies may be interfering with this year's presidential election.Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat serving Georgia, is proposing a moratorium on state purchases of electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper trail. His Election Integrity Act, introduced Wednesday, would also prohibit voting systems from being connected to the internet as a way to prevent online tampering.The high-profile hack of the Democratic National Committee publicized in June has citizens worried that U.S. election systems may be vulnerable, Johnson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New legislation seeks to prevent US voting systems from being hacked

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced two bills to protect voting systems from hacking, amid fears that Russian cyber spies may be interfering with this year's presidential election.Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat serving Georgia, is proposing a moratorium on state purchases of electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper trail. His Election Integrity Act, introduced Wednesday, would also prohibit voting systems from being connected to the internet as a way to prevent online tampering.The high-profile hack of the Democratic National Committee publicized in June has citizens worried that U.S. election systems may be vulnerable, Johnson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile apps still have long way to go in state governments

A new survey released this week reveals that while a little more than half of state CIOs surveyed consider mobile devices and apps an essential or high priority, relatively few state government apps are mobile ready or are being used by employees and external users on mobile devices.The 2016 State CIO Survey: The Adaptable State CIO, released at the annual National Association of State CIO (NASCIO) conference this week in Orlando and produced by NASCIO, accounting/consulting firm Grant Thornton and trade association CompTIA, covers a range of topics beyond mobile, including cybersecurity, the internet of things, cloud computing and hiring.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Baking Specialization into Hardware Cools CPU Concerns

As Moore’s Law spirals downward, ultra-high bandwidth memory matched with custom accelerators for specialized workloads might be the only saving grace for the pace of innovation we are accustomed to.

With advancements on both the memory and ASIC sides driven by machine learning and other workloads pushing greater innovation, this could be great news for big datacenters with inefficient legions of machines dedicated to ordinary processing tasks—jobs that could far more efficient with more tailored approaches.

We have described this trend in the context of architectures built on stacked memory with FPGAs and other custom accelerators inside recently, and we …

Baking Specialization into Hardware Cools CPU Concerns was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: The lean and antifragile data center

Cloud is a new technology domain, and data centre engineering is still a developing discipline. I have interviewed a top expert in cloud infrastructure, senior leader and consultant, Pete Cladingbowl of Skozo. He has a vision of the ‘lean’ data centre and a better kind of Internet for users to reach it. He also has a roadmap for how these can be practically realised. The key is to apply established theories of value flow from more mature industries. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: The lean and antifragile data center appeared first on 'net work.

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security: Intel EPID simplifies authentication of IoT devices

Did you know that over 75 million tourists visit the United States every year? Or that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) screens over 2 million people daily? The TSA processes 150 passengers per security lane. Imagine the public outrage if it took 20 minutes to screen a passenger and the process publicly disclosed personal information. That’s the average time and result of installing an IoT device today. What lessons can be applied from security screenings to accelerate IoT device adoption? How can the authentication and installation of new IoT devices be streamlined?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security: Intel EPID simplifies authentication of IoT devices

Did you know that over 75 million tourists visit the United States every year? Or that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) screens over 2 million people daily?The TSA processes 150 passengers per security lane. Imagine the public outrage if it took 20 minutes to screen a passenger and the process publicly disclosed personal information. That’s the average time and result of installing an IoT device today.What lessons can be applied from security screenings to accelerate IoT device adoption? How can the authentication and installation of new IoT devices be streamlined?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Wi-Fi and LTE-U live together? The tests are ready

The moment of truth has arrived for a hotly contested project to make sure LTE and Wi-Fi can share the same frequencies.On Wednesday, the Wi-Fi Alliance released a test plan for LTE-Unlicensed products, which would bring 4G cellular to unlicensed spectrum bands that Wi-Fi users depend on. The group also said it is qualifying an independent lab where LTE-U vendors can take their equipment for testing.LTE-U could give smartphones and other cellular devices more frequencies to use, potentially bringing better service to more users in crowded areas. But some makers and operators of Wi-Fi gear, including cable operators using Wi-Fi to compete with mobile carriers, warn that the new technology could crowd out Wi-Fi and hurt its performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Talos: Spam at levels not seen since 2010

Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Talos: Spam at levels not seen since 2010

Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Virtualizing WAN capabilities

Virtualization has dramatically transformed data center infrastructure and now it’s time for wide area networking (WAN) to undergo a similar transformation.Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) heralds a new era of networking in which WANs are software-centric, rather than tied to proprietary, inflexible hardware devices.“NFV eliminates the need for proprietary hardware; and enables routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, content delivery systems, end-user devices, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) nodes, and almost any other network function to run as software on virtual machines,” according to Roopashree Honnachari, industry director of business communications services with Frost & Sullivan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenDaylight Unleashes Boron, its Fifth Code Iteration

It includes increased contributions from operators.

This $139 computer can be a PC or robot and will run Windows 10 desktop

Many Raspberry Pi-like developer boards are available, but most can't run Microsoft's Windows 10 desktop operating system. OS versatility is a strong suit of the new SolidRun Q4 board.SolidRun can run multiple versions of Windows 10. It has the flexibility to be a PC or a board to use to create cool gadgets.The SolidPC Q4 is packed with fast processors, memory, storage, and ports that make it a viable Windows 10 PC. It's cheap at US$139, but here's the bad news: You'll need to buy the Windows 10 desktop OS separately, and its price starts at $119.99.The board computer will need to be configured to meet the minimum requirements of Windows 10, which is 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage for a 64-bit version of the OS. SolidRun Q4 supports up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and has up to 128GB of internal flash  storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Working around Apple’s inexplicable email app change

For the second time in a row, I find myself unmotivated to upgrade my iPhone. The 6S had nothing that appealed to me, and the 7 is a downright turn-off with its lack of a headset jack. Five years after Steve Jobs' death, and this is what passes for innovation at Apple. The only thing preventing a defection on my part is all the apps I've invested in won't transfer to Android, and I don't feel like repurchasing all of them.+ Also on Network World: Settings in iOS 10: Every notable change you need to know +In addition to the decidedly unappealing phone, iOS 10 made a baffling move that has left me wondering what Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer officer, and Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, are thinking. One of the more welcomed features in previous versions of iOS was the Trash All feature in Apple Mail. Prior to that you had to manually select every email for deletion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

60% off ZeroLemon ToughJuice USB-C 30000mAh Macbook Compatible Power Bank – Deal Alert

ZeroLemon describes their ToughJuice power bank as the world's toughest external battery pack, with 30000mAh capacity and a rugged anti-shock exterior. With enough juice to get you up and running again and again on a single charge, ToughJuice provides up to ten charges to a smartphone, two charges to a tablet or multiple charges to nearly any other device. It features four USB ports (1 QuickCharge 2.0 port, with legacy 5V/2A support and 3 Ports for 1A charging) but more importantly it features USB-C/Type-C Compatibility: the USB-C/Type-C port makes the battery pack compatible with the new MacBook, charging at 5V/2.5A and other USB-C powered devices. The device averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 200 people (read reviews), and its list price is currently discounted to $79.99. See the discounted ZeroLemon ToughJuice power bank now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Industrial IoT Group Releases Security Framework

The next step is for the IIC to put this security framework into a testbed.

More than 840,000 Cisco devices are vulnerable to NSA-related exploit

More than 840,000 Cisco networking devices from around the world are exposed to a vulnerability that's similar to one exploited by a hacking group believed to be linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.The vulnerability was announced by Cisco last week and it affects the IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR software that powers many of its networking devices. The flaw allows hackers to remotely extract the contents of a device's memory, which can lead to the exposure of sensitive information.The vulnerability stems from how the OS processes IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1) requests. This key exchange protocol is used for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and other features that are popular in enterprise environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More than 840,000 Cisco devices are vulnerable to NSA-related exploit

More than 840,000 Cisco networking devices from around the world are exposed to a vulnerability that's similar to one exploited by a hacking group believed to be linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.The vulnerability was announced by Cisco last week and it affects the IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR software that powers many of its networking devices. The flaw allows hackers to remotely extract the contents of a device's memory, which can lead to the exposure of sensitive information.The vulnerability stems from how the OS processes IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1) requests. This key exchange protocol is used for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and other features that are popular in enterprise environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More than 840,000 Cisco devices are vulnerable to NSA-related exploit

More than 840,000 Cisco networking devices from around the world are exposed to a vulnerability that's similar to one exploited by a hacking group believed to be linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.The vulnerability was announced by Cisco last week and it affects the IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR software that powers many of its networking devices. The flaw allows hackers to remotely extract the contents of a device's memory, which can lead to the exposure of sensitive information.The vulnerability stems from how the OS processes IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1) requests. This key exchange protocol is used for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and other features that are popular in enterprise environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here