The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, March 31

Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoinVirtual evidence is no less tempting to a corrupt agent than cash or drugs found in a raid: Two former US federal agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin in the course of investigating the Silk Road marketplace. A former DEA special agent, who worked undercover to cultivate a relationship with recently convicted Ross Ulbricht, allegedly used online personas to engage in complex bitcoin transactions to steal both from the government and the targets of the investigation. And a former Secret Service agent who served as a computer forensics expert allegedly took more than $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation—and put it in his account at now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LG may introduce leather-covered flagship smartphone at April 28 event

LG Electronics is expected to introduce its next high-end smartphone on April 28, and has hinted that the back of the device will be covered in leather.In the light of the growing focus on looks at the recent Mobile World Congress, it wouldn’t be surprising if LG uses better materials for the successor to the G3, which is expected to be called the G4. The invite for April 28 that the company sent out on Tuesday just said “save the date” and “see the Great”, but the text is written over a leather back with stitching on one side.LG wouldn’t be the first to offer leather or faux leather as an alternative. Real leather is an option on Motorola Mobility’s Moto Maker customization service, and Samsung Electronics uses faux leather on the back of the Galaxy Note 4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s iPhone trade-in program in China could boost sales

Apple has quietly launched a trade-in program to let Chinese customers exchange their old iPhones and iPads for the latest devices, which could help promote adoption of its upcoming Apple Pay and Apple Watch.The trade-in program has already been available in the U.S., but Apple on Tuesday brought the service to China, mentioning it in an update to its website.Chinese customers will be able to exchange iPhones as old as the iPhone 4 to receive store credit that can be used towards the purchase of a new unit, according to an Apple store worker in Beijing.The company, however, will only accept units that were officially sold in China, and not in other countries. Customers can bring the old devices to a local Apple store, where the product serial numbers and overall quality will be checked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google cloud platform can now be managed from a phone

Google is testing a version for Android smartphones and tablets of a console that will help its customers monitor services in the cloud while on the move.Following the beta launch of the Cloud Console for Android, Google said a version for Apple’s iOS operating system is expected to launch later this year.Using the app, users can set up alerts, manage Google cloud platform resources and access health graphs to gain insights into the performance and availability of their cloud-powered applications on Google’s Cloud Monitoring feature, wrote Michael Thomsen, a product manager at Google, in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inaugural Customer Symposium Highlighted Fast Move to SDN/NFV

Inaugural Customer Symposium Highlighted Fast Move to SDN/NFV

by Andy McFarland, VP of Customer Care - March 31, 2015

Our inaugural symposium featured registrants from 5 continents.

In Paris a few weeks ago, Packet Design hosted our first ever Customer Symposium to discuss industry trends and share our latest product developments. Partners and customers joined us from four hemispheres and five continents (with a handful who travelled over 10,000 km). In addition to a showcase of our SDN product (due out later this year) and a sneak preview of our 15.1 release (stay tuned for more on this), the highlight was a presentation by Heavy Reading industry analyst Caroline Chappell. Here’s a quick summary of her talk.

Chappell discussed SDN and NFV adoption trends and shared deployment strategies being used by leading communication service providers. She also outlined the new architectures and management systems needed to successfully operate SDN and NFV-based networks.

One quote that stood out was her contention that, in her more than 25 years of industry experience, “I have never seen the telco industry transition so quickly." She said the timeline for widespread SDN adoption has been pared down from 10 to five years. Continue reading

IBM to pump $3 billion into new IoT business unit

Hungry for a bigger piece of the Internet of things market, IBM will invest US$3 billion over four years to establish a new business unit dedicated to providing IoT systems and services to enterprises.“We’re only at the very beginning of an amazing revolution. If we thought we were dealing with big data now, we haven’t seen anything yet,” said Erick Brethenoux, IBM director of analytics.IBM General Manager Chris O’Connor will oversee the new unit, which will initially court enterprises in travel, logistics, insurance, public utilities, transportation and retail, Brethenoux said.IBM will also tailor a new cloud service, the IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform, providing a way for enterprises to build their own data-driven systems, Brethenoux said. Over time, it will also develop specialized packages for specific fields like the insurance industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EFF questions US government’s software flaw disclosure policy

It’s not clear if the U.S. government is living up to its promise to disclose serious software flaws to technology companies, a policy it put in place five years ago, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.The digital watchdog said on Monday it received a handful of heavily redacted documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which it sued last July after it and the National Security Agency moved too slowly on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.Last year, the EFF sought documents related to the U.S. government’s efforts to beef up its Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP), a framework for notifying companies about zero-day vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to update Docker on CentOS 7

I recently noticed that the Kubernetes guys are moving their container images from the Docker hub registry to their own repository…

image
A quick look tells me that Google now has it’s own image repository (gcr.io) so it seems to make sense that the Kubernetes team would be using that rather than the Docker hub registry.  That being said, I though all I’d have to do was update my YAML files to point to the new location.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.  After pushing the controller definitions to the Kubernetes cluster it became apparent that the containers were stuck in a pending state.  When I logged into one of the hosts and check the Docker logs I saw the issue…

image 
After some digging, I found this…

image

Since the container image name had a ‘-‘ in it, Docker didn’t know what to do with it.  So the fix is to update Docker to the latest stable code which happens to be version 1.5.  In my case, the repositories I was using with YUM didn’t have 1.5 so we need to pull the latest binaries from Docker and use those.  To update, Continue reading

Three Tips for Technical Blogging

From time to time, I’m asked by new or potential technical bloggers for advice on how to get into writing, or how to overcome some kind of mental reservation that he/she may have. It’s actually somewhat ironic - I still suffer from many of the same issues that I suffered from back before Keeping It Classless existed. I have been having some serious "Newbie Blogger" issues last few weeks. Ironically, I feel compelled to write about them.

Three Tips for Technical Blogging

From time to time, I’m asked by new or potential technical bloggers for advice on how to get into writing, or how to overcome some kind of mental reservation that he/she may have. It’s actually somewhat ironic - I still suffer from many of the same issues that I suffered from back before Keeping It Classless existed. I have been having some serious "Newbie Blogger" issues last few weeks. Ironically, I feel compelled to write about them.

Docker Online Meetup: Kitematic in action

Three weeks ago, we announced that Kitematic, an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) for running Docker containers on your Mac, was joining the Docker family. Today we’re happy to share with you the video recording from the last Docker Online Meetup about Kitematic (for those … Continued

Software Stack Choices in Cloud Networking

The networking industry is changing rapidly with demand for more dynamic control of big data, and scale-out cloud applications. The inevitable shift to software-defined workloads and workflows is crystal clear. This calls for more “disaggregation” of software models for the network stack.

Should networking move to a more open standards-based approach or continue with legacy stacks? The answer is defined by considering the following three options for networking software stacks, and the actual choice depends on the factors as shown below in Figure 1.

1. Classic OS: The established network vendors tend to develop multi-million lines of complex software code with enterprise or service provider class features for LAN or WAN. This closed monolithic “Blob-OS” model can be based on modified and proprietary versions of a BSD or Linux Kernel. Traditional enterprise support is the hallmark of this model, but innovation is rarely evident. Claims of programmability usually include band-aid APIs, or guest virtual machine access. The classic OS addresses mature markets akin to a mainframe usually for customers with siloed IT stacks that support legacy applications.

2. Cloud OS: At Arista, our software engineers build based on an open Linux Kernel, providing programmable capabilities that legacy switch-based Blob-OSs do Continue reading

Tim Cook takes stand against Indiana’s ‘religious freedom’ law

In a testament to Tim Cook's character, the Apple CEO recently penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post regarding the recently passed legislation in Indiana which allows business to discriminate against individuals on account of their sexual orientation, all in the name of religious freedom.With the Apple Watch set to launch in under a month, April is arguably the most important month Apple has seen in quite some time. And still, Cook has no qualms about throwing his hat into the ring and getting involved in a debate that might alienate some more closed-minded customers. All of this reflects highly on Tim Cook insofar as he's not afraid to speak out on important issues even in anticipation of one of the company's most important product launches ever.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tim Cook takes stand against Indiana’s “religious freedom” law

In a testament to Tim Cook's character, the Apple CEO recently penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post regarding the recently passed legislation in Indiana which allows business to discriminate against individuals on account of their sexual orientation, all in the name of religious freedom.With the Apple Watch set to launch in under a month, April is arguably the most important month Apple has seen in quite some time. And still, Cook has no qualms about throwing his hat into the ring and getting involved in a debate that might alienate some more closed-minded customers. All of this reflects highly on Tim Cook insofar as he's not afraid to speak out on important issues even in anticipation of one of the company's most important product launches ever.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Juniper The Next Cisco?

Juniper flexed its muscles at the Innovation Showcase held in March 2015. What did they talk about? What does it mean for their customers going forward? I perform an introductory analysis.
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