Lenovo HPC Bounces Back After IBM Spinoff

When IBM sold off its System x division to Lenovo Group in the fall of 2014, some big supercomputing centers in the United States and Europe that were long-time customers of Big Blue had to stop and think about what their future systems would look like and who would supply them. It was not a foregone conclusion that the Xeon-based portion of IBM’s HPC business would just move over to Lenovo as part of the sale.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Many believed that Lenovo could not hold onto its HPC business, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell were quick …

Lenovo HPC Bounces Back After IBM Spinoff was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Too many IoT networks? Cisco just bet on this one

Cisco Systems just cast a vote of confidence in one of the many technologies that might get your next IoT device online.On Tuesday, the company announced gateways between LoRaWAN low-power wireless networks and fatter pipes like Ethernet cables. The gateways can take in data from sensors and other small Internet of Things devices and send it back to an enterprise or cloud.This is Cisco’s first commercial foray into LPWANs (low power, wide area networks), a new generation of infrastructure designed for devices that are too small and power-constrained to use cellular.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘How to get an A/C budget approved’

According to one IT professional posting on Reddit’s section for systems administrators, the best way to get an air-conditioning budget approved is to turn up the heat – literally -- on the right company executives. He writes:   After adding a second rack to our server room the portable A/C unit just couldn't hack it anymore. Ambient temperatures were regularly spiking above 30C (86F). I had to come in on weekends to open doors, move fans, etc.Since this is just the beginning of summer I know it's only going to get worse. We need a commercial A/C unit. The portable A/C we have exhausts above the drop ceiling, which just creates a blanket of hot air and compounds the issue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘How to get an A/C budget approved’

According to one IT professional posting on Reddit’s section for systems administrators, the best way to get an air-conditioning budget approved is to turn up the heat – literally -- on the right company executives. He writes:   After adding a second rack to our server room the portable A/C unit just couldn't hack it anymore. Ambient temperatures were regularly spiking above 30C (86F). I had to come in on weekends to open doors, move fans, etc.Since this is just the beginning of summer I know it's only going to get worse. We need a commercial A/C unit. The portable A/C we have exhausts above the drop ceiling, which just creates a blanket of hot air and compounds the issue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Senator stalls intelligence funding bill over surveillance concerns

A U.S. senator has stalled an intelligence budget bill over concerns that it would expand surveillance while limiting oversight of it.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act, saying the bill would allow the FBI, without a court order, to demand U.S. residents' email and Internet records from ISPs and other communications providers.The bill would allow the FBI to obtain new records through the controversial National Security Letter program, which allows the FBI to collect phone and financial records through administrative subpoenas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Senator stalls intelligence funding bill over surveillance concerns

A U.S. senator has stalled an intelligence budget bill over concerns that it would expand surveillance while limiting oversight of it.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act, saying the bill would allow the FBI, without a court order, to demand U.S. residents' email and Internet records from ISPs and other communications providers.The bill would allow the FBI to obtain new records through the controversial National Security Letter program, which allows the FBI to collect phone and financial records through administrative subpoenas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 5 storage vendors shows massive shift to the cloud

There’s a changing of the guard afoot in the storage industry, and it’s getting cloudy.Each quarter 451 Research Group surveys it members in its Voice of the Enterprise series. Late last year, the company’s research revealed a dramatic reshaping of the storage market both in terms of which vendors enterprises consider strategic storage partners and where their future storage will be housed.+ MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Gartner says cloud will be the “default” application deployment option by 2020 | Deutsche Bank says one-third of finance apps will be in the cloud within 3 years +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Canonical, Snappy and the marketing value of collaboration

Collaboration is an important thing in the free and open source software world. Individual contributors (often employed by or involved with competing companies or organizations) working together for the benefit of all.It’s a core principle. Without collaboration, none of the free software world works.And it’s not just essential from the practical point of view—of people working together to get concrete things accomplished. It’s also become a bit of a marketing buzz word. And something happened two weeks ago that I found rather annoying.Wait. Before I go any further, I should make something clear. I am a huge fan of the collaborative efforts of many companies in the Linux and greater open source world. Even competitors such as SUSE and Red Hat come together on a regular basis to work hand in hand to find ways to benefit their own companies, while at the same time helping their rival and the broader community. And they do so happily. Heck, I’ve even seen SUSE and Red Hat employees give presentations together at Linux conferences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Brexit could cause data privacy headaches for US companies

The impact of the United Kingdom vote to withdraw from the European Union could have far-reaching consequences for international companies, which may need to rethink their data management policies.“As a part of the European Union, there is a general directive that all nations abide by a guide,” says Geeman Yip, CEO of cloud consultancy BitTitan. “Now that the UK is not a part of the EU, the previous baseline directives that were adopted will change.”Said another way: When the UK is part of the EU it has the same data sovereignty laws as other countries in the EU. When the UK breaks away, those laws could change. Companies operating in Europe may have to manage one set of data privacy laws for the UK and another for EU-member countries. The issue will impact both cloud and managed service providers who may need to offer additional options for customers to host data across Europe, and enterprise end users who may need to reconsider where their data is stored in Europe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Overvaluing Experience

“Sure, great candidate—so long as you just look at the paper. They don’t have any experience.”

I wonder how many times I’ve heard this in my networking career—I wonder how many times this has been said about me, in fact, after I’ve walked out of an interview room. We all know the tale of the paper tigers. And we all know how hard it is to land a position without experience, and how hard it is to get experience without landing a job (I have a friend in just this position right now, in fact). But let me tell you a story…

I don’t fish any longer, but I used to fish quite a bit—with my Grandfather. Now, like most Grandfathers, mine was not ordinary. He was, in fact, a County Agent, working for the US Forestry Service. This meant he spent his time blasting ponds, helping farmers figure out how to increase yield on their fields, and growing all sort of odd new types of things on his small plot of land. He also had mules (I’ll tell you about the mules some time later, I’m certain), and an old Forestry Green pickup truck.

career-01Anyway, to return to Continue reading

Alphabet looks to take on the iPhone with a Google-branded smartphone

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone back in 2007, he boldly proclaimed that the device was a leapfrog product that would take competitors five years to catch up to. As it turns out, Jobs was right.With the release of the iPhone, many in the smarpthone market realized they had to completely rethink the way they envisioned the smartphone experience. Specifically, Google (now Alphabet) completely retooled its Android mobile OS and, as Jobs predicted, Android began to give iOS a run for its money right around the 2012-2013 timeframe.While the iPhone's chief competition these days comes from third-party manufacturers that make use of Android (Samsung, LG, HTC etc.), a recent report relays that Alphabet plans to take on the iPhone directly with a Google branded phone of its own.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Alphabet looks to take on the iPhone with a Google branded smartphone

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone for the first time back in 2007, he boldly proclaimed that the device was a leapfrog product that would take competitors 5 years to catch up to. And, as it turns out, Jobs was right.With the release of the iPhone, many in the smarpthone market realized that they had to completely rethink the way they envisioned the smartphone experience. Specifically, Google (now Alphabet) completely retooled its Android mobile OS and, as Jobs predicted, Android began to give iOS a run for its money right around the 2012-2013 time frame.While the iPhone's chief competition these days comes from third-party manufacturers who make use of Android (Samsung, LG, HTC etc.), a recent report relays that Alphabet has plans to take on the iPhone directly with a Google branded phone of its own.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM just found a way to turn toxic old smartphones into medical-grade plastic

The technology industry's e-waste problem isn't expected to go away anytime soon, but IBM just made a discovery that could help. Researchers there have discovered a new recycling process that can turn the polycarbonates used to make smartphones and CDs into a nontoxic plastic that's safe and strong enough for medical use.Polycarbonates are found not just in smartphones and CDs but also LED screens, Blu-ray players, eyeglass lenses, kitchen utensils, and household storage gear. Unfortunately, they're known to leach BPA as they decompose over time, and there's considerable concern about the effects of that chemical on the brain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Novel Architectures on the Far Horizon for Weather Prediction

Weather modeling and forecasting centers are among some of the top users of supercomputing systems and are at the top of the list when it comes to areas that could benefit from exascale-class compute power.

However, for modeling centers, even those with the most powerful machines, there is a great deal of leg work on the code front in particular to scale to that potential. Still, many, including most recently the UK Met Office, have planted a stake in the ground for exascale—and they are looking beyond traditional architectures to meet the power and scalability demands they’ll be facing …

Novel Architectures on the Far Horizon for Weather Prediction was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Y Combinator wants to build a tech city, too

This whole “tech-companies-think-big-with-plans-to-build-entire-cities” thing is getting out of hand.Earlier this year, I reported on (OK, ridiculed) Google’s silliest moonshot, a plan by Google's parent company, Alphabet, to create Project Sidewalk, a city with hundreds of thousands of residents, intended to act as a proving ground for new technology. I asked “what could possibly go wrong” with a plan like that? I was thinking, well, just about everything.+ Also on Network World: Google’s biggest, craziest ‘moonshot’ yet+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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