The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, April 17

Wikileaks goes to HollywoodWikiLeaks won plaudits from people who want to see the workings of government exposed to daylight, by publishing a vast trove of U.S. data several years ago. Now, it’s decided to expose another cache of purloined information that has decidedly less obvious benefit for the public interest. It’s put up a searchable database of the documents stolen from Sony Pictures last year in a high-profile hack, using the rationalization that basically, big companies should have their dirty washing hung out just because (insert reference to military-industrial complex here). Those who can’t wait to read a Hollywood executive’s true feelings about a certain famous actress would probably agree.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, April 17

Wikileaks goes to HollywoodWikiLeaks won plaudits from people who want to see the workings of government exposed to daylight, by publishing a vast trove of U.S. data several years ago. Now, it’s decided to expose another cache of purloined information that has decidedly less obvious benefit for the public interest. It’s put up a searchable database of the documents stolen from Sony Pictures last year in a high-profile hack, using the rationalization that basically, big companies should have their dirty washing hung out just because (insert reference to military-industrial complex here). Those who can’t wait to read a Hollywood executive’s true feelings about a certain famous actress would probably agree.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SD-WAN’s Value Prop Conundrum

My interpretation of the SD-WAN value prop can be boiled down to cost savings, simplified operations, and improved application performance over inconsistently performing WAN links. Here's the conundrum. An engineer might instinctively recoil at this sort of value proposition.

LA school district seeks millions from Apple over iPad software woes

The Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking a multimillion dollar refund from Apple over a failed project to provide 650,000 students with iPads they could use at home.LA Unified approached Apple in 2013 about using its tablets as part of an ambitious project to provide every student, teacher and administrator in the U.S.'s second-largest school district with an iPad.The initiative, then known as the Common Core Technology Project, would cost around US$1.3 billion, the school district said at the time, with half that figure going to Apple and the remainder being used to build out wireless networks at the schools.Apple hired Pearson Education as a subcontractor to develop software for the iPads, but according to a letter the school district sent to Apple this week, a "vast majority" of the student have been unable to use the software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Whistleblowers at risk when using US government websites

More than two dozen U.S. government websites should be urgently upgraded to use encryption, as whistleblowers are potentially at risk, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.At least 29 websites that can be used for reporting abuse and fraud don’t use encryption, the ACLU said in a letter sent on Tuesday to the U.S.’s top technology chief, CIO Tony Scott.There has been a broad push recently to move websites to using SSL/TLS (secure sockets layer/transport security layer) encryption. Most e-commerce sites use SSL/TLS, but the case has grown stronger for its broader adoption because of a surge in state-sponsored espionage and cybercriminal activity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Flip Side of Overlays

Why Labeled BGP on White Box Will Disrupt How We Buy Routers

For those of us that are old enough to have or remember a record collection, there is familiarity (and probably a little nostalgia) for the term “flip side.” In this context, flip side refers to the B-side of a standard vinyl record, and refers to secondary recordings or bonus tracks that weren’t as heavily marketed as their A-side counterparts.

Why am I writing about an antiquated music medium? And what does this have to do with networking? I bring this up because it’s an interesting parallel with what’s happening with network overlays – and specifically, how these are viewed from the “flip side,” or in other words, the different points of view from the consumer and the provider.

First off, some background. In the simplest terms, an overlay is a logical network that enables you to create paths and connections on top of (and in many cases, regardless of) the physical connections between the end points. More importantly, overlays are a critical construct because they enable network operators to create more virtual subnets – which in turn support multi-tenancy, VM mobility, and service differentiation.

These are all Continue reading

Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper

Now that Nokia’s made its move for Alcatel-Lucent, speculation is rampant on how Nokia rival Ericsson might respond. And the presumed target for Ericsson is Juniper.By buying Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia would become the leading provider of wireless equipment to service providers and significantly expand its wireline portfolio, making it a more formidable competitor to Ericsson. Specific wireline assets to be gained from Alcatel-Lucent would be the core and edge routers sold to service providers, of which Alcatel-Lucent is the No. 4 and No. 2 player in the industry, respectively.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Solidarity

The government's zealous War on Hackers threatens us, the good hackers who stop the bad ones. They can't tell the good witches from the bad witches. When members of our community get threatened by the system, we should probably do more to stand in solidarity with them. I mention this because many of you will be flying to SFO this coming week for the RSA Conference, which gives us an opportunity to show solidarity.

Today, a security researcher tweeted a joke while on a plane. When he landed, the FBI grabbed him and confiscated all his stuff. The tweets are here:



Chris Roberts' area of research is embedded control systems like those on planes. It's not simply that the FBI grabbed him because of a random person on a plane, but specifically because he's a security researcher. He's on the FBI's radar (so to speak) for things like this Fox News interview.

I suggest we all start joke tweeting along these lines,  from the airplanes, like:

DFW->SFO. Playing with airplane wifi. I Continue reading

AMD withdraws from high-density server business

AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which had developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers.The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD withdraws from high-density server business

AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers. The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MIT researchers develop wearable thumbnail-mounted wireless controller

Researchers at MIT have come up with a novel way to interact with wireless devices – a miniaturized trackpad so small that it can be stuck onto a user’s thumbnail.NailO, as the device is called, is the brainchild of media arts and sciences grad student Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a native of Taiwan, who came up with the idea when she couldn’t find the nail art stickers popular in that country in the U.S. She called the device “unobtrusive.”+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Fave Raves: 34 tech pros share favorite IT products + Techiest college commencement speakers of 2015+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feeling the Love from our IT Brethren

I had the honor of accepting two awards yesterday on behalf of the Cumulus Networks team. We’re pleased because the honors were awarded based on a broad poll of real people in real IT shops, including some of the world’s biggest enterprises and service providers. You can’t buy these; we didn’t even know that the poll was being taken. Those voters, who we think of as our IT brethren, chose us for “Bare Metal Switch OS Market Leader,” for one of only two “Special Achievement” awards (together with our partner, VMware), and three other accolades.

Bare Metal Switch winners: Cumulus Networks and Dell
With Sudi Krishnamurthy, Dell Networking

 

Bare Metal Switch OS #1
Bare Metal Switch OS awards: #1 for market leader, innovation leader and price leader, and tied for #1 performance leader.

“Well, how did I get here?”

When we founded Cumulus Networks, we were driven by a vision of how high-capacity interconnect would change modern applications.

We set out to make great networking technology available to the masses, addressing three critical needs: affordability, an efficient operating model, and availability via a variety of channels. These tenants have become the definition of open networking.

To fulfill these goals, we built the company with IT professionals from all disciplines: development, operations, support and logistics. Continue reading

Moore’s Law at 50: The past and future

When you’re strapping on the latest smart watch or ogling an iPhone, you probably aren’t thinking of Moore’s Law, which for 50 years has been used as a blueprint to make computers smaller, cheaper and faster.Without Moore’s Law it’s quite possible that new types of computers like Microsoft’s HoloLens, a holographic wearable with which users can interact with floating images, would not have been developed. For decades, Moore’s Law has been a guiding star for the development of modern electronics, though in recent years its relevance has been subject to debate.Moore’s Law isn’t a scientific theory, but a set of observations and predictions made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in an article [click here to download] first published in Electronics Magazine on April 19, 1965, which were subsequently modified. His core prediction states that the density of transistors, or the number of transistors on a given die area, would double every two years, which leads to double the performance. Loosely translated, that means in 18 to 24 months you could buy a computer that is significantly faster than what you have today with the same amount of money.To read this article in full or to Continue reading

Instagram clarifies rules to ban revenge porn

Instagram is clarifying its rules around sexual, illegal and other inappropriate content, including posts involving revenge porn.The site now expressly forbids users from threatening to post intimate images of others, as well as sexual content involving minors, the service said in its updated policies on Thursday. More broadly, photos showing sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks aren’t allowed, Instagram says.For safety reasons, Instagram may also remove images that show nude or partially nude children, the company said.Instagram previously had a ban on nude images and other content like photos depicting extreme violence or gore. But as the Facebook-owned company has grown, it’s now clarifying its rules, aiming to keep its app friendly for a general audience. Instagram, which Facebook bought for US$1 billion in 2012, now has more than 300 million users who log in monthly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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