Xiaomi faces challenge to reach sales goal, amid slowing smartphone growth

Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi has hopes of selling at least 80 million smartphones this year, but that goal may harder to reach than originally thought.On Thursday, the fast-rising company announced it had sold 34.7 million smartphones for the first six months of 2015. Although the figure means that sales were up 33 percent year-over-year, Xiaomi still has its work cut out to reach that 80 million number.Given that Xiaomi sold its first phone only four years ago, the company has made astonishing progress to become one of China’s top smartphone brands. It was even briefly the country’s largest vendor, before falling behind the new market leader, Apple, in this year’s first quarter, according to research firm IDC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Business Case for SD-WAN

An anonymous commenter wrote this comment to my initial SD-WAN post:

I can still hardly imagine the business case behind SD-WAN. Any thoughts?

This question is really easy to answer. There’s a huge business case that SD-WAN products are aiming to solve: replacing traditional MPLS/VPN networks with encrypted transport over public Internet. However…

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After Uber ruling, pressure mounts on companies to reclassify contractors

The pressure on app-based companies to reclassify their contractors as employees is picking up, with more of them getting sued this week.The California Labor Commission ruled last month that a driver of Uber Technologies was an employee and not a contractor, when driving for the company, and was hence entitled to reimbursement on certain expenses. The ride-hailing company said it had appealed the decision.Postmates, Shyp, and Washio were sued by workers this week, arguing that they should be classified as employees and not independent contractors, according to Shannon Liss-Riordan who is an attorney in these cases. The actions against Shyp and Postmates were filed as “class action arbitration” demands in arbitration courts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

YouTube: A Little IWAN Fun in the Lab

In this YouTube “playing in the lab” IWAN fun we are going to have 2 phones (one in Branch 1 and one in Branch 3)  doing a voice/video call. We will use LiveAction to see that the video call between the 2 branches is actually going directly spoke-to-spoke despite the fact that they are on an mGRE tunnel with a DMVPN hub in the Hub Site. We will confirm what LiveAction is seeing via command line on Branch1 Router 1 and see the NHRP shortcuts that this router has to go directly to the Router 3’s direct IP address that it uses to connect to the MPLS cloud.

We will then ask what might happen if a brownout impairment were to occur on the Branch1_Router1 link with the MPLS PE.  For example – 2% loss.  We will look at a little of the PfRv3 configs up on the domain master controller as well as Branch1_Router1’s master policy that it received from the domain master controller.  Then we will cause impairment (2% loss) to the MPLS link… during which I have a video recording of the phone call… where … pretty much… the move over from the primary Continue reading

PayPal to acquire money transfer service Xoom for $890 million

PayPal is acquiring Xoom, an international money transfer service, in a deal that lets PayPal break into a new market worth an estimated $600 billion a year, the companies said Wednesday.PayPal is paying $25 per share in cash for Xoom, valuing the deal at $890 million, the companies said.Xoom, founded in 2001, lets U.S. customers send money to others and pay bills in 37 countries, including Mexico, Brazil and India. Users can track their transactions with text updates, email notifications and online access from desktops and mobile devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DEA agent pleads guilty to accepting Silk Road funds

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent intimately involved in the Silk Road investigation admitted on Wednesday he secretly accepted bitcoins from the underground website’s operator and illegally took other funds.Carl Mark Force IV, who was a DEA agent for 15 years, pleaded guilty to money laundering, obstruction of justice and extortion under color of official right, according to the plea agreement, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.Force could face up to 20 years in prison on each of the counts.Force, who was based in Baltimore, was part of a multi-agency task force investigating the Silk Road, an underground marketplace for goods such as drugs and fake ID documents. It was shut down in October 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook tests a new way to show video – and make money from it

Facebook is preparing a new way to show videos on the social network and opening the door to a new source of advertising revenue at the same time.The new feature, called Suggested Videos, will roll out first on iOS in the coming weeks and probably will come to other platforms like Android and the Web in the next few months.It works like this: When users click on a video in their News Feed, a new area pops up with related videos from Facebook partners that users can also watch. Some of those videos will be advertisements, and when a user watches one of them, Facebook will share the advertising dollars with the other partners supplying the video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VPN users, beware: You may not be as safe as you think you are

It’s become common practice to use virtual private networks for extra privacy and security in this era of mass surveillance, but a study published this week suggests such networks may not be as safe as they’re commonly made out to be.In fact, because of a vulnerability known as IPv6 leakage, many of them can expose user information to prying eyes, according to a paper from researchers at Sapienza University of Rome and Queen Mary University of London.Entitled “A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass: IPv6 Leakage and DNS Hijacking in Commercial VPN clients,” the report describes a study conducted late last year that examined 14 popular commercial VPN providers around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC tells TracFone it must allow phone unlocking

TracFone, a major provider of prepaid mobile phone service, must keep its promise to let customers unlock their devices and transfer service to competing carriers, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said.TracFone must transition to unlockable phones in a settlement announced by the FCC Wednesday. In addition to the TracFone brand, the company provides pay-as-you-go mobile service through the brands Straight Talk, Net10 Wireless, SafeLink Wireless, Telcel America, Simple Mobile and Page Plus Cellular.TracFone, with about 25.7 million U.S. mobile customers, violated FCC rules by failing to live up to promises that it would unlock phones for customers enrolled in the agency’s Lifeline program, a subsidized mobile program for low-income people, the agency said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Breakthrough could make it easier to lay fiber at long distances

One of the big problems with fiber has always been that the more power you add to a signal—to get the signal to travel further—the more distortion you get. That distortion degrades the quality of the data. It's a problem because ideally you want fiber to travel long distances. It's cheaper to run one long cable than multiple pieces with added repeaters, as is the current process now.Deciphering data at 12,000 km Scientists reckon they've got a solution, though. Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they've been able to send data 12,000 kilometers along fiber without repeaters and still decipher the information at the end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Breakthrough could make it easier to lay fiber at long distances

One of the big problems with fiber has always been that the more power you add to a signal—to get the signal to travel further—the more distortion you get. That distortion degrades the quality of the data. It's a problem because ideally you want fiber to travel long distances. It's cheaper to run one long cable than multiple pieces with added repeaters, as is the current process now.Deciphering data at 12,000 km Scientists reckon they've got a solution, though. Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they've been able to send data 12,000 kilometers along fiber without repeaters and still decipher the information at the end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Welcome UK2 Group!

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Today we are thrilled to welcome UK2 Group as a CloudFlare partner. Customers of UK2 Group (including its brands UK2.net, Midphase, and Westhost) are now able to access CloudFlare’s web performance and security solutions with a single click. Backed by CloudFlare, UK2 Group’s customers can now protect their websites against security threats, ensure only clean traffic gets served, and speed up site performance no matter where visitors are located. Customers in need of advanced features, and even more performance and security, can sign up for CloudFlare Plus—a plan only offered through our reseller partners.

UK2 Group is one of the innovators of the hosting industry and operates globally. While its name points to its roots (located just down the road from the CloudFlare office in London), it also has an extensive presence in the US. We’re excited to partner with UK2 Group to provide the best web performance and security to its numerous customers.

Click here to learn more.

Federal wiretaps down slightly, encryption impact decreases

For the first time in a number of years the use of authorized federal wiretaps decreased 13% in 2014 over 2013.According to the 2014 Wiretap Report, released today by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts a total of a total of 3,554 wiretaps were reported as authorized, with 1,279 authorized by federal judges and 2,275 authorized by state judges. Compared to the applications approved during 2013, the number approved by federal judges decreased 13% in 2014 and the number approved by state judges increased 8%. One state wiretap application was denied in 2014, the report stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Federal wiretaps down slightly, encryption impact decreases

For the first time in a number of years the use of authorized federal wiretaps decreased 13% in 2014 over 2013.According to the 2014 Wiretap Report, released today by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts a total of a total of 3,554 wiretaps were reported as authorized, with 1,279 authorized by federal judges and 2,275 authorized by state judges. Compared to the applications approved during 2013, the number approved by federal judges decreased 13% in 2014 and the number approved by state judges increased 8%. One state wiretap application was denied in 2014, the report stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacktivist group possibly compromised hundreds of websites

A hacker group known as Team GhostShell is publishing snippets of sensitive data allegedly stolen from the databases of hundreds of compromised websites.The group, which previously targeted government organizations, law enforcement agencies and companies from various industries in 2012, announced in March 2013 that it was halting its activities.In a surprise return Monday the group started posting on Twitter the names of websites it claims to have hacked as part of a new campaign, along with links to samples of data extracted from their databases.So far the group has published the names of over 450 websites, but claims that it has hacked many more. The alleged victims range from companies to education institutions and government organizations from different countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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