Microsoft covets LinkedIn’s algorithms

Microsoft yesterday announced it would buy the business social network LinkedIn for a company acquisition record of $26.2 billion, a purchase triggered by Microsoft's appetite for algorithms, an analyst argued. "There are two components to LinkedIn that Microsoft wanted," said Jenny Sussin, a Gartner research director, in an interview. "One is the data component, the other is the algorithm component." An algorithm is a set of operations that tells a computer what calculations to run on what data, then how to process that data to generate a result. Algorithms are the "secret sauce" of many technology firms, the fiercely-guarded crown jewels on which a company's fortunes rest. Google's page-ranking algorithms, for example, are as secret as the recipe for Coca-Cola, and just as critical to Google's ability to generate relevant search results as the sugar water formula is to Coke's bottom line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

38% off REC TEC Wood Pellet Grill and Smoker – Deal Alert

The computer-controlled REC TEC wood pellet grill averages 5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from nearly 250 customers (93% rate it 5 stars - read reviews) and promises to change the way you eat. The grill starts with the push of a button and accurately maintains temperatures between 180 and 500-degrees, in 5-degree increments, by self-feeding from a hopper of real hardwood pellets available in apple, oak, pecan and more. This precision instrument is built with high temp durable powder coat finish, stainless steel handles, and features a 40-pound capacity hopper for long lasting grill or smoking sessions, and a large 19.5x36" grilling area. To help win your confidence they offer an "unmatched" 6-year limited warranty. With a regular list price of $1,598, it's currently discounted by a whopping 38% to $998 making it an attractive option, if you're in the market. Learn more about the discounted REC TEC grill at Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Universal Snap Works Across All Linux Distributions

Canonical contributed the initial code for the snap.

Is It Real, or Is It Cumulus VX?

Phew! Cumulus Linux 3.0 has just been released! A big shout out to all of my engineering colleagues who worked so hard to make this happen. JR Rivers gave an overview of all the goodies included in 3.0 in his recent blog post. Stay tuned for more blog posts from other engineers for details on all of those new features.

But Cumulus Linux isn’t the only beneficiary of all the 3.0 work. Cumulus VX, our free virtual machine-based version of Cumulus Linux, also has some pretty cool new tricks. When we launched Cumulus VX last August we thought it would be a way for people to get hands on with a Linux-based switch operating system, in their own environment and without any commitment. Boy, Were we surprised at how it quickly became so much more. With over 3,800 unique users, Cumulus VX is being deployed in all sorts of ways we never dreamed of. As just one example, existing customers are using it to validate their configurations before upgrading their physical switches from one release to another.

What’s New?

And that brings me to the first change we’ve made: concurrent releases. Our plan from now on Continue reading

A closer look at Apple’s biggest announcements from WWDC 2016

Analysis of Apple’s biggest announcements from WWDCImage by ReutersApple's WWDC keynote, which included demos and presentations from Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, (pictured above) was jam-packed with a number of intriguing announcements and software updates spanning the entirety of the company's product lineup. From watchOS and iOS to tvOS and macOS, Apple gave us a whole lot to digest. To help you make sense of it all, we've compiled a list highlighting the top announcements to come out of WWDC 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Russian hackers breach DNC computers, steal data on Trump

Russian hackers managed to breach the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and stole opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.The hackers had access to email and chat traffic as far back as last summer, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. No financial data was stolen, however, suggesting that espionage was the motive.The hackers belong to two separate groups that have been linked to the Russian government, according to security firm Crowdstrike, which was hired to mitigate the data breach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Russian hackers breach DNC computers, steal data on Trump

Russian hackers managed to breach the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and stole opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.The hackers had access to email and chat traffic as far back as last summer, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. No financial data was stolen, however, suggesting that espionage was the motive.The hackers belong to two separate groups that have been linked to the Russian government, according to security firm Crowdstrike, which was hired to mitigate the data breach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Walls Come Down On The Last Bastion Of Proprietary

Open source software has done a lot to transform the IT industry, but perhaps more than anything else it has reminded those who architect complex systems that all elements of a datacenter have to be equally open and programmable for them to make the customizations that are necessary to run specific workloads efficiently and therefore cost effectively.

Servers have been smashed wide open in large enterprises, HPC centers, hyperscalers, and cloud builders (excepting Microsoft Azure, of course) by the double whammy of the ubiquity of the X86 server and the open source Linux operating system, and storage has followed suit …

The Walls Come Down On The Last Bastion Of Proprietary was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: The end of the hypervisor

The death knell of the hypervisor was sounded when Intel provided much of the unique capabilities of the hypervisor directly in the chip via the Intel-VTx instruction set. Prior to this, VMware and Xen had two unique approaches to providing hypervisor capabilities: binary translation and paravirtualization respectively. Arguments raged about which was faster, but once Intel-VTx came along, by virtue of being on the chip die, it was the de facto speed winner. -Cloud Scaling

The post Worth Reading: The end of the hypervisor appeared first on 'net work.

Framing Questions for Optimized I/O Subsystems

Building high performance systems at the bleeding edge hardware-wise without considering the way data actually moves through such a system is too common—and woefully so, given the fact that understanding and articulating an application’s requirements can lead to dramatic I/O improvements.

A range of “Frequently Unanswered Questions” are at the root of inefficient storage design due to a lack of specified workflows, and this problem is widespread, especially in verticals where data isn’t the sole business driver.

One could make the argument that data is at the heart of any large-scale computing endeavor, but as workflows change, the habit of …

Framing Questions for Optimized I/O Subsystems was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

What is flow-based load balancing ?

Flow-based load balancing is used mostly in layer 2 networks, although in Layer 3 routing, packets can be load balanced per packets or per flow, flow-based load balancing is commonly used with the Local area network, datacenter and datacenter interconnect technologies. There are two important load balancing mechanisms in layer 2. Vlan-based load balancing and […]

The post What is flow-based load balancing ? appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Microsoft released 16 security bulletins for June, 5 rated critical

Microsoft released 16 security bulletins for June, five of which are rated critical for remote code execution vulnerabilities. Even the MSRC team doesn’t seem too excited over this month’s patches as the entire Patch Tuesday announcement is a mere three sentences.FYI: You should be keeping an eye out for the Adobe Flash Player patch as Adobe issued a security advisory, warning of a Flash exploit being used in the wild for targeted attacks. The fix for Flash is expected to be released on Thursday, June 16.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft released 16 security bulletins for June, 5 rated critical

Microsoft released 16 security bulletins for June, five of which are rated critical for remote code execution vulnerabilities. Even the MSRC team doesn’t seem too excited over this month’s patches as the entire Patch Tuesday announcement is a mere three sentences.FYI: You should be keeping an eye out for the Adobe Flash Player patch as Adobe issued a security advisory, warning of a Flash exploit being used in the wild for targeted attacks. The fix for Flash is expected to be released on Thursday, June 16.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft and LinkedIn: A match made in uncool heaven

Normally, I’m a huge skeptic of big-bucks tech mergers. But I’m 100 percent on board with Microsoft’s $26.2 billion surprise acquisition of LinkedIn, announced earlier this week.+ Also on Network World: Microsoft scoops up LinkedIn for $26.2B in cash +Why? Because as I see it, merger success isn’t usually based on technology fit or market positioning or trivia like that. Instead, most of the time it all hinges on the compatibility of corporate culture and values, and Microsoft and LinkedIn are eerily similar those regards—like twin sons from different mothers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Security products may seem like ‘snake oil’, but that’s OK

At CircleCityCon, CSO's Steve Ragan talks with researcher Pablo Breuer about how many security technologies suffer from 'snake oil syndrome', and how CSOs and other security professionals can deal with those issues.

No Capes, No Wands

As a keen observer of the network engineering world for the last twenty… okay, maybe longer, but I don’t want to sound like an old man telling stories quite yet… years, there’s one thing I’ve always found kind-of strange. We have a strong tendency towards hero worship.

I don’t really know why this might be, but I’ve seen it in Cisco TAC—the almost hushed tones around a senior engineer who “is brilliant.” I’ve seen it while sitting in a meeting in the middle of an argument over some technical point in a particular RFC. Someone says, “we should just ask the author…” Which is almost always followed by something like: “Really? You know them?”

To some degree, this is understandable—network engineering is difficult, and we should truly honor those in our world who have made a huge impact. In many other ways, it’s unhelpful, and even unhealthy. Why?

First, it tends to create an “us versus them,” atmosphere in our world. There are engineers who work on “normal” networks, and then there are those who work on, well, you know, special ones. Not everyone needs those “special skills,” so we end up creating a vast pool of people Continue reading

Barefoot Networks Just Raised Another $57M

Also: Why networking should follow the example of graphics chips

What does PE-CE mean in MPLS ?

What does PE-CE mean in the context of MPLS ? What is CE , P and PE device in MPLS and MPLS VPN ? These are foundational terms and definition in MPLS. MPLS is one of the most commonly used encapsulation mechanism in Service Provider networks and before studying more advanced mechanisms, this article is […]

The post What does PE-CE mean in MPLS ? appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Open Source at Docker, Part 3: The Tooling and Automation

The Docker open source project is among the most successful in recent history by every possible metric: number of contributors, GitHub stars, commit frequency, … Managing an open source project at that scale and preserving a healthy community doesn’t come without challenges.

This post is the last of a 3-part series on how we deal with those challenges on the Docker Engine project. Part 1 was all about the people behind the project, and part 2 focused on the processes. In Part 3, we will cover tooling and automation.

There are many areas for automation in a project such as Docker. We wanted to present and share some of our tooling with you: the CI, the utility bots, and the project dashboards.

Continue reading

BeagleBone board gets long-overdue Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities

Before Raspberry Pi rocked the world of makers, boards from BeagleBoard.org were the computers of choice among developers who were looking to create cool gadgets.One of its boards, BeagleBone, isn't as popular as it used to be, but it still has a loyal following. Seeed Studios has taken a version of the open-source board and given it a much-needed wireless upgrade, adding Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support.The BeagleBone Green Wireless is a significant improvement over predecessors: among other things it now allows makers to add wireless capabilities to smart home devices, wearables, health monitors and other gadgets. The upgrade also brings BeagleBone into the Internet of Things era, in which wirelessly interconnected devices are constantly exchanging data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here