25 surprising facts about Google

25 things you probably don’t know about GoogleGoogle (now officially a subsidiary of Alphabet) has a relatively storied history for being such a young company. Founded in the late 1990s by Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s search engine quickly supplanted more established players in the search space before ultimately becoming synonymous with search altogether. Today, Google is much than a search engine, as the company leveraged its success to branch off into many other tech areas, including mobile operating systems, robotics, and self-driving cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s earnings report surprises investors

Apple yesterday released its earnings report for the June quarter and investors were left pleasantly surprised. Even though overall revenue and iPhone sales were down year over year, the decline wasn't nearly as bad as many analysts and investors were anticipating. As a result, shares of Apple jumped up nearly 7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.As for the nitty gritty details, Apple during the June quarter generated $42.4 billion in revenue while enjoying a quarterly profit of $7.8 billion. By way of contrast, Apple in the same quarter a year-ago posted revenue of $49.6 billion and a profit of $10.7 billion."We are pleased to report third quarter results that reflect stronger customer demand and business performance than we anticipated at the start of the quarter,” Tim Cook said in a press release. “We had a very successful launch of iPhone SE and we’re thrilled by customers’ and developers’ response to software and services we previewed at WWDC in June.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm agrees to pay $19.5M to settle charges of bias against women

Qualcomm has agreed to pay US$19.5 million to settle a gender discrimination class action lawsuit that alleged that women at the company get lower pay and have lesser chances of promotion under its current programs.The settlement on behalf of a class of about 3,290 female employees was reached before suit was filed, but still requires the filing of a class complaint and a move for preliminary approval of the agreement from a judge in a federal court in California, according to Sanford Heisler, the legal firm representing the women.The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleges that in Qualcomm’s U.S. operations, women in science, technology, engineering, and math, known together as STEM, and related roles face discrimination in pay and promotions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IETF 96

The IETF meetings are relatively packed events lasting over a week, and it’s just not possible to attend every session. From the various sessions I attended here are a few personal impressions that I took away from the meeting that I would like to share with you.

In light of increased cyberattacks, White House sets defense plan with FBI in charge

Faced with increasingly troubling attacks on its cyber infrastructure, the United States has outlined new measures intended to help it respond more effectively to attacks that might compromise public safety or its national security interests.On Tuesday, President Obama approved a directive that lays out how federal agencies will respond to “significant cyber incidents," with the FBI to be formally in charge of investigating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In light of increased cyberattacks, White House sets defense plan with FBI in charge

Faced with increasingly troubling attacks on its cyber infrastructure, the United States has outlined new measures intended to help it respond more effectively to attacks that might compromise public safety or its national security interests.On Tuesday, President Obama approved a directive that lays out how federal agencies will respond to “significant cyber incidents," with the FBI to be formally in charge of investigating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Fosters Another OpenStack Kubernetes Mashup

Because Google is such a wildly successful company and a true innovator when it comes to IT platforms, and because we know more about its infrastructure at a theoretical level than what has been built by other hyperscalers and cloud providers, it is natural enough to think that the future of computing for the rest of us will look like what Google has already created for itself.

But ironically, only by going into the public cloud business could Google have to change its infrastructure enough to actually have to make it look more like what large enterprises will need, and

Google Fosters Another OpenStack Kubernetes Mashup was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Apple reports second straight quarter of declining iPhone sales

Apple has reported its second straight quarter of falling iPhone sales, hit by stiff competition in China and the ongoing slowdown in the worldwide smartphone market.The company sold 40.4 million iPhones from April to June, down from 47.5 million in the same quarter last year, Apple announced Tuesday.Revenue for the quarter, the third of its fiscal year, was $42.4 billion, down 17 percent from $49.6 billion a year earlier. Its net profit fell 27 percent to $7.8 billion. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google taps AI to help you bid for digital ads

Real-time bidding is an aspect of digital marketing that can seem overly complex for the average bear, so it was only a matter of time before AI entered the picture. This week, Google brought machine learning into the process to help make it easier.Tapping some of the same artificial-intelligence technologies that have already appeared in Google Photos and AlphaGo, Smart Bidding is a new capability for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search to help companies determine their optimal bid for any given campaign or portfolio. It can factor in millions of signals, Google says, and continually refines models of users' conversion performance at different bid levels.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bailed out by Comware’s python interpreter

Something funny happened to an IRF stack the other day. The gear was moved to a remote location and, as part of the move, the cables/transceivers were moved around.

The IRF (10Gb/s) and uplink (1Gb/s) ports switched places.

The new IRF ports (5 and 6) got added to the configuration just fine, leaving me with:
 #  
irf-port 1/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/2
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/5
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/6
#
irf-port 2/2
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/1/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/1/2
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/1/5
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/1/6
#

But IRF would't release the old ports making it impossible to repurpose them as uplinks:
 [switch]irf-port 1/1  
[switch-irf-port1/1]undo port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/1
Check failed for reason:
Can't support IRF on a port with 1000M speed!
[switch]

Can't remove a port from the IRF group because it's ineligible to participate in IRF. Okaaaaay...

Without functioning uplinks, it was impossible to transfer the saved configuration away for an off-box edit.

Python to the rescue!
I split the IRF, used python to edit the stored configuration in-place on each IRF member, then rebooted the switches individually. Here's the edit-by-python:
 <switch>python   
Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr Continue reading

What is 6PE?

6PE is one of the efficient solutions for interconnecting IPv6 islands over an IPv4-only MPLS cloud without needing to drastically change the core network design by having all your Core routers dual-stacked 6PE does not use manual standard tunnels, it provides an alternative where all tunnels are established dynamically eliminating the need to configure and …

The post What is 6PE? appeared first on Networkers-online.com.

Gain access to an ARM server running Linux OS, through the cloud

If you want to play with an ARM-based server, you can now apply to gain access to one online through the Linaro Developer Cloud.The cloud service was announced in March but has finally gone live. It's mainly targeted at developers who want to evaluate ARM servers.The free service is one way to access ARM servers, which aren't widely available. Applications go through an approval process, and only those serious about programming for ARM servers will likely be approved.Developers will get remote access to bare-metal servers with ARM processors. Linaro has said servers will have ARM-based chips from Qualcomm, Cavium, and Huawei, and users will be able to select specific hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Financial analysts forecast another downturn for Apple’s iPhone, Mac

Apple later today will again announce a downturn for all three of its primary product lines, according to a group of independent and institutional financial analysts.The June quarter results will nearly mirror those of the first three months of 2016, when Apple reported selling 16% fewer iPhones than in the same period in 2015, marking the first time since the 2007 roll-out that sales for the iconic smartphone contracted on a year-over-year basis.According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who formerly blogged about Apple for Fortune but now runs the subscription-based Apple 3.0 website, the nine independent and 18 institutional analysts he queried forecast a fall in unit sales of the iPhone, iPad and Mac lines, as well as another decline in revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Smartwatch shipments nosedive, but recovery due in 2017

The global smartwatch market nosedived by 32% in the second quarter of 2016, with Apple Watch shipments down by 55% when compared to a year earlier, according to research firm IDC. The decline — the first since the market started in 2013 — is expected to reverse next year after Apple and Google launch important operating system updates this fall, IDC said. Also, more watches will launch with cellular connections to LTE wireless without the need to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone. Apple was the only smartwatch maker in the top five to see a decline in the second quarter, although the Apple Watch remained the top smartwatch by far, with 1.6 million devices shipped and 47% of the market, IDC said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yahoo users have no need to panic

For Yahoo's stalwart users, the company's acquisition should not usher in any dramatic changes in the near future.Actually, some industry analysts say people using Yahoo Mail, its search engine or its news page now may feel more secure, and that services are unlikely to disappear from lack of funding or lack of corporate interest anytime soon.However, for a company that has become a decided B-list player after once being an Internet pioneer, changes to Yahoo may be akin to a tree falling in a forest when there's no one there to hear it.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD 9 big moments in Yahoo's troubled history +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here