30 days in a terminal: Day 0 — The adventure begins

Last summer, I wrote an article series called "Kicking Google out of my life." It was an attempt to remove all Google services entirely from my daily usage for 30 days—a surprisingly daunting challenge for someone who had become deeply dependent on Google. I was mostly successful. I chronicled my experience—detailing how I approached replacing Google services with non-Google variants—and in the end, my life was better for it.Did I return to Google for a few things (such as YouTube and G+)? You bet I did. But my heavy reliance on a single company finally came to an end, and I learned a great deal (both about available alternatives and my own personal preferences) in the process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Unhappiness with MPLS Spurs SD-WAN Adoption

These are enterprises with more than 1,000 employees.

A black market is selling access to hacked government servers for $6

Want access to a government server? An online black market is selling access to thousands of hacked servers for as little as US$6.Known as xDedic, the market has a catalog of over 70,000 compromised servers for sale, Kaspersky Lab said Wednesday.The servers are in 173 countries and used by governments, businesses and universities. The owners likely have no idea they’ve been hacked, the security firm said.Hackers at xDedic breached many of the servers through trial-and-error using different passwords. They catalogued the servers' software, browsing history and other details buyers might like to know.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A black market is selling access to hacked government servers for $6

Want access to a government server? An online black market is selling access to thousands of hacked servers for as little as US$6.Known as xDedic, the market has a catalog of over 70,000 compromised servers for sale, Kaspersky Lab said Wednesday.The servers are in 173 countries and used by governments, businesses and universities. The owners likely have no idea they’ve been hacked, the security firm said.Hackers at xDedic breached many of the servers through trial-and-error using different passwords. They catalogued the servers' software, browsing history and other details buyers might like to know.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Next-Gen Network Adapters: More Oomph, Switchless Clusters

There are two endpoints in any network connection, and you have to focus on both the server adapter and the switch to get the best and most balanced performance out of the network and the proper return on what amounts to be a substantial investment in a cluster.

With the upcoming ConnectX-5 server adapters, Mellanox Technologies is continuing in its drive to have more and more of the network processing in a server node offloaded to its adapter cards. And it is also rolling out significant new functionality such as background checkpointing and switchless networking, and of course there is …

Next-Gen Network Adapters: More Oomph, Switchless Clusters was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

People Skills

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FBI: Business e-mail scam losses top $3 billion, a 1,300% increase in since Jan.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) this week said the scourge it calls the Business Email Compromise continues to rack-up victims and money – over $3 billion in losses so far.+More on Network World: FBI/FTC: Watch those e-mails from your “CEO”+The BEC scam is typically carried out by compromising legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds, the IC3 stated.The impact of the scam is detailed I the IC3 stats released this week including:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The case for WAN acceleration as NFV

Previously, I discussed the benefits of using regional performance hubs to support new data patterns associated with the increasing use of cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and Office365.Just as business applications have transitioned to an “as a service” model, so will many network-based functions such as firewalls, IPS, IDS, etc. using network function virtualization (NFV). Although there hasn’t much been public discourse yet on WAN Optimization as a service, it is ideally suited for being “NFV-ed.”+ Also on Network World: Reinventing the WAN +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The case for WAN acceleration as NFV

Previously, I discussed the benefits of using regional performance hubs to support new data patterns associated with the increasing use of cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and Office365.Just as business applications have transitioned to an “as a service” model, so will many network-based functions such as firewalls, IPS, IDS, etc. using network function virtualization (NFV). Although there hasn’t much been public discourse yet on WAN Optimization as a service, it is ideally suited for being “NFV-ed.”+ Also on Network World: Reinventing the WAN +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mirantis throws another hand grenade: Services are cool again

I'm a big fan of Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack vendor. It is one company that has no problem at all being contentious. Where other vendors tend to think deeply about the impacts of what they say and process their messages through multiple levels of communication staffers, Mirantis has an "ask forgiveness, not permission" approach. This must cause serious headaches for its long-suffering press staff, but it certainly provides serious fodder for the commentators out there.Looking back over the years, Mirantis has been the source of many high-profile cloud stories. Of course, high-profile is a relative term, and it is, admittedly, a small number of people who watch the space that Mirantis plays in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Image Optimization Technology that Serves Millions of Requests Per Day

This article will touch upon how Kraken.io built and scaled an image optimization platform which serves millions of requests per day, with the goal of maintaining high performance at all times while keeping costs as low as possible. We present our infrastructure as it is in its current state at the time of writing, and touch upon some of the interesting things we learned in order to get it here.

Let’s make an image optimizer

You want to start saving money on your CDN bills and generally speed up your websites by pushing less bytes over the wire to your user’s browser. Chances are that over 60% of your traffic are images alone.

Using ImageMagick (you did read ImageTragick, right?) you can slash down the quality of a JPEG file with a simple command:

$ convert -quality 70 original.jpg optimized.jpg

$ ls -la

-rw-r--r--  1 matylla  staff  5897 May 16 14:24 original.jpg

-rw-r--r--  1 matylla  staff  2995 May 16 14:25 optimized.jpg

Congratulations. You’ve just brought down the size of that JPEG by ~50% by butchering it’s quality. The image now looks like Minecraft. It can’t look like that - it sells your products Continue reading

AT&T moves Wi-Fi calling needle forward for users of some Android devices

Having provided the option for iPhone users looking to make such international calls back in March, AT&T today announced that owners of certain Android devices will now also have access to Wi-Fi calling.So if you’re stuck in a spot with lousy to non-existent cell coverage – my kids’ school, for example – you’ll be able to call and text without stepping outside.The Android option is limited for starters to LG G4 but AT&T indicated that others will follow “soon.”From an AT&T blog post:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Linked-Out: Microsoft’s acquisition could open a box of trouble

A Pandora’s box (pardon the pun) will open when Microsoft closes on its recently announced acquisition of LinkedIn. Make no mistake; this is about a huge resource pool of both data and client prospects. It’s also many eggs in one basket. LinkedIn is underdeveloped. It has not been mined, nor has it been very creative. Yes, there are many vanity things one can do: list accomplishments, rally the troops, promote business and prospect—actual B2B can start there. But there’s no mechanism for fulfillment at LinkedIn that doesn’t include LinkedIn in terms of promotion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn: Microsoft’s acquisition could open a box of trouble

A Pandora’s box (pardon the pun) will open when Microsoft closes on its recently announced acquisition of LinkedIn. Make no mistake; this is about a huge resource pool of both data and client prospects. It’s also many eggs in one basket.LinkedIn is underdeveloped. It has not been mined, nor has it been very creative. Yes, there are many vanity things one can do: list accomplishments, rally the troops, promote business and prospect—actual B2B can start there. But there’s no mechanism for fulfillment at LinkedIn that doesn’t include LinkedIn in terms of promotion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chef’s open source tool lets applications automate infrastructure provisioning

Chef, a company that has made a name for itself developing infrastructure automation software products, released a new open source project named Habitat this week that it says is defining a new category: Application automation. Habitat is a way of packaging an application in a way that lets the app provision the infrastructure it needs to run. This process gives Habitat the ability to run on any type of infrastructure, from physical to virtualized servers, in data centers or in the cloud. +MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Cisco unearths its inner startup culture via companywide innovation contest | This startup may have the world’s fastest networking switch chip +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google slips to No. 2 in places Millennials want to work

Where do millennials most want to work? 3M, according to a survey of 13,000 high school students, college students and young professionals. Last year’s top-ranked company, Google, is second on the 2016 list of most desirable employers. This year’s Millennial Career Survey is the ninth annual report from the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), an international honors organization that aims to advance the goals of high achieving students. The full report digs into employment preferences, career planning, educational goals and life choices of the millennial generation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 25 companies where millennials want to work; Google slips to No. 2

Where do millennials most want to work? 3M, according to a survey of 13,000 high school students, college students and young professionals. Last year’s top-ranked company, Google, is second on the 2016 list of most desirable employers.This year’s Millennial Career Survey is the ninth annual report from the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), an international honors organization that aims to advance the goals of high achieving students. The full report digs into employment preferences, career planning, educational goals and life choices of the millennial generation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 25 companies where millennials want to work; Google slips to No. 2

Where do millennials most want to work? 3M, according to a survey of 13,000 high school students, college students and young professionals. Last year’s top-ranked company, Google, is second on the 2016 list of most desirable employers.This year’s Millennial Career Survey is the ninth annual report from the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), an international honors organization that aims to advance the goals of high achieving students. The full report digs into employment preferences, career planning, educational goals and life choices of the millennial generation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Leaving fixed function switches behind

There are two competing trends in platform designs that architects always have to contend with. They can build a platform that performs a specific function and does it well, or create a more generic platform that sacrifices some efficiency but does a lot of jobs well. Sometimes you try to shoot the gap between these two poles. -The Next Platform

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128 Technology aims to fix the internet

After two years of being in stealth mode, 128 Technology came out of hiding this week and is making a bold claim—that they can fix the way the internet works.128 Technology is led by Andy Ory, former CEO of Acme Packet, another Massachusetts-based company that was headquartered only a few miles from where 128 Technology is located. Also, many of the current employees of 128 Technology are former Acme Packet employees.Other than physical location, there are a couple of other similarities between 128 Technology and Acme Packet. First, the names of the companies are equally non-descriptive of what they do. Second, and more important, Acme was one a pioneer in the session border control (SBC) market, which redefined how multimedia traffic moved across networks. 128 Technology is trying to do something similar with all network traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here