Reminder: Solarized for Better Terminals

I have used the “Solarized” colour scheme on my Mac for several years. This is:

… a sixteen color palette…designed for use with terminal and gui applications

If you spend a lot of time using the Terminal, this makes a huge difference. It gives me the right combination of colours to make sure everything is readable, and reduces eye-strain.

I’ve used it for so long that I’ve forgotten about it. It’s become “normal” for me.

PuTTY Defaults == Unusable

Recently I’ve been forced to use PuTTY on Windows. I’d forgotten how terrible the default colour scheme is, particularly when you’re using VIM, or doing an “ls” on a RHEL system. Check this screenshot:

putty_default

The default LS_COLORS on a RHEL system, using PuTTY defaults, will displays directories in dark blue on a black background. Hopeless. I can’t read those directory names.

Solarized to the rescue

I downloaded the “Solarized Dark” registry file from here. Double-click that to merge the registry settings. You’ll then see a new PuTTY Saved session “Solarized Dark”:

putty_sessions

Load that session. Save it as the Default Settings if you like. Add any other settings you need – e.g. username, SSH key. Add the hostname/IP, and connect. Now see how Continue reading

HP Moonshot – Stuff I Wish I’d Known

Yeah, it looks just like this.
I've been working with HP Moonshot for some months now. It's a neat box with a lot of interesting features. There are plenty of press releases and (possibly paid-for) "reviews" available out there, but not much frank commentary from actual end users, and that's disappointing.

What is it?
Briefly, Moonshot is a miniature blade enclosure. I'm sure there are marketing folks who would like me to use different terminology, but it boils down to servers, Ethernet switches and power all rolled into one box.

There are some key differentiators between this enclosure and some of its larger cousins:

Low Power - The whole package is tuned for high density and low power. There are no monstrously fast multi-socket servers available, but the density is amazing. With 8 cores per node and 180 nodes per chassis we're talking about 300+ cores per rack unit!

Less Redundancy - Unlike the C-class enclosures which sport redundant "Onboard Administrator" modules, Moonshot has a single "Chassis Manager". I do not view this as a problem for two reasons: First, Moonshot is mostly suited for massively horizontally scalable applications which should tolerate failure of a whole chassis. Second, failure of Continue reading

Dell’s Venue 10 7000 vs Microsoft Surface 3: Same price, different appeal

The Venue 10 7000 from Dell and the Surface 3 from Microsoft share a few things in common: they will ship in a few weeks, are marketed as tablets that can be used as laptops, and start at $499. But they offer different advantages.To determine which one provides better value, buyers must decide whether they’ll use the device mostly as a tablet or as a laptop. Here’s how the products stack up on features.Screen size and resolutionThe Dell Venue 10 7000 has a slight edge on resolution, while the Surface 3 provides more screen size. Dell’s tablet has a 10.5-inch screen that can display images at a 2560 x 1600-pixel resolution, while the Surface 3 has a 10.8-inch screen with a 1920 x 1280-pixel resolution. The Venue uses the emerging OLED technology, while the Surface 3’s more conventional screen is based on LCD technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 47 – VMKernel Bindings & iSCSI with Chris Wahl

Chris Wahl of WahlNetwork.com and co-author of Networking for VMware Administrators joins Ethan Banks for a discussion of when -- and when NOT -- to use VMkernel bindings when doing iSCSI plumbing between VMware hosts and storage arrays.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
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The post PQ Show 47 – VMKernel Bindings & iSCSI with Chris Wahl appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Oracle bolsters Retail Cloud with new services

It’s been just over half a year since Oracle completed its US$5.3 billion acquisition of Micros, and on Wednesday the company added several new services to the retail-focused technologies it gained through that deal.Six new Oracle Retail cloud services, specifically, are now available by subscription, with the goal of helping retailers manage e-commerce, customer engagement, order management, order fulfillment, loss prevention and brand compliance.Oracle’s new Retail Brand Compliance Management cloud service, for instance, automates many of the operations required to grow and improve private-label merchandising operations. Retailers can use it to plan, track and manage merchandising activities, drop shipping and supplier relationships.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flaw in WordPress caching plug-in could affect over 1 million sites

A vulnerability in the popular WP Super Cache plug-in for WordPress could allow attackers to inject malicious scripts into websites. The scripts, when loaded by administrators, could trigger unauthorized actions.WordPress websites are a popular target for hackers and many of them are compromised due to plug-in vulnerabilities. Just on Tuesday, the FBI warned that attackers sympathetic to the extremist group ISIS -- also known as ISIL -- have defaced many websites by exploiting known vulnerabilities in WordPress plug-ins.The persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in WP Super Cache can be exploited by sending a specifically crafted query to a WordPress website with the plug-in installed, according to Marc-Alexandre Montpas, a senior vulnerability researcher at Web security firm Sucuri.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Seven new hardware technologies for Windows 10 PCs

The arrival of Windows 10 later this year could usher in more convenient, fun and wire-free PC computing.Some new features that make for easier hardware handling are already available, but not yet in Windows PCs, which still make up the vast majority of desktop and laptop machines. For example, Apple's MacBook and Google's Chromebook Pixel have set the stage for USB Type C ports and its associated reversible cables to be used in Windows PCs later this year. Meanwhile, the new Windows Hello feature -- which will allow users to unlock a Windows 10 device by recognizing a face, iris or fingerprint -- could bring 3D cameras and more sensors to PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft creates a container for Windows

Hoping to build on the success of Docker-based Linux containers, Microsoft has developed a container technology to run on its Windows Server operating system.“We’re finding that interest in containers is very high,” said Mike Schutz, who runs cloud platform product marketing for Microsoft. Twenty percent of Azure users deploy Linux and a significant number of those users run Docker containers, he said.The Windows Server Container can be used to package an application so it can be easily moved across different servers. It uses a similar approach to Docker’s, in that all the containers running on a single server all share the same operating system kernel, making them smaller and more responsive than standard virtual machines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel courts China’s hardware startups to popularize its mobile, IoT chips

Erwin Liu is the CEO of a fledgling Chinese startup, and he’s been the happy recipient of free chips from Intel.“Whenever I went to Intel’s offices, they would always give us some free samples,” he said.Liu’s company, CEIN Biotechnology, which develops finger vein scanners, is just one among the many Chinese tech startups Intel is courting.In the battle for chip supremacy, the U.S. tech giant has been trying to dig deep into China’s hardware industry, and ensure that not just big vendors use its technology, but small emerging players too.On Wednesday, Intel held its annual developers conference in Shenzhen, China, at a time when rival ARM-based chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek have been all the rage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Zen: You Cant Change The Fact But You Might Change The Perception

  The mendicant was perplexed. This wasn’t unusual and, truth be told, the mendicant often didn’t understand everything and lived in a constant state of perplexedness. But this time, he was sure of the facts and knew that something was not right. He sighed and went to find the the Master. The Master was communing […]


The post Network Zen: You Cant Change The Fact But You Might Change The Perception appeared first on EtherealMind.

Stop making the NSA the bogeyman of privacy

Snowden is my hero, but here's the thing: the NSA is the least of our worries. Firstly, their attention is foreign, not domestic. Secondly, they are relatively uncorrupt. Our attention should be focused on the corrupt domestic law-enforcement agencies, like the ATF, DEA, and FBI.

I mention this because a lot of people seem concerned that the "cyber threat sharing" bills in congress (CISA/CISPA) will divulge private information to the NSA. This is nonsense. The issue is private information exposed to the FBI and other domestic agencies. It's the FBI, ATF, or DEA that will come break down your door and arrest you, not the NSA.

We see that recently where the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) has been caught slurping up international phone records going back to the 1990s. This appears as bad as the NSA phone records program that started the Snowden disclosures.

I know the FBI is corrupt because I've experienced it personally, when the threatened me in order to suppress a conference talk. We know they are corrupt in the way they hide cellphone interception devices ("stingray") from public disclosure. We know they are corrupt because their headquarters is named after J Edgar Hoover, the notoriously corrupt Continue reading

Apple Watch reviews: Complete roundup

Like clockwork, the embargo on Apple Watch reviews ended on Wednesday morning, just two days ahead of when pre-orders of the device are scheduled to open up. Per usual, Apple sent review units to a few outlets who have now lifted the veil of secrecy from Apple's highly anticipated wearable. Below are a few of the more notable excerpts from the initial grouping of Apple Watch reviews.Nilay Patel of The Verge: Let's just get this out of the way: the Apple Watch, as I reviewed it for the past week and a half, is kind of slow. There's no getting around it, no way to talk about all of its interface ideas and obvious potential and hints of genius without noting that sometimes it stutters loading notifications. Sometimes pulling location information and data from your iPhone over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi takes a long time. Sometimes apps take forever to load, and sometimes third-party apps never really load at all. Sometimes it's just unresponsive for a few seconds while it thinks and then it comes back.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch Reviews: Complete Roundup

Like clockwork, the embargo on Apple Watch reviews ended on Wednesday morning, just two days ahead of when pre-orders of the device are scheduled to open up. Per usual, Apple sent review units to a few outlets who have now lifted the veil of secrecy from Apple's highly anticipated wearable. Below are a few of the more notable excerpts from the initial grouping of Apple Watch reviews.Nilay Patel of The Verge: Let’s just get this out of the way: the Apple Watch, as I reviewed it for the past week and a half, is kind of slow. There’s no getting around it, no way to talk about all of its interface ideas and obvious potential and hints of genius without noting that sometimes it stutters loading notifications. Sometimes pulling location information and data from your iPhone over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi takes a long time. Sometimes apps take forever to load, and sometimes third-party apps never really load at all. Sometimes it’s just unresponsive for a few seconds while it thinks and then it comes back.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google ordered by German authority to change privacy practices

A German data protection authority has ordered Google to change how it handles users’ private data in the country by the end of the year.The administrative order was issued on Wednesday by the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Johannes Caspar, in order to force Google to comply with German data protection law and give users more control over their data.Google started combining existing policies for various services when it changed its privacy policy in 2012, despite the concerns of European Union data protection authorities. At least six authorities then started formal investigations into the new policy; Hamburg was one of those six.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encryption startup Vera locks down transferred documents

In Silicon Valley, the recruiting game is extremely competitive, according to Ron Harrison, founder of Jivaro Professional Headhunters, a specialist in placing technology candidates.In some cases, Harrison said the difference between getting nothing and a US$30,000 fee has come down to the few slim minutes between when one recruiter sent a resume to a company and a competing recruiter did.“It’s a dirty business,” Harrison said in a phone interview.Recruiting is complicated by the fact that companies may share resumes, even if the receiving company isn’t a client of the recruiter. Essentially, it means a recruiter loses its intellectual property through a gaping hole: an unencrypted document can be sent to anyone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Apple Watch is like Google Glass

The Verge has a terrific “day in the life” review of the Apple watch today, written by editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, that puts the device through its paces morning, noon and night.It’s a lengthy read and I thought one of its most telling points, near the end, was worth noting here: After the gym, I head to Betony for drinks with Eater managing editor Sonia Chopra so we can talk about a future of food series for later in the year. So far I’ve mostly used the Watch either alone or in an office environment, but it’s really different to have a smartwatch in a bar: here, even small distractions make you seem like a jerk. Sonia’s trying to describe the project to me and find ways to work together, but I keep glancing at my wrist to see extremely unimportant emails fly by.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oyster breaks out of its subscription shell, targets Amazon with e-book store

E-book subscription service Oyster has opened an online book store, a move that pits the young company against heavyweight Amazon.Oyster’s ebook store has the support of the top five publishers in the U.S. While Amazon also offers books from these publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster—it got into a nasty battle with them over pricing. Amazon wanted to offer their books at steep discounts, ignoring the publishers’ suggested prices.The fight between Amazon and Hachette was especially toxic, with Amazon preventing customers from pre-ordering upcoming books from the publisher and threatening to stop stocking its titles. The two parties resolved their dispute last November, but didn’t disclose the deal’s terms. None of the publishers immediately replied to questions regarding their negotiations and pricing arrangements with Oyster.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Up against laws of physics, Bell Labs pushes network performance

By using more spectrum and developing new ways to send multiple channels of data at the same time, researchers at Bell Labs are working to increase bandwidths over fiber, copper and the air.Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs celebrated its Nobel Laureates and gave a sneak peek at some of the projects that are part of its vision for networks in 2020 at an event on Wednesday.Because most network technologies have hit or are very close to the limit of what can be transferred over one channel, increasing speeds is getting more complicated. But Bell Labs President Marcus Weldon is convinced there is still room for major improvements.Part of Bell Labs’ plan for 5G is a pint-sized base station, or small cell, that can generate its own power by using solar energy or energy harvesting. The power consumption of current equipment has to come down for this to work, according to Weldon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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