House panel moves to require warrants for stored data

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has advanced a bill to give email and cloud-stored data new privacy protections from law enforcement searches. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted 28-0 to approve an amended version of the Email Privacy Act, which would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other cloud-stored data that's more than six months old. Some privacy advocates and tech companies have been pushing Congress to update a 30-year-old law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for the last six years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 Stack Benchmarking DOs and DON’Ts

An interesting question came up on the mechanical-sympathy list about how to best benchmark a stack of different queue (aeron/argona, jctools, dpdk, pony) and transport (aeron, dpdk, seastar) options.

Who better to answer than Gil Tene, Vice President of Technology and CTO, Co-Founder, of Azul Systems? Here's his usual insightful and helpful response:

If you are looking at the set of "stacks" (all of which are queues/transports), I would strongly encourage you to avoid repeating the mistakes of testing methodologies that focus entirely on max achievable throughput and then report some (usually bogus) latency stats at those max throughout modes.

The tech empower numbers are a classic example of this in play, and while they do provide some basis for comparing a small aspect of behavior (what I call the "how fast can this thing drive off a cliff" comparison, or "peddle to the metal" testing), those results are not very useful for comparing load carrying capacities for anything that actually needs to maintain some form of responsiveness SLA or latency spectrum requirements.

Rules of thumb I'd start with (some simple DOs and DON'Ts):

Fridge that automatically refills your water pitcher is either the best or worst thing ever

I’ve become that dad - you know, the one who goes around the house turning off the lights because his kids haven’t learned how to flip a light switch, or the one who opens the cupboard to discover an empty bag of Oreos (See it on Amazon).So instead of disdain, I want to congratulate and applaud GE for inventing a refrigerator that has an automatic refill water pitcher function. The press release says it best:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SmartThings community in uproar over loss of Rule Machine

There’s a storm brewing on the SmartThings forums as the SmartThings community suffered a big loss when community developer Bruce Ravenel announced his decision to pull Rule Machine.You can set up “routines” and add “actions” such as turning all the lights on, opening garage doors, unlocking doors and setting the thermostat in the SmartThings app. If you wanted those devices to be smarter and interact with other apps, then IFTTT lets people setup If This Then That recipes. But Rule Machine added another level of “smart” to smart devices. As was explained on the HA (Home Automation) Forums, Rule Machine is “like IFTTT but with an extra ‘This.’ If This and This, then do an action.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tokyo hotel apologizes in advance of minute-long Internet disruption

We all live in fear of the Internet going down, whether it be via a government kill switch or a nefarious hacking group. The operators of one swanky hotel in Japan understand the public's unease, and have taken pains to assure patrons that really, the Internet will only be inaccessible from the facility for 1 minute, and at 4AM at that.A friend who is working in Japan this week shared the photo above of a note from the Palace Hotel Tokyo's housekeeping staff, and she commented: "Only in Japan... The detail and thoughtfulness and modesty that pervades everything here is truly admirable."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tokyo hotel apologizes in advance of minute-long Internet disruption

We all live in fear of the Internet going down, whether it be via a government kill switch or a nefarious hacking group. The operators of one swanky hotel in Japan understand the public's unease, and have taken pains to assure patrons that really, the Internet will only be inaccessible from the facility for 1 minute, and at 4AM at that.A friend who is working in Japan this week shared the photo above of a note from the Palace Hotel Tokyo's housekeeping staff, and she commented: "Only in Japan... The detail and thoughtfulness and modesty that pervades everything here is truly admirable."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery Helps Meet Key Recovery Point Objectives at an Affordable Cost

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 10, 2015 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the City of Avondale, Ariz., has implemented VMware’s unified platform for the hybrid cloud. By virtualizing the network with VMware NSX™ and adopting VMware vCloud® Air™ Disaster Recovery, the City is better equipped to protect critical services. More than simple backups, Avondale is better prepared to achieve quick recovery from unforeseen incidents that could impact the delivery of municipal services to citizens and businesses such as traffic management, water and wastewater utilities, and emergency response by police officers and firefighters.

The city of Avondale, an innovative community in the Phoenix Metropolitan area, is committed to making sure that critical health, safety, utility, and financial services are always available for its residents. According to the City of Avondale, its municipal government maintains a budget of $180 million with over 500 employees. The 16-person Information Technology (IT) department supports the community by using technology to engage the community and innovate municipal services to keep the city responsive, efficient, and secure.

The City was looking to improve its ability to recover from unforeseen disasters through cloud-based disaster recovery. Given the Continue reading

U.S. government data security is an embarrassment

The U.S. spends a lot of money—Congressionally encumbered funds, but also unknown/untold amounts of money on its domestic, international and military-based espionage and intelligence activities.You’d think the U.S. was getting a good deal. Yet its citizenry is being robbed blind—and frequently. A mysterious hacking group, APT6, has been noodling around inside our infrastructure for years undetected until recently.This is to say: the greatest “superpower” on planet Earth has let the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), IRS and only heaven knows what infrastructure get cracked open like an egg. Your data, my data, yes, our information assets are in some cache resting in some dark data center somewhere—but not in the original spot where it belonged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Adapting Applications And Avoiding Acrobatic Adjustments

JumpingHoops

A couple of months ago, I was on a panel at TechUnplugged where we talked about scaling systems to large sizes. Here’s a link to the video of that panel:

One of the things that we discussed in that panel was applications. Toward the end of the discussion we got into a bit of a back-and-forth about applications and the systems they run on. I feel like it’s time to develop those ideas a bit more.

The Achilles’ Heel

My comments about legacy applications are pointed. If a company is spending thousands of dollars and multiples hours of time in the engineering team to reconfigure the network or the storage systems to support an old application, my response was simple: go out of business.

It does sound a bit flippant to think that a company making a profit should just close the shutters and walk away. But that’s just the problem that we’re facing in the market today. We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time creating bespoke, custom networks and systems to support applications that were written years, or even decades, ago in alien environments.

We do it every day without thinking. We have to install this specific Java version Continue reading

Microsoft, Samba Badlock flaw not critical, but serious enough

Microsoft and the Samba project fixed a vulnerability in their implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol after the flaw was initially announced three weeks ago under the name Badlock.The vulnerability, covered by Microsoft in its MS16-047 security bulletin published Tuesday, was also fixed in Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11. It could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate an authenticated user and execute arbitrary network calls to the server, possibly with administrative privileges.Badlock's existence was announced on March 22 by a company called SerNet, which  offers Samba consulting, support and development services. It employs the person who found the flaw: a Samba development team member named Stefan Metzmacher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft, Samba Badlock flaw not critical, but serious enough

Microsoft and the Samba project fixed a vulnerability in their implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol after the flaw was initially announced three weeks ago under the name Badlock. The vulnerability, covered by Microsoft in its MS16-047 security bulletin published Tuesday, was also fixed in Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11. It could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate an authenticated user and execute arbitrary network calls to the server, possibly with administrative privileges. Badlock's existence was announced on March 22 by a company called SerNet, which  offers Samba consulting, support and development services. It employs the person who found the flaw: a Samba development team member named Stefan Metzmacher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

63% Off Etekcity Digital Infrared Thermometer Temperature Gun – Deal Alert

There are some things you just don't need -- until the price plummets to $25 and then you can't grab your wallet fast enough. The Etekcity Lasergrip 630 Digital Infrared Thermometer Temperature Gun uses dual lasers to instantly measure the temperature of almost anything you can shoot it at. List price is $70, but with the current 63% off deal you can snag it for just $25.99. The gun gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 200 reviewers (read reviews). Check electrical components, oven & fridge temps, check for drafts, find a frozen pipe, see if your beer is cold enough (because you can, that's why) -- at $25 it might pay for itself in just a few hours of wandering around the house. The Lasergrip 630 has a measurable range of -58F to 1,076F (can display in celsius as well) and is powered by a 9-volt battery. If you've always wanted to check temps with lasers, see this heavily discounted item now at Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Privacy regulators: Commission ‘could do better’ on Privacy Shield

The Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement is better than its predecessor, Safe Harbor, but still not good enough, European Union data protection authorities said Wednesday.They want the European Commission improve the deal it has negotiated with U.S. authorities to ensure that EU citizens' personal information receives privacy protection equivalent to that of EU law when it is exported to the U.S.The authorities have been examining Privacy Shield since it was unveiled in February, and announced the results of their study Wednesday.The deal is too complex, they say, as it is composed of a collection of legal instruments, letters and annexes rather than a single, easily understandable document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU privacy regulators: Commission ‘could do better’ on Privacy Shield

The Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement is better than its predecessor, Safe Harbor, but still not good enough, European Union data protection authorities said Wednesday. They want the European Commission improve the deal it has negotiated with U.S. authorities to ensure that EU citizens' personal information receives privacy protection equivalent to that of EU law when it is exported to the U.S. The authorities have been examining Privacy Shield since it was unveiled in February, and announced the results of their study Wednesday. The deal is too complex, they say, as it is composed of a collection of legal instruments, letters and annexes rather than a single, easily understandable document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft will add QR codes to Windows 10 crashes

Windows 10 is an ultra-modern piece of software, an operating system written for the cloud generation, right? Well, not so fast. A new form of error reporting uses a mobile technology that’s been declared dead.Windows has never been particularly helpful in saying why your computer crashed. Even the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in Windows 10 doesn’t tell you much. And the large sad face emoticon doesn’t exactly help, does it?It’s almost comical that they tell you the error code, like “KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR” or “HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED” and then tell you to look it up after you reboot. And good luck finding any useful information.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10 So, what is Microsoft’s solution? A QR code. Yes, a QR code, that dead technology from mobile phones. It was supposed to be a way to rapidly look up info on items in retail outlets or get info from other sources, but it never got any traction. For some time now, QR codes have long been considered dead in the water.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What happened next: the deprecation of ANY

Almost a year ago, we announced that we were going to stop answering DNS ANY queries. We were prompted by a number of factors:

  1. The lack of legitimate ANY use.

  2. The abundance of malicious ANY use.

  3. The constant use of ANY queries in large DNS amplification DDoS attacks.

Additionally, we were about to launch Universal DNSSEC, and we could foresee the high cost of assembling ANY answers and providing DNSSEC-on-the-fly for those answers, especially when most of the time, those ANY answers were for malicious, illegitimate, clients.

Although we usually make a tremendous effort to maintain backwards compatibility across Internet protocols (recently, for example, continuing to support SHA-1-based SSL certificates), it was clear to us that the DNS ANY query was something that was better removed from the Internet than maintained for general use.

Our proposal at the time was to return an ERROR code to the querier telling them that ANY was not supported, and this sparked a robust discussion in the DNS protocol community. In this blog post, we’ll cover what has happened and what our final plan is.

Just before we published our blog a popular software started using ANY queries, to get all address Continue reading

The Four Element Sword Engagement

Ongoing APT activity against Tibetans, Hong Kong and Taiwanese interests In “The Four Element Sword Engagement (Full Report)”, Arbor ASERT reveals recent ongoing APT activity likely associated with long-running threat campaigns against Tibetans, Hong Kong, Taiwanese interests and human rights workers. We presume the existence of associated malcode, dubbed the Four Element Sword Builder, which […]

Concept Data Tower Scrapes The Sky For Efficiency

We talk about architecture all the time when discussing systems, but when it comes to the datacenters that house these machines, the shells are about as exciting as a monstrous warehouse for a massive distribution operation. Considering that data and processing are the most profitable products on the planet these days, maybe this is suitable and fitting, but another way to look at it is that datacenters should not only be marvels of engineering but also inspiring structures like other kinds of buildings.

Every year, the architecture magazine Evolo hosts a skyscraper design competition so that architects can let their …

Concept Data Tower Scrapes The Sky For Efficiency was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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