Microsoft’s new Raspberry Pi 3 kit makes it easy to create new devices

Microsoft wants to make the Raspberry Pi 3 computer easier to use for people who want to be device makers but haven't worked with hardware before.Microsoft is developing the Seeed Windows 10 IoT Core Grove Kit with China-based Seeed Studio. The kit has all the hardware and software needed to start creating cool new devices.Contents of the kit include the Raspberry Pi 3, a breakout board, connectors, cables and a smartphone-like screen. The kit will be available in the summer, though the companies didn't immediately provide a price."If you're interested in getting started with software, you know your hardware ... but you're scared of plugging in your hardware and electrocuting yourself, this kit is for you," said Daniel Rosenstein, lead principal program manager at Microsoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Writing books still matters—reading them does, too

Ivan, over at ipspace.net, has an interesting post up on writing books —

Why would you want to write a book? If you think you’ll earn a lot of money, think twice… unless you plan to write a science fiction bestseller, Swift-for-Dummies, or 50 Shades of Something.

Several points in reply…

No, you won’t make a lot of money. Writing books for a living (in fact, writing for a living at all) has been pretty much destroyed by several factors, including the absolute dismal rate at which our culture reads (I’m considered something of a freak with my goal of reading 100 books/year; C.S. Lewis read that many in a few weeks in the hospital, across four or five languages), and the rate at which people try to “climb the author pile” by writing for free on blogs/etc.

There is one comment here that I think is really worth pointing out: To make matters worse, core networking is not exactly a popular topic (compared to Swift Programming or Introduction to IPv6)… I’ve heard this a lot in my time as an author—for instance, my books simply don’t sell as well as just about anything at the CCIE level, Continue reading

Tech-support scammers claim your email has been hacked

The Federal Trade Commission is warning of “a new twist” on the old tech-support scam.From an FTC blog post: Lately, we’ve heard reports that people are getting calls from someone claiming to be from the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. Their claim? That your email account has been hacked and is sending fraudulent messages. They say they’ll have to take legal action against you, unless you let them fix the problem right away.If you raise questions, the scammers turn up the pressure – but they’ve also given out phone numbers of actual Federal Trade Commission staff (who have been surprised to get calls). The scammers also have sent people to the actual website for the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. (It’s a real thing: it’s an organization that helps governments work together on cross-border privacy cooperation.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech-support scammers claim your email has been hacked

The Federal Trade Commission is warning of “a new twist” on the old tech-support scam.From an FTC blog post: Lately, we’ve heard reports that people are getting calls from someone claiming to be from the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. Their claim? That your email account has been hacked and is sending fraudulent messages. They say they’ll have to take legal action against you, unless you let them fix the problem right away.If you raise questions, the scammers turn up the pressure – but they’ve also given out phone numbers of actual Federal Trade Commission staff (who have been surprised to get calls). The scammers also have sent people to the actual website for the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. (It’s a real thing: it’s an organization that helps governments work together on cross-border privacy cooperation.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple fixes iOS lock screen bypass that gives access to photos, contacts

Apple has reportedly fixed a vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to bypass the passcode on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus running iOS 9.3.1 in order to access the address book and photos.The bypass technique was discovered by researchers from German security firm Evolution Security and takes advantage of Siri's integration with apps like Twitter or Facebook and the new 3D Touch feature that's only available on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models.On a locked device, attackers can call up Siri and ask to search for items that contain @ tags using Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo. Then they can locate a string like an email address and use the 3D Touch hard push to bring out the context menu for it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple fixes iOS lock screen bypass that gives access to photos, contacts

Apple has reportedly fixed a vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to bypass the passcode on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus running iOS 9.3.1 in order to access the address book and photos.The bypass technique was discovered by researchers from German security firm Evolution Security and takes advantage of Siri's integration with apps like Twitter or Facebook and the new 3D Touch feature that's only available on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models.On a locked device, attackers can call up Siri and ask to search for items that contain @ tags using Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo. Then they can locate a string like an email address and use the 3D Touch hard push to bring out the context menu for it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Frontier Communications continues to take a beating from Verizon castoffs

The transition of 3.7 million Verizon landline customers in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications, as announced on April 1 of all days, continues to be a mess due to a combination of technical and communications issues.Unhappy landline phone, broadband FiOS Internet and video-on-demand customers have vented to Frontier support, including on social media sites, to express their frustration. Some have blamed Verizon as well, for not ensuring its residential, small/medium business and enterprise customers would receive a smooth transition after grabbing its $10.54 billion in the sale and shifting 9,400 of its employees to Frontier. (Though Verizon has blamed uncertainty round federal Internet regulation (i.e., net neutrality) for forcing it to sell the assets in the first place.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Frontier Communications continues to take a beating from Verizon castoffs

The transition of 3.7 million Verizon landline customers in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications, as announced on April 1 of all days, continues to be a mess due to a combination of technical and communications issues.Unhappy landline phone, broadband FiOS Internet and video-on-demand customers have vented to Frontier support, including on social media sites, to express their frustration. Some have blamed Verizon as well, for not ensuring its residential, small/medium business and enterprise customers would receive a smooth transition after grabbing its $10.54 billion in the sale and shifting 9,400 of its employees to Frontier. (Though Verizon has blamed uncertainty round federal Internet regulation (i.e., net neutrality) for forcing it to sell the assets in the first place.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Volkswagen chooses OpenStack for private cloud

The second largest car manufacturer in the world, Volkswagen Group, will use the open-source cloud computing platform OpenStack to build a private cloud that will host websites for its brands VW, Audi and Porsche, and be a platform for innovating automotive technology, the company announced today.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Mirantis beats out Red Hat for big VW OpenStack deal | Jeff Bezos to shareholders: At 10 years old, AWS is bigger than Amazon was and growing faster +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WhatsApp: The FBI’s worst nightmare

If encryption is something to be feared in the hands of terrorists, WhatsApp just delivered them a tool that will give the FBI nightmares much worse than the encryption on iPhones. WhatsApp enlisted the help of Open Whisper Systems to implement the encryption, and according to that company’s blog, “This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.” This will likely drive law enforcement crazy, the FBI in particular, because it makes it impossible for WhatsApp to obey court orders to decrypt specified communications. Even if it wanted to comply, it couldn’t. The encryption is set up between the endpoints in the communication and WhatsApp just moves the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WhatsApp: The FBI’s worst nightmare

If encryption is something to be feared in the hands of terrorists, WhatsApp just delivered them a tool that will give the FBI nightmares much worse than the encryption on iPhones. WhatsApp enlisted the help of Open Whisper Systems to implement the encryption, and according to that company’s blog, “This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.” This will likely drive law enforcement crazy, the FBI in particular, because it makes it impossible for WhatsApp to obey court orders to decrypt specified communications. Even if it wanted to comply, it couldn’t. The encryption is set up between the endpoints in the communication and WhatsApp just moves the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel and the Network Arms Race

IntelLogo

Networking is undergoing a huge transformation. Software is surely a huge driver for enabling technology to grow by leaps and bounds and increase functionality. But the hardware underneath is growing just as much. We don’t seem to notice as much because the port speeds we deal with on a regular basis haven’t gotten much faster than the specs we read about years go. But the chips behind the ports are where the real action is right now.

Fueling The Engines Of Forwarding

Intel has jumped into networking with both feet and is looking to land on someone. Their work on the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) is helping developers write code that is highly portable across CPU architecture. We used to deal with specific microprocessors in unique configurations. A good example is Dynamips.

Most everyone is familiar with this program or the projects that spawned, Dynagen and GNS3. Dynamips worked at first because it emulated the MIPS processor found in Cisco 7200 routers. It just happened that the software used the same code for those routers all the way up to the first releases of the 15.x train. Dynamips allowed for the emulation of Cisco router software but it Continue reading