Apple, Google urge Obama to reject encryption back doors

Apple and Google are appealing to U.S. President Barack Obama to reject proposals to allow encryption “back doors” in mobile devices.A letter signed by Apple and Google to be sent Tuesday is aimed at protecting privacy and limiting law enforcement access to encrypted data, according to a report in The Washington Post.“Strong encryption is the cornerstone of the modern information economy’s security,” the paper quotes the letter as saying.Over 140 technology companies, technologists and civil society groups also signed it, calling on the president to not “in any way subvert, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable” security software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 new access points deliver super-fast Wi-Fi

Access points put to the testWe put four new access points to the test, from Linksys, Xclaim, Amped and ZyXel, using the same test-bed and methods as our last review. The Linksys LAPAC1750PRO performed best in the throughput tests and was a feature-rich product. The Amped Wireless AP was a close second in the speed tests and is a solid business-class access point. The Xclaim unit did well given it’s only a two stream (2x2) AP. The ZyXEL unit was last in throughput, but has a number of advanced features in the areas of configuration, management and security. (Read our full review.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 new access points deliver super-fast Wi-Fi

Continuing our ongoing series of 802.11ac reviews, we put four new access points to the test, bringing our total to 13. This time around, we looked at products from Linksys, Xclaim, Amped and ZyXel, using the same test-bed and methods as our last review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Login system supplies fake passwords to hackers

A team of researchers has developed a system that makes it much harder for hackers to obtain usable passwords from a leaked database, which could help blunt the damage from a data breach.The system is described in a research paper that has been submitted for consideration at the 2015 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, which takes place in Los Angeles in December.Called ErsatzPasswords, the system is aimed at throwing off hackers who use methods to “crack” passwords, said Mohammed H. Almeshekah, a doctoral student at Purdue University in Indiana.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DevNet Zone at Cisco LIVE

Going to Cisco LIVE? Interested in chatting about network automation or about how DevOps principles can be used on the network? Well, if you are, feel free to reach out - I would love to have a conversation out in San Diego! I just booked a trip to Cisco LIVE, but am only purchasing the $49 DevNet Explorer pass. This means I should have plenty of time to socialize and will likely be spending most of my time at the DevNet zone. I’ll have access to my remote lab and should be able to demo much of what I’ve posted about in the past few months too.

Email me (jedelman8 at gmail) or comment below if you’re interested in meeting up.

Thanks,
Jason

Twitter: @jedelman8

Analytics and SDN

Recent presentations from AT&T and Google describe SDN/NFV architectures that incorporate measurement based feedback in order to improve performance and reliability.

The first slide is from a presentation by AT&T's Margaret Chiosi; SDN+NFV Next Steps in the Journey, NFV World Congress 2015. The future architecture envisions generic (white box) hardware providing a stream of analytics which are compared to policies and used to drive actions to assure service levels.


The second slide is from the presentation by Google's Bikash Koley at the Silicon Valley Software Defined Networking Group Meetup. In this architecture, "network state changes observed by analyzing comprehensive time-series data stream." Telemetry is used to verify that the network is behaving as intended, identifying policy violations so that the management and control planes can apply corrective actions. Again, the software defined network is built from commodity white box switches.

Support for standard sFlow measurements is almost universally available in commodity switch hardware. sFlow agents embedded within network devices continuously stream measurements to the SDN controller, supplying the analytics component with the comprehensive, scaleable, real-time visibility needed for effective control.

SDN fabric controller for commodity data center switches describes the measurement and control capabilities available in commodity switch hardware. Continue reading

This well-funded startup could turn bitcoin mining – and the chip industry – on its head

A startup company with some very big-name backers has just come out of stealth mode and revealed a business plan that could turn bitcoin mining—and even the economics of selling chips and smartphones—on its head.The first thing to know about the company, which calls itself 21, is that it has designed an embedded chip for bitcoin mining—the process of running complex algorithms that are required to solve an equation to generate, or mine, new coins in the digital currency.Bitcoin mining initially was done by individuals on home PCs, but the work has gradually been taken over by mining collectives and large compute clusters that are now needed to solve the increasingly complex Bitcoin algorithms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook could cash in from Messenger games

Facebook is said to be eyeing games for its mobile Messenger product, a move that might jump-start the revenue the company generates from non-advertising sources.Facebook is in talks with gaming developers to incorporate or tie their apps in some way into Messenger, The Information news site reported on Monday. The talks are at an early stage and they could break down. But incorporating games into Messenger, which is popular among a growing number of mobile users, could boost the company’s gaming business, which depends heavily on the declining number of desktop computer users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open source meets telecom at NFV World Congress

When Linux first became a serious challenger for enterprise-class infrastructure, traditional IT vendors had to contend and to rationalize just what exactly this open source thing was. The initial response from many vendors was to attempt to stop it, but it only grew. And as open source grew, many mostly younger businesses learned to leverage it for great commercial success; however, the titans of the previous era have had challenges adapting their business models to embrace open source successfully.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CIOs put the Internet of Things in perspective

When you hear the phrase Internet of Things (IoT), you are probably excited, confused, concerned or tired of hearing the buzzphrase -- or maybe all of those things plus a few more. After all, the reality of digital devices acting on their own to capture, transmit and, in some cases, act on data affects everything from home appliances to telehealth is attention-getting. >> More Internet of Things coverage on CIO.com << Just how many "things" are are talking about? Gartner estimates that by 2020, the IoT will consist of 25 billion devices. Those devices, according to Cisco, will dominate the Internet by 2018. Yep, dominate – meaning machines will communicate over the Internet more than we (i.e. humans) do. So if there’s a little fear, uncertainty and doubt mixed in among the excitement, it’s only natural.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 6s release may come as early as August

While the first few iterations of the iPhone were all released during the summer months, the iPhone 4s completely turned Apple's iPhone release schedule on its head. Due to various production problems that resulted in delays, the iPhone 4s was released in October of 2011. Since then, Apple has adjusted its iPhone release schedule accordingly, with each new iPhone models now debuting during the fall.But now we're hearing word that Apple's next-gen iPhone, prematurely dubbed the iPhone 6s, might be released sometime in August. According to a recent report in GforGames, which typically has a decent track record with respect to Apple rumors, rumblings from Apple's supply chain suggests that Apple doesn't anticipate any yield issues with its next-gen iPhone and may revert back to a summer launch schedule.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Watch intense trailer for new Steve Jobs movie starring Michael Fassbender

The first trailer for the new "Steve Jobs" movie starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Seth Rogen as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has hit the web, and it's pretty intense even though it's all dialogue.The film is slated to arrive in U.S. theaters on Oct. 9, four years after Jobs died.Apple enthusiasts are hoping the film, which was originally going to be directed by David Fincher and star Christian Bale, will be a major upgrade over the Ashton Kutcher "Jobs" movie from 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asus packs 64GB of storage in $299 ZenFone 2

Asus isn’t a household name in the U.S. when it comes to smartphones, but it is trying to make a strong statement with the Zenfone 2, which packs more storage than similarly-priced competitors.The Zenfone 2, which has a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, starts at $199. It will begin shipping on Tuesday with Google’s Android 5.0 OS.A model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage goes for $299, while the $199 model has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The smartphone is shipping as an unlocked device, meaning it will work with multiple carriers.It has an Intel 64-bit Atom Z3580 processor code-named Moorefield and a PowerVR G6430 graphics processor, which is capable of handling 1080p video rendering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey finds most US residents want changes to Patriot Act surveillance

U.S. residents have major problems with government surveillance, and six in 10 want to see the records collection provisions of the Patriot Act modified before Congress extends it, according to a survey commissioned by a civil rights group.Just 34 percent of survey respondents said they’d like to see the Patriot Act preserved as a way to keep the U.S. safe from terrorists, according to the survey commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union. Sixty percent either strongly or somewhat agreed with a statement saying Congress should modify the Patriot Act to “limit government surveillance and protect Americans’ privacy.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Appeals court rules Samsung won’t have to pay $930M in Apple patent case

Samsung will not have to pay all of the US$930 million in damages that Apple was awarded in 2012, a U.S. appeals court ruled Monday.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., agreed with a California federal jury that Samsung violated Apple design and utility patents related to the iPhone. However, the appeals court reversed the jury’s finding that Samsung infringed on Apple’s trade dress, or the overall look and packaging of a product.Thus, the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, where the case was originally tried, must recalculate the portion of the settlement dealing with trade dress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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