PlexxiPulse—VMUG Reflections

We like to attend conferences and events to stay current on trends, learn new things, make connections and to hear what’s happening in our industry. We were at the VMUG conference in Chicago last month and had some great conversations with networking and storage decision-makers and administrators. Our own director of product marketing, Bob Noel, was at the show and was impressed by the emphasis on the hyperconvergence and discussion around how the network needs to deliver agility that can keep pace with storage and compute. Bob wrote a blog post on his time at the event—take a look here. We’ll be at the Boston VMUG event on December 8, 2015. We hope to see you there.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

FierceEnterpriseCommunications: SDN promises operational ease, cost reduction
By Chris Talbot
If recent vendor claims are to be believed, software-defined networking is starting to take off in a big way in the enterprise. There are still years ahead of tweaking and improving those deployments, as well as security concerns to overcome. The reason is clear: SDN promises several benefits over the old way of designing networks. Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How keystroking style could replace passwords for authentication

The username and password mix that we've been using for authentication is on its way out, some people think.As we all know, problems include outright theft, the loss of password, phishing, and bots.Alternatives that have proven a bit more successful have included adding an extra element of authentication — such as an object that has to be in the possession of the user. A bank card at an ATM is an example of this. That's called two-factor authentication.But a new biometric typing keystroke algorithm that knows how you type could be a better authentication method, some scientists say.Biometrics Biometrics promise the most security, experts say. A fingerprint, or a voice print, is unique — it's theoretically inseparable, unlike the easily copied magnetic card.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Your Docker Agenda for October

Wow, Docker Global Hack Day #3 was a huge success! Over 2,000 community members attended the over 50 local editions organized by Docker meetup groups. Many thanks to all of the amazing people who made these events possible and our awesome Docker community who … Continued

Sprint layoffs likely as part of cost-reduction plan

Sprint will likely cut its 31,000-person workforce as part of up to $2.5 billion in cost reductions in the next six months, a company spokesman said Friday."It's likely some jobs will be impacted by this [cost-cutting] process, but it's premature to talk about details," said Sprint spokesman David Tovar in a telephone interview on Friday.In addition to 31,000 workers, the company also employs about 30,000 contractor employees, he said. Sprint, with 57.7 million customers, fell to the nation's fourth largest wireless carrier in August, behind T-Mobile.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This vigilante virus protects you against malware attacks, quotes Richard Stallman

Forget about traditional PC malware: Infecting routers and other Internet-connected devices is the new hotness among malicious actors, given its effectiveness and relative ease. But there’s a new sort of malware swirling across the web—vigilante code that infiltrates your router and Internet of Things devices and then actually hardens them against traditional attacks, leaving helpful messages and homages to free software activist Richard Stallman in its wake.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

9 ways to be tech-ready for the next hurricane

Hurricane preparednessImage by NASA Goddard Space Flight CenterWith Hurricane Joaquin stirring up high winds and rain off the East Coast, FEMA has released a set of guidelines that might help you if the storm system hits. This slideshow provides you with tech guidelines during the storm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5G, Arctic gold rush excite global tech forum attendees

Oulu, Finland -- The 24th Global Forum, an annual policy and strategy conference for technology leaders, was held this week in Oulu, a Nordic university town and research city about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle. Juha sipila Opened by Juha Sipilä, Finland’s current prime minister and a telecommunications engineer by training, the conference theme was “Digitalization: From Disruption to Sustainability.”+ FROM LAST YEAR'S CONFERENCE:Global Forum: Innovation creates opportunity, causes disruption +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For October 2nd, 2015

Hey, it's HighScalability time:


Elon Musk's presentation of the Tesla Model X had more in common with a new iPhone event than a traditional car demo.

If you like Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
  • 1.4 billion: Android devices; 1000: # of qubits in Google's new quantum computer; 150Gbps: Linux botnet DDoS attack; 3,000: iPhones sold per minute; smith: the most common last name in the US; 50%: storage reduction by using erasure coding in Hadoop; 101: calories burned during sex.

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @peterseibel: How to be a 10x engineer: help ten other engineers be twice as good.
    • The Master Algorithm: Scientists make theories, and engineers make devices. Computer scientists make algorithms, which are both theories and devices
    • @immolations: Feudalism may not be perfect but it's the best system we've got. More of us have chainmail today than at any point in history
    • @mjpt777: We managed to transfer almost 10 GB/s worth of 1000 byte messages via Aeron IPC. That's more than a 100GigE network. Way to scale up on box!
    • @caitie: lol what my services do 1.5 billion writes per Continue reading

EMV sets the stage for a better payment future

Yesterday was the deadline. Finally, the United States is switching from the old-fashioned swiping method for credit card transactions to the more secure chip-based system scheme dubbed EMV (for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, which together originated the technology).The chip is harder to counterfeit, and unlike magnetic stripes, it can't be easily read and duplicated, which is what credit-card counterfeiters have long done. In other countries, the chip is coupled with a PIN, so if someone steals the card, they can't use it unless they also know your PIN -- a form of second-factor authentication U.S. debit cards have long used, but not U.S. credit cards. However, U.S. banks are not requiring the use of PINs with chip cards; the old-fashioned, security-irrelevant signature will still be used here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 gloriously excessive PC cooling setups

The start of something gloriousImage by SWNS TVThere’s a common refrain in some corners of the PC enthusiast community: “May our frame rates be high and our temperatures low.” More than a mere utterance, it’s a simple, straightforward embrace of the very best that the PC has to offer. There’s a lot of power in those words—and some people truly take them to heart.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here