Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For September 18th, 2015

Hey, it's HighScalability time:


This is how you blast microprocessors with high-energy beams to test them for space.

  • terabits: Facebook's network capacity; 56.2 Gbps: largest extortion DDoS attack seen by Akamai; 220: minutes spent usings apps per day; $33 billion: 2015 in-app purchases; 2334: web servers running in containers on a Raspberry Pi 2; 121: startups valued over $1 billion

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design: Two obsessions are the hallmarks of Nature’s artistic style: Symmetry—a love of harmony, balance, and proportion Economy—satisfaction in producing an abundance of effects from very limited means
    • : ad blocking Apple has done to Google what Google did to MSFT. Added a feature they can't compete with without breaking their biz model
    • @shellen: FWIW - Dreamforce is a localized weather system that strikes downtown SF every year causing widespread panic & bad slacks. 
    • @KentBeck: first you learn the value of abstraction, then you learn the cost of abstraction, then you're ready to engineer
    • @doctorow: Arab-looking man of Syrian descent found in garage building what looks like a bomb 
    • @kixxauth: Idempotency is not something you take a pill for. -- ZeroMQ
    • Continue reading

What Does It Mean When A Project Has Been Forked?

Open source projects that involve lots of folks sometimes run into conflicts. Should the project go in direction X, or direction Y? Is feature A more important, or feature B? And so on. Sometimes the concerns around an open source project are more pragmatic than pedantic. Should we, as a commercial entity, continue to use this open source project as is, or go in our own direction with it? The keyword to look for in these circumstances is fork.

Cyber Supply Chain Security Is Increasingly Difficult for Critical Infrastructure Organizations

As the old cybersecurity adage states, ‘the cybersecurity chain is only as strong as its weakest link.’  Smart CISOs also understand that the proverbial weak link may actually be out of their control. U.S. retailer Target certainly experienced this lack of cybersecurity control in 2013.  The now infamous Target data breach that exposed the personal information of 110 million people began with a spear phishing attack on one of the company’s HVAC contractors, Fazio Mechanical of Sharpsburg, PA.  Cyber-criminals compromised a Fazio Mechanical system, gained credentialed access to Target, and proceeded to wreak havoc on Target’s data, customers, and reputation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy

This week, we announced that we have raised a $35 million round of financing. The round was led by a new investor with participation from our existing investors (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners) bringing our total funding to $83 million. The capital raised will fuel the expansion of our sales, marketing, customer support, and research and development efforts. We’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished in this year and are eager to see what the rest of 2015 has in store for us. Take a look at this week’s blog post from our CEO Rich Napolitano on Plexxi’s continued momentum on the heels of our funding announcement.

Social media has been buzzing this week, see below! Have a great weekend.

The post PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy appeared first on Plexxi.

When in Mexico, don’t use the ATMs

Security expert Brian Krebs, who has made a specialty of exposing ATM scams over the years, has a doozy of a three-part series this week uncovering a widespread scheme in Mexico based on sophisticated Bluetooth technology and old-fashioned cash bribes.In part one, Krebs describes being tipped off by an employee of a Mexican ATM company, explains how the scam works – bribe-enabled physical access to the machines is key -- and embarks on a trip to Cancun to attempt to gauge the scope of the illegal operation first-hand.Part two reads like a detective novel as Krebs moves about Mexican tourist establishments checking for a telltale Bluetooth signal emanating from ATMs. He has no trouble finding them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Citizens of Tech Podcast Has Re-Launched!

My friend Eric Sutphen and I started the Citizens of Tech podcast using some spare capacity on the Packet Pushers platform to see what folks thought of the idea. We received lots of positive comments from the audience. Several of you stated that Citizens of Tech quickly became one of your "must listen" shows. With warm, glowing feelings of audience love in mind, we've opted to give the show a site of its very own! http://citizensoftech.com

A bad debate for tech

Most of the references to technology in the so-called main-stage GOP debate Wednesday night were around protecting U.S. borders. There were calls for drones, visa entry and exit tracking systems, and overall more reliance on electronics to deter illegal crossings. It was all about building a better fence, and not about government's role in advancing technology.There was no discussion about the H-1B visa except at the margins. There was no mention of the federal government's role in science investment. Space exploration? Not discussed. Technology hardly came up in the three-hour debate, the same as what happened in the first debate on August 6.Climate change, bypassed in the first debate, did come up in Wednesday night's debate. It's a subject that offers much opportunity to talk about science, government investments in basic science including supercomputers, alternative energy systems and energy storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Windows 10 is the most secure Windows ever

Microsoft added two game-changing security features for enterprise users in Windows 10, but until recently, the company has been relatively quiet about them.So far the buzz has mainly been about Windows Hello, which supports face and fingerprint recognition. But Device Guard and Credential Guard are the two standout security features of Windows 10 -- they protect the core kernel from malware and prevent attackers from remotely taking control of the machine. Device Guard and Credential Guard are intended for business systems and are available only in Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DLSP – QoS-Aware Routing Protocol on Software Gone Wild

When I asked “Are there any truly QoS-aware routing protocols out there?” in one of my SD-WAN posts, Marcelo Spohn from ADARA Networks quickly pointed out that they have one – Dynamic Link-State Routing Protocol.

He also claimed that DLSP has no scalability concerns – more than enough reasons to schedule an online chat, resulting in Episode 40 of Software Gone Wild. We didn’t go too deep this time, but you should get a nice overview of what DLSP is and how it works.

Understanding QEMU

Since QEMU is the main tool I use in our virtual lab, it is crucial to know what qemu in general is and what are all the qemu options for? And I am no expert here, actully I ran some qemu images myself without honest understanding why am I providing this particular set of options and

The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize winners

Uncooking an egg, peeing like a whale, and fathering a few hundred childrenDon’t look so confused – it’s the 2015 Ig Nobel awards, the scientific equivalent of the Razzies, given out to real science projects “that make you laugh, and then make you think.” Or, in the case of several of this year’s “winners,” that make you squirm uncomfortably in your chair. Read on, if you dare.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here