Dish Network, T-Mobile US reportedly in merger talks

Satellite TV service provider Dish Network and wireless carrier T-Mobile US are reportedly in talks for a merger, which could be the latest in a wave of consolidation in the media and communications industry.The two sides are said to have agreed that Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, will become the chairman of the merged entity, while T-Mobile CEO John Legere will be appointed as the CEO of the combined companies, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.The talks were described to the newspaper as in “the formative stage,” with no guarantee that a deal will be finally done. Key issues such as the purchase price and the mix of cash and stock that would be used to pay for the deal are still unresolved, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber CEO admits company is not perfect

Uber has made enemies in the five years its cars have been on the road. Safety concerns have sparked lawsuits from regulators, its data collection practices have landed it in hot water, and CEO Travis Kalanick cant seem to shake his spoiled brat image.Hes aware of that. I can come off as a fierce advocate for Uber. I also realize that some have used a different A-word to describe me, he said on Wednesday.Im not perfect, and neither is this company, he said during an event at Ubers headquarters in San Francisco to commemorate the fifth anniversary of its launch in that city.During a talk attended by employees of the company and Uber investors, Kalanick painted an idealized picture of the company not so much as a mobile app service, but as a benevolent force for society.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber CEO admits company is not perfect

Uber has made enemies in the five years its cars have been on the road. Safety concerns have sparked lawsuits from regulators, its data collection practices have landed it in hot water, and CEO Travis Kalanick can't seem to shake his spoiled brat image.He's aware of that. "I can come off as a fierce advocate for Uber. I also realize that some have used a different A-word to describe me," he said on Wednesday."I'm not perfect, and neither is this company," he said during an event at Uber's headquarters in San Francisco to commemorate the fifth anniversary of its launch in that city.During a talk attended by employees of the company and Uber investors, Kalanick painted an idealized picture of the company not so much as a mobile app service, but as a benevolent force for society.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AWS customers want more information on its renewable energy plans

Amazon Web Services customers have sent a letter to the cloud services provider requesting that it disclose more information about its sustainability practices.The 19 companies, including Tumblr, Change.org and the Huffington Post, said they want to convey the information to their users, customers, employees and other stakeholders.While lauding Amazon’s commitment to get its entire cloud operation running on renewable energy, the companies wrote to AWS chief Andy Jassy last week that they want to see Amazon disclose more about its current carbon and energy footprint, its progress towards renewable energy goals, and its strategy for increasing its use of renewable energy. The letter also requests that Amazon share how it defines renewable energy and what energy sources the company will prefer going forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The HP split by the numbers: 2,800 apps and 75,000 APIs

Hewlett-Packard has given a glimpse of what the company’s separation looks like from an internal IT perspective, and not surprisingly, there are some big numbers involved.The ongoing task involves dividing up or retooling 2,800 applications and 75,000 APIs (application programming interfaces) before the company becomes Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. on Nov. 1.Before the transformation began, HP had 50,000 servers in six data centers. Five thousand IT staff are working on the transition at any given time, said John Hinshaw, head of HP technology and operations, at the HP Discover conference Wednesday.HP has been preparing for the split since it was announced last October. The work is 80 percent complete, according to Hinshaw, and HP will actually start to operate as two companies on Aug. 1, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprise IP Routing Best Practices

What motivated me to write this post is a state of the IP routing of some of the enterprise networks I’ve seen. A quick show ip route command reveals a non-disentanglable mixture of dynamic and static route with multiple points of redistribution and complex, rigid filtering rules, something you’d only see in your bad dream or a CCIE-level lab. It certainly takes a good engineer to understand how it works and even that can take up to several hours. I think the reason for that is that people have generally been concentrated on learning about the routing protocol, how it works, all the knobs you can twist to influence a routing decision logic. However, one thing often overlooked is the routing protocols best practice design, i.e. when and how to use a particular protocol. And since the latter is often an acquired skill, a lot of not-so-lucky engineers end up with wrong ideas and concepts in the heads. Below I’ll try to list what I{:.underline} consider a best practice design of today’s enterprise networks.

Continue reading

Enterprise IP Routing Best Practices

What motivated me to write this post is a state of the IP routing of some of the enterprise networks I’ve seen. A quick show ip route command reveals a non-disentanglable mixture of dynamic and static route with multiple points of redistribution and complex, rigid filtering rules, something you’d only see in your bad dream or a CCIE-level lab. It certainly takes a good engineer to understand how it works and even that can take up to several hours. I think the reason for that is that people have generally been concentrated on learning about the routing protocol, how it works, all the knobs you can twist to influence a routing decision logic. However, one thing often overlooked is the routing protocols best practice design, i.e. when and how to use a particular protocol. And since the latter is often an acquired skill, a lot of not-so-lucky engineers end up with wrong ideas and concepts in the heads. Below I’ll try to list what I{:.underline} consider a best practice design of today’s enterprise networks.

Continue reading

What apps sell or steal your data or take over your phone? PrivacyHawk can tell you

Did you know "the U.S. accounts for more than 42% of the world's most dangerous mobile apps targeting non-jailbroken and non-rooted devices? These apps aren't found on shady third-party stores—they're found right in the trusted Apple App Store and Google Play—putting the everyday consumer at higher risk for privacy violation than they likely realize." That's just one nugget from Marble Security's threat stats after the firm's analysts, cryptographers, and cybercrime specialists analyzed over 3.5 million iOS and Android apps from more than 650,000 publishers. They scored each app "against 1,000 potentially malicious and privacy-leaking behaviors to determine whether it is risky or safe."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Prototype of HP’s futuristic ‘Machine’ coming next year

A prototype of Hewlett-Packard’s futuristic Machine computer will be ready for partners to develop software on by next year, though the finished product is still half a decade away.The single-rack prototype will have 2,500 CPU cores and an impressive 320TB of main memory, CTO and HP Labs Director Martin Fink told reporters at the HP Discover conference Wednesday. This is more than 20 times the amount of any server on the market today, he claimed.But there’s a catch: the prototype will use current DRAM memory chips, because the advanced memristor technology that HP eventually plans to use is still under development—one of the big reasons The Machine remains several years away.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My CLUS 2015 Schedule

I’m lucky enough to be heading to Cisco Live in San Diego this year to host customers from my area. When I’m not with a customer during the day I plan on attending these sessions:

Monday

  • Coding 101: How to Call REST APIs from a REST Client and Python
  • IoT Solutions – Connecting Oil and Gas Pipelines
  • An IoT Security Model & Architecture for Securing Cyber-Physical and IT-OT Converged Assets
  • Keynote

Tuesday

  • APIC-EM: Controller Workload and Use Cases
  • Designing for the Secure Convergence of Enterprise and Process Control Networks
  • Emerging Threats – The State of Cyber Security

Wednesday

  • IWAN Customer Case Study
  • Industrial Keynote – IoE and the IT Mindset Shift – The Evolution of the IT Career
  • Ethernet Evolving – Ethernet at New Speeds, Deterministic Networking, and Power over Everything!
  • Advanced Malware Protection

Thursday

  • Snort Implementation in Cisco Products
  • Cloud Consumption in North America
  • No Lights, No Power, No Service? – Defending IoT
  • Closing Keynote

My main themes for picking sessions were industrial connectivity (due to the customer base I cover) and cyber security with a sprinkling of strategically chosen sessions to fill the gaps.

I plan on blogging my notes from each session soon after the session ends. Continue reading

Jay Z tries to grow Tidal with a desktop app

Tidal, the paid music streaming service owned by artist and businessman Jay Z, can now be accessed via a desktop app.Users can download the app, which is in beta release, from Tidal’s site. The app will detect audio sources like Apple’s AirPlay to let users play music on compatible stereo systems, Tidal said Wednesday. Tidal already has iOS and Android apps, as well as a web app optimized for the Chrome browser.Jay Z has positioned Tidal as a high quality music streaming service supported by musicians like Taylor Swift and Kanye West, but its success is far from guaranteed in a crowded market. Apple is expected to launch a revamped streaming service based on its Beats acquisition next week. Spotify recently added video and smarter playlist features to its app, including a function that picks songs based on the user’s running pace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft lets EU governments inspect source code for security issues

European governments will be able to review the source code of Microsoft products to confirm they don’t contain security backdoors, at a transparency center the company opened in Brussels on Wednesday.The center will give governments the chance to review and assess the source code of Microsoft enterprise products and to access important security information about threats and vulnerabilities in a secure environment, said Matt Thomlinson, Vice President of Microsoft Security in a blog post. By opening the center, Microsoft wants to continue building trust with governments around the world, he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU, US officials close in on broad privacy accords

After years of thorny negotiations, top EU and U.S. officials say they are close to agreement on two privacy accords that would regulate the transfer of personal data of European citizens to the U.S.At stake is the ability of U.S. and European companies and governments to share data about private citizens for commercial and law enforcement purposes.A version of one of the two privacy deals being discussed, the Safe Harbor accord, has been in force for years but is being renegotiated. Failure to reach agreement on how to change the accord would spell serious trouble for companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, which have relied on it to transmit data on EU citizens to the U.S. for processing and storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Users with weak SSH keys had access to GitHub repositories for popular projects

A number of high-profile source-code repositories hosted on GitHub could have been modified using weak SSH authentication keys, a security researcher has warned.The potentially vulnerable repositories include those of music streaming service Spotify, the Russian Internet company Yandex, the U.K. government and the Django Web application framework.Earlier this year, researcher Ben Cox collected the public SSH (Secure Shell) keys of users with access to GitHub-hosted repositories by using one of the platform’s features. After an analysis, he found that the corresponding private keys could be easily recovered for many of them.The SSH protocol uses public-key cryptography, which means that authenticating users and encrypting their connections requires a private-public key pair. The server configured to accept SSH connections from users needs to know their respective public keys and the users need to have the corresponding private keys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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