Prezi tries again to get companies to change their presentations

Prezi, the seven-year-old startup that aims to reinvent the way that people make presentations, has launched a new business-focused offering that's aimed at getting companies to use its software instead of rivals like PowerPoint. Teams that sign up for Prezi Business will get several new features, including the ability to present over the Web, analytics to understand how different parts of presentations fly with audiences, and real-time collaboration. It's a major push for the presentation software company, which is competing against the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple with a cloud-based tool that pans and zooms through a canvas, rather than showing an audience a series of slides. Prezi CEO Peter Arvai argued in an interview that the software's ability to easily show relationships between presentation elements makes it a more effective tool for convincing an audience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No, Musky, Feudalism is best for Mars

Recently, the press fawned all over Elon Musk's comments at a conference. Among them was Musk's claim that "direct democracy" would be the best system, where citizen's vote directly for laws, rather than voting for (corrupt) representatives/congressmen. This is nonsense. The best political system would be feudalism.

There is no such thing as "direct democracy". Our representatives in congress are only the first layer on top of a bureaucracy. Most rules that restrict us are not "laws" voted by congress but "regulations" decided by some bureaucrat.

Consider the BP Gulf Oil spill, as an example. It happened because oil companies got cozy with their regulators, the minerals Management Service (MMS), part of the Department of the Interior. The bureaucrats had a dual mandate: to protect the environment, and to promote economic activity. Oil companies lobbied them to risk the environment in favor of profits.

Consider  Obamcare's controversial mandate that health insurers must pay for abortions. This was not part of the law pass by congress, but a decision by the bureaucrats in charge of all the little details in carrying out the law.

Consider the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulation of the Internet. It bases its Continue reading

IBM targets data scientists with a new development platform based on Apache Spark

Making sense of data can involve a wide variety of tools, and IBM is hoping to make data scientists' lives easier by putting them all in one place. The company on Tuesday released what it calls Data Science Experience, a new development environment in the cloud for real-time, high-performance analytics. Based on data-processing framework Apache Spark, Data Science Experience is designed to speed and simplify the process of embedding data and machine learning into cloud applications. Included in the new offering are tools such as RStudio and Jupyter Notebooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How I went from zero to overclocking in 30 minutes

If you think overclocking is something that only hardcore PC enthusiasts can get into, think again. At Computex in Taipei last week I got the chance to try overclocking Intel's latest processor, the 10-core Broadwell-E chip, and it was a lot of fun.Thanks to Intel's XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) overclocking app, doing some basic overclocking was easy. But beware: If you're the type of person who likes a challenge and enjoys tinkering with computers, it can get addictive fast.Overclocking is the process of running a processor and other components faster than their rated speed. It's done to get more performance for heavy-duty applications like gaming and video processing, and there's even a competitive side to it, with international rankings and competitions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former NASA Exec Brings Stealth Machine Learning Chip to Light

Chip startups come and go. Generally, we cover them because of novel architectures or potential for specific applications. But in some cases, like today, it is for those reasons and because of the people behind an effort to bring a new architecture into a crowded, and ultimately limited, landscape.

With $100 million in “patience money” from a few individual investors who believe in the future of sparse matrix-based computing on low-power and reprogrammable devices, Austin-based Knupath, has spent a decade in stealth mode designing and fabricating a custom digital signal processor (DSP) chip to target deep learning training, machine …

Former NASA Exec Brings Stealth Machine Learning Chip to Light was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

13% off ThermaCELL Mosquito Repellent Pest Control Outdoor and Camping Lantern – Deal Alert

The Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern effectively repels mosquitoes and other biting insects in a 15 x 15-foot zone. It has no open flames, operates on a single butane cartidge, and is perfect for a deck, porch or campsite. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon and is currently discounted to $34.90. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Muhammad Ali & IBM sought to “shake up the world” with Linux

The late Muhammad Ali was not only a champion fighter and cultural figure, but also no slouch in the advertising ring. Ali sold pizzas, car batteries and even roach spray ("I can whup anything on two legs but even me, the greatest, needs help beating things with six legs...") While many have used Ali's image or voice in their ads, including Apple (Think Different commercial) and Gatorade, I'm not aware of Ali hawking much in the way of technology. One exception was this 2004 IBM Super Bowl ad during which the company pushes Linux and open source computing, something it had been behind since the late 1990s. The ad features a young boy (depicted as "Linux" in related IBM ads) soaking up vintage video of Ali boasting "I shook up the world!" and then sitting face-to-face with the boxer, who urges the kid to "shake things up" and "shake up the world."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to ensure new graduates aren’t compromising enterprise networks

With college graduations now behind students, many young people might already have secured jobs even before they crossed the stage with their degrees in hand. With these fresh-faced employees on the payroll, now businesses must make sure their security habits are in line with today’s policies.New graduates aren’t just bringing their skills and experience to the workplace – they’re also bringing poor cybersecurity habits. Recent studies have shown Millennials are generally indifferent about data security, says David Meyer of OneLogin, an identity access management company.With many new grads choosing to use applications and devices that have not been approved by corporate IT, there is no easy way to monitor usage to ensure data remains secure. Considering the average cost of a cyber breach is approximately $3.8 million, it’s in a company’s best interest to exercise precaution as they welcome entry-level employees into the ranks, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How Intel plans to change servers as it breaks away from PCs

From PCs to servers, Intel is trying to redesign the way computers operate. We've already seen how PCs are changing, with 2-in-1 hybrids and tiny Compute Sticks, but some of the chip maker's groundbreaking technologies will initially appear in servers.The PC market is in decline, and the chipmaker has cut unprofitable products like smartphone chips. Intel is redirecting more resources to develop server and data-center products, which are already money makers for the company. Intel is also focusing on markets like the Internet of Things, memory, silicon photonics, and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), all of which have ties to the fast-growing data center business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Intel plans to change servers as it breaks away from PCs

From PCs to servers, Intel is trying to redesign the way computers operate. We've already seen how PCs are changing, with 2-in-1 hybrids and tiny Compute Sticks, but some of the chip maker's groundbreaking technologies will initially appear in servers.The PC market is in decline, and the chipmaker has cut unprofitable products like smartphone chips. Intel is redirecting more resources to develop server and data-center products, which are already money makers for the company. Intel is also focusing on markets like the Internet of Things, memory, silicon photonics, and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), all of which have ties to the fast-growing data center business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Privacy is disappearing

So the main question raised by all this surveillance tech is how much we’re willing to risk loss of liberty for the sake of greater security. A saying often attributed to Benjamin Franklin has it: “Those who prefer security to liberty deserve neither.” Assuming that’s true, we need to come together as a polity to decide when to say “Enough!” to all the spying. Intellectual Takeout

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The post Worth Reading: Privacy is disappearing appeared first on 'net work.

Streaming telemetry

The OpenConfig project has been getting a lot of attention lately.  A number of large network operators, lead by Google, are developing "a consistent set of vendor-neutral data models (written in YANG) based on actual operational needs from use cases and requirements from multiple network operators."

The OpenConfig project extends beyond configuration, "Streaming telemetry is a new paradigm for network monitoring in which data is streamed from devices continuously with efficient, incremental updates. Operators can subscribe to the specific data items they need, using OpenConfig data models as the common interface."

Anees Shaikh's Network Field Day talk provides an overview of OpenConfig and includes an example that demonstrates how configuration and state are combined in a single YANG data model. In the example, read/write config attributes used to configure a network interface (name, description, MTU, operational state) are combined with the state attributes needed to verify the configuration (MTU, name, description, oper-status, last-change) and collect metrics (in-octets, in-ucast-pkts, in-broadcast-pkts, ...).

Anees positions OpenConfig streaming telemetry mechanism as an attractive alternative to polling for metrics using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) - see Push vs Pull for a detailed comparison between pushing (streaming) and pulling (polling) metrics.

Streaming telemetry is Continue reading
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