Building a Raspberry Pi-powered Barkometer, Part 3

In the last two parts of the Barkometer, which is my IoT project to prove that my dog is not a barkoholic, I discussed the hardware and my problems with getting a clean recording. It turns out, much to my irritation, that the Sabrent USB 2.0 External 2.1 Surround Sound Adapter was the problem all along. But before I discuss the hardware problems, let me explain how to record sound on a Raspberry Pi …The subsystem of Raspbian that deals with sound is called the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). ALSA is a huge, complex project with support for an incredible number of sound cards and is basically death by features. It handles everything from single channel recording (what I’m trying to do) to generating tones, white noise, and all sorts of test signals, to playback of multi-channel audio. Truly a massive engineering feat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gmail outage for business users lasted over 12 hours

Gmail service for users of the Google for Work cloud-based productivity suite was down for over 12 hours on Wednesday, apparently affecting users in a number of countries including the U.S. Google reported early Thursday that the problem was resolved for the vast majority of affected customers, and it would be working individually with the rest of them. It said it would provide a more detailed analysis of the incident to customers once its internal investigation is completed. The company first acknowledged the problem on its Apps Status Dashboard at 8:16 a.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday, stating that it is investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. “Based on reports, it affects only Google for Work Gmail users," Google said. Affected users were redirected to a page with 'Service not available, contact your administrator.'To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Whitebox Switching at LinkedIn with Russ White on Software Gone Wild

When LinkedIn announced their Project Falco I knew exactly what one of my future Software Gone Wild podcasts would be: a chat with Russ White (Mr. CCDE, now network architect @ LinkedIn).

It took us a long while (and then the summer break intervened) but I finally got it published: Episode 62 is waiting for you.

Should I Use L2VPN+MACSEC or L3VPN+GETVPN?

Here are the outlines of an interesting ExpertExpress discussion:

• A global organization wanted to connect data centers across the globe with a new transport backbone.
• All the traffic has to be encrypted.

Should they buy L2VPN and use MACsec on it or L3VPN and use GETVPN on it (considering they already have large DMVPN deployments in each region)?

Hackers are shaping U.S. election coverage with data leaks

Hackers are becoming a major source of political leaks in this year’s presidential race.Case in point: On Tuesday, stolen emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell became headline news after a mysterious site with possible ties to Russian cyber spies gave them to the press. Since then, media outlets have been pointing out juicy details found in the emails. For example, Powell called Clinton “greedy” and her rival Donald Trump a “national disgrace.”The incident has security experts worried that hackers are manipulating U.S. media outlets to influence this year’s election.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers are shaping US election coverage with data leaks

Hackers are becoming a major source of political leaks in this year’s presidential race.Case in point: On Tuesday, stolen emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell became headline news after a mysterious site with possible ties to Russian cyber spies gave them to the press. Since then, media outlets have been pointing out juicy details found in the emails. For example, Powell called Clinton “greedy” and her rival Donald Trump a “national disgrace.”The incident has security experts worried that hackers are manipulating U.S. media outlets to influence this year’s election.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers are shaping US election coverage with data leaks

Hackers are becoming a major source of political leaks in this year’s presidential race.Case in point: On Tuesday, stolen emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell became headline news after a mysterious site with possible ties to Russian cyber spies gave them to the press. Since then, media outlets have been pointing out juicy details found in the emails. For example, Powell called Clinton “greedy” and her rival Donald Trump a “national disgrace.”The incident has security experts worried that hackers are manipulating U.S. media outlets to influence this year’s election.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Using Vagrant with AWS

In this post, I’d like to describe how to use Vagrant with AWS, as well as provide a brief description of why this combination of technologies may make sense for some use cases. In some respects, this post is similar to my posts on using Docker Machine with OpenStack and using Vagrant with OpenStack in that combining Vagrant with AWS creates another clean “provider/consumer” model that makes it easy for users to consume infrastructure.

If you aren’t already familiar with Vagrant, I’d highly recommend first taking a look at my introduction to Vagrant, which provides an overview of the tool and how it’s used.

Prerequisites

Naturally, you’ll need to first ensure that you have Vagrant installed. This is really well-documented already, so I won’t go over it here. Next, you’ll need to install the AWS provider for Vagrant, which you can handle using this command:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-aws

Once you’ve installed the vagrant-aws plugin, you’ll next need to install a box that Vagrant can use. Here, the use of Vagrant with AWS is a bit different than the use of Vagrant with a provider like VirtualBox or VMware Fusion/VMware Workstation. In those cases, the box Continue reading

Self-driving cars won’t make us more productive

Self-driving cars are raising hopes that we’ll get a lot done when we don’t have to drive anymore. According to a University of Michigan study, that’s about as likely as a parent finishing two memos and a big presentation while taking a teen-age learner out to drive.The average U.S. driver spends an hour a day in their car, but the study concluded that for 62 percent of Americans, freeing up that driving time won’t make them any more productive. And the findings suggest riding in a self-driving car may be a white-knuckle nightmare of nerves, car sickness, unsafe seats and flying gadgets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Extreme Networks Snags Zebra’s WLAN Business

How to connect the Dots with cool new smartphone-friendly beacons

A Kickstarter project for glowing Bluetooth beacons designed to make your smartphone more useful has blown past its $20K goal with about a week to go.Iota Labs is building physical Bluetooth 4.0-enabled Dots that use location tracking to put your smartphone notifications into context. For example, stick one in the kitchen to prompt you to check food expiration dates or in your car to automatically open up Waze. Put one in the hallway to let you know -- via its LED color as it senses you being in the area -- if a roommate is home and might need a bit of discretion on your part. Or if you want to stretch this initially consumer-oriented product into a business tool, have one alert you to unread emails from your boss as you step into your office. (See Iota's video pitch below.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack. Less Bad Than The Rest.

A topic I complain about with some regularity is my inability to keep up with incoming messages. I’m too busy creating something for someone else to consume to bother trying to keep up. That’s the way of things. If I successfully keep up with all the input, I never achieve useful output.

In this world of message misery, Slack is my friend. I find that Slack is better at managing input than most other forms of communication.

As Slack groups form (I’m in 8 now), it allows me to interact with people in a private or semi-private manner in a way that’s less intrusive than Google Hangouts or an iMessages chat room.

Slack groups are far better for me than e-mail. I have a passionate dislike for e-mail, although I’ve gotten better at managing it with process and tools. E-mail remains useful to me because it’s the lowest common denominator of communications. If nothing else works, then I can probably send the person an e-mail.

At the moment, Slack is the “least worst” way to manage communication for me.

• I can mute as well as tune notifications. I often mute entire channels that do not require real-time interaction. I can also set do not disturb times. I can also Continue reading

ZeroStack ‘Invites’ VMware Workloads to Its Cloud

Presto change-o, you run on KVM now.

Catch the Latest #VMworld 2016 Updates in Our NSX SociaLab

So you missed VMworld 2016…You can still hear about the latest VMware NSX updates in an NSX-focused SociaLab!

Sign up for an NSX SociaLab in your area now.

NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). Bring your own device to this interactive hands-on lab event where our engineering experts will guide you step-by-step through the technical features, functions and business use cases of NSX that were released at VMworld 2016 – all while you test drive the solution for yourself.

During the event, you’ll get to partake in multiple Hands-On Labs featuring logical switching, dynamic routing, distributed firewall, logical network services, all of which were featured at VMworld 2016, and more. You’ll walk away from our SociaLab knowing how to:

• Create a logical switch and attach virtual machines to it
• Understand the routing capabilities supported in NSX and the benefit of performing them at the hypervisor layer
• Explore how the distributed firewall protects a 3-tier application and create rules based on security groups & identity

Now’s your chance to hear what you missed out on at VMworld to meet our technical experts, ask questions and collaborate with peers. Don’t miss this in-person opportunity to learn Continue reading

The Next Wave of Deep Learning Applications

Last week we described the next stage of deep learning hardware developments in some detail, focusing on a few specific architectures that capture what the rapidly-evolving field of machine learning algorithms require. This week we are focusing in on a trend that is moving faster than the devices can keep up with; the codes and application areas that are set to make this market spin in 2017.

It was with reserved skepticism that we listened, not even one year ago, to dramatic predictions about the future growth of the deep learning market—numbers that climbed into the billions despite the fact …

The Next Wave of Deep Learning Applications was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Binding to an IPv6 subnet

In the original framework of the IP architecture, hosts had network interfaces, and network interfaces had single IP addresses. The list of active network interfaces, and the manner in which they acquire IP addresses, either by a static configuration or by some dynamic mechanism via a query to the local network, is specified in a boot time configuration file. —Potaroo

The post Worth Reading: Binding to an IPv6 subnet appeared first on 'net work.

iOS 10 adoption tops last year’s 9 uptake rate in first day

Although Apple stumbled yesterday as it issued iOS 10, the new mobile operating system has gained traction to outpace last year's upgrade by the end of its first full day.At the 24-hour milestone, iOS 10 accounted for 14.5% of all iOS editions detected by Mixpanel, whose metrics platform is widely used by mobile app developers to track usage and user engagement.That was higher than the 12.4% accumulated by iOS 9 last year at the same post-release point, but still significantly lower than the record holder iOS 7, which collected a whopping 29.9% within 24 hours of its 2013 debut.Apple released iOS 10 yesterday at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This new programming language promises a 4X speed boost on big data

Memory management can be challenge enough on traditional data sets, but when big data enters the picture, things can slow way, way down. A new programming language announced by MIT this week aims to remedy that problem, and so far it's been found to deliver fourfold speed boosts on common algorithms.The principle of locality is what governs memory management in most computer chips today, meaning that if a program needs a chunk of data stored at some memory location, it's generally assumed to need the neighboring chunks as well. In big data, however, that's not always the case. Instead, programs often must act on just a few data items scattered across huge data sets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

End of the line for Microsoft Band?

Last week when I discussed the latest rumors surrounding Surface All-In-Ones, I added that there was no news on the Microsoft Band front. Now there apparently is news, and it's not the best.Microsoft's Band and Band 2 devices look like they run Windows 10, but they don't. They only run firmware. One of the rumors surrounding future Band products is that they would get the full OS, or at least enough of it to make it functional with PCs. That may not be the case, however. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports that the group working on bringing Windows 10 to Band was disbanded weeks ago. That doesn't necessarily mean Band 3 won't happen; it just means the group working on a Windows 10 port is gone. They could always release Band 3 with firmware just like the first two versions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds

Microsoft never sleeps. Even before the Windows 10 Anniversary Update was rolled out, the company began work on the next two major updates to Windows 10, code-named Redstone 2 and Redstone 3. (Redstone 1 was the code name for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.) Redstone 2 will likely be fully ready in the spring of 2017. It's not yet clear when Redstone 3 will be finished.If you want to test drive the upcoming updates, you don't have to wait until their final releases. As it did with the Anniversary Update, Microsoft has been releasing public preview builds, each a little bit closer to the final version. The updates are being tested and delivered the same way that those for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update were -- first to members of Microsoft's Insider Program via a series of public preview builds and then, when they are final, via Windows Update.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here