Ex-Facebook engineer launches startup to tackle server management

One of the founders of Facebook’s Open Compute Project has launched a new company that aims to cut the cost of running data centers using “community-based analytics.”Coolan announced a beta version of its first product on Wednesday, a service that collects and aggregates data about its customers’ server environments and uses it to predict failures, prevent outages and allow companies to benchmark themselves against peers.The company was cofounded by Amir Michael, a former Facebook engineer who led development of the Open Compute Project’s first server designs. That group aims to give customers more control over how their equipment gets designed and built, and Coolan aims to have a similar empowering effect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple ordered to pay Texas company $532.9 million after losing patent case

Apple has been ordered to pay US$532.9 million after a U.S. jury found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by Smartflash, a Texas-based technology licensing company.That figure is less than the $852 million that Smartflash was seeking, but is still a blow to Apple. Smartflash said it was entitled to a percentage of sales from Apple devices like Mac computers, iPhones and iPads that were used to access iTunes.Apple tried to have the case thrown out, saying that it never used Smartflash's technology. Apple also argued the patents in question are invalid because previous patented innovations from other companies covered the same technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadband advocates urge Republicans to overturn FCC on net neutrality

The U.S. Congress should pass net neutrality legislation that overturns proposed rules at the Federal Communications Commission so that the protections survive over the long term, some opponents of the FCC approach said.With the FCC scheduled to vote on new net neutrality rules in less than 24 hours, broadband advocates at a House of Representatives hearing Wednesday told Republican lawmakers they should move forward with plans to pass their own rules.FCC rules without congressional action on net neutrality could open up the regulations to a court challenge or repeal by a future FCC, said Rick Boucher, a former Democratic congressman who is now honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, a broadband advocacy group. Long-lasting net neutrality rules are needed, he told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Europol and security vendors disrupt massive Ramnit botnet

European law enforcement agencies seized command-and-control servers used by Ramnit, a malware program that steals online banking credentials, FTP passwords, session cookies and personal files from victims.Ramnit started out in 2010 as a computer worm capable of infecting EXE, DLL, HTM, and HTML files. However, over time it evolved into an information-stealing Trojan that’s distributed in a variety of ways.Ramnit is capable of hijacking online banking sessions, stealing session cookies which can then be used to access accounts on various sites, copying sensitive files from hard drives, giving attackers remote access to infected computers and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New, faster wireless network to be built

As recently as a week ago, in a February 17th, 2015, Financial Times newspaper article, investor analysts were speculating as to just what U.S. satellite TV company Dish was going to do with its massive hoard of unused, cached mobile-suitable spectrum that it's been accumulating over the years.Well, we might have just learned the answer. Artemis Networks, a wireless startup, has reached a deal to lease some of that spectrum, for a while, in San Francisco. It wants to use it to experiment with its unusual pCell technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New, faster wireless network to be built

As recently as a week ago, in a February 17th, 2015, Financial Times newspaper article, investor analysts were speculating as to just what U.S. satellite TV company Dish was going to do with its massive hoard of unused, cached mobile-suitable spectrum that it's been accumulating over the years.Well, we might have just learned the answer. Artemis Networks, a wireless startup, has reached a deal to lease some of that spectrum, for a while, in San Francisco. It wants to use it to experiment with its unusual pCell technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook fixed 61 high-severity flaws last year through its bug bounty program

As a result of reports received through its bug bounty program Facebook confirmed and fixed 61 high-severity vulnerabilities last year, almost 50 percent more than in 2013.Since 2011, the company has been paying monetary rewards to researchers who report flaws that could compromise the integrity or privacy of user data or could enable access to systems within its infrastructure.While the minimum reward is US$500, there is no upper limit. The company decides how much to pay depending on a bug’s severity and sophistication. The program doesn’t cover only the facebook.com site and related services, but also other products that Facebook created or acquired, like Instagram, Parse, Onavo, Oculus, Moves and osquery.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MIT researchers building chips to prevent leaky Internet of Things

MIT researchers this week are demonstrating a design for new radio chips that could be used to efficiently power the Internet of Things.The researchers, led by MIT Professor in Electrical Engineering Anantha Chandrakasan, are presenting their work at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, where the show theme is "Silicon Systems -- Small Chips for Big Data." The MIT paper is titled "A +10dBm 2.4GHz Transmitter with sub-400pW Leakage and 43.7% System Efficiency."MORE: Internet of Things to bring new economic boomTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenStack Board Member Rob Hirschfeld on the impact of DevOps, SDN, Docker & more

I recently had the great pleasure to sit down with community-elected OpenStack board member and Crowbar co-creator, Rob Hirschfeld. Rob shared awesome nuggets of wisdom on data center and cloud operations. You can view the video and the full transcript below: Art Fewell: Welcome to Open Networking TV. This is the Catch Up, I’m your host Art Fewell. Today we will be catching up with the OpenStack guru, Rob Hirschfeld.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenStack Board Member Rob Hirschfeld on the impact of DevOps, SDN, Docker & more

I recently had the great pleasure to sit down with community-elected OpenStack board member and Crowbar co-creator, Rob Hirschfeld. Rob shared awesome nuggets of wisdom on data center and cloud operations. You can view the video and the full transcript below: Art Fewell: Welcome to Open Networking TV. This is the Catch Up, I’m your host Art Fewell. Today we will be catching up with the OpenStack guru, Rob Hirschfeld.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The FCC’s Orwellian Internet policy

President Obama’s secret plan to protect the “open Internet” is locked inside the Federal Communications Commission. We don’t know what’s in the 322 pages, but we are told it includes a transparency rule.  We think it also includes a no-blocking rule, which is crucial because the commission's own website has been blocking access to the press releases of its minority commissioners.  The FCC, consisting of five appointed members, is celebrating the democratic process used in formulating the 332-page plan. In a campaign coordinated with the White House, commission staff solicited several million form letters from activists cheering the ever-popular “Title II reclassification.” Nearly 1 million voters responded furiously with comments of their own, advocating the exact opposite policy, one of Internet freedom. Many senators and congressmen are skeptical an “independent, expert” agency is supposed to work this way. Commission staff, however, are warning Congress, and its 535 elected representatives, to buzz off, lest it intrude on democracy. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber offers free rides to Koreans, hopes they won’t report its illegal drivers to police

Uber Technologies is offering free rides on its uberX ride-sharing service in the South Korean capital of Seoul, after city authorities intensified their crackdown on illegal drivers by offering a reward to residents who report Uber drivers to police.Last December, the city of Seoul offered rewards of 1 million won (about US$910) to people who report Uber drivers, and called all services by Uber “blatantly illegal.” In the last three months of operating the service for sale, about 100 reports have been made although no rewards were provided by the city yet, according to Uber Korea’s spokeswoman. Seoul city was not available for immediate response.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber offers free rides to Koreans, hopes they won’t report its illegal drivers to police

Uber Technologies is offering free rides on its uberX ride-sharing service in the South Korean capital of Seoul, after city authorities intensified their crackdown on illegal drivers by offering a reward to residents who report Uber drivers to police.Last December, the city of Seoul offered rewards of 1 million won (about US$910) to people who report Uber drivers, and called all services by Uber “blatantly illegal.” In the last three months of operating the service for sale, about 100 reports have been made although no rewards were provided by the city yet, according to Uber Korea’s spokeswoman. Seoul city was not available for immediate response.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Motorola’s new Moto E is a more powerful LTE smartphone

Motorola Mobility’s new Moto E has LTE and a more powerful processor than its predecessor, but users will also have to make do with a low-resolution front camera that doesn’t measure up to ones offered on competing products.The upgraded Moto E’s arrival less than a year after the first version went on sale highlights the growing competition for unlocked smartphones costing US$200 or less. It will start shipping on Thursday in 40 countries and cost about $150.The new Moto E has a 4.5-inch, 540 x 960-pixel screen and a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor from Qualcomm. The original model has a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor and a 4.3-inch screen with the same resolution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

TCAM and CAM memory usage inside networking devices

How does Internet work - We know what is networking

As this is networking blog I will focus mostly on the usage of CAM and TCAM memory in routers and switches. I will explain TCAM role in router prefix lookup process and switch mac address table lookup. However, when we talk about this specific topic, most of you will ask: how is this memory made from architectural aspect? How it is made in order to have the capability of making lookups faster than any other hardware or software solution? That is the reason for the second part of the article where I will try to explain in short how are the most usual

TCAM and CAM memory usage inside networking devices

Flaw in popular Web analytics plug-in exposes WordPress sites to hacking

WordPress site owners using the WP-Slimstat plug-in installed should upgrade it to the latest version immediately in order to fix a critical vulnerability, security researchers warn.WP-Slimstat, a Web analytics plug-in for WordPress, has been downloaded over 1.3 million times and is highly rated by users. The plug-in allows site owners to track returning visitors and registered users, monitor JavaScript events, detect intrusions, analyze email campaigns and more.Researchers from Web security firm Sucuri found a vulnerability that stems from weak cryptographic key generation in WP-Slimstat versions 3.9.5 and lower. If attackers can determine the secret key used by the plug-in, they can launch blind SQL injection attacks that enable them to read sensitive information from the site’s database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What’s in my toolbag – Update 1 – Fluke LinkSprinter 200

A few years back some of us wrote on a common theme around our tools and tool-bags.  These posts turned out to be quite popular and informative to many in the community, including ourselves.  Since the original post back in 2011, I have added a few new toys tools to my tool-bag and figured it was […]

The post What’s in my toolbag – Update 1 – Fluke LinkSprinter 200 appeared first on Fryguy's Blog.

With no Google, Chinese app stores soar on high downloads

Chinese demand for smartphones is leading to a surge in app downloads from the country—so much so that five of the leading app stores in the world are now from China.Apple and Google still run two of the biggest app stores on the planet, but in China local app stores are pulling in billions of downloads, just by targeting the home market, according to Juniper Research.China itself accounted for 59 percent of all app downloads made last year, which in total reached close to 185 billion. In contrast, the U.S. market only accounted for 8 percent of all app downloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Greenland

Emerging enterprise techs to watch

New technologies affecting enterprise IT continue to be invented, commercialized and adopted. The latest batch of techs looming on the horizon, examined in greater detail below, include quantum computing, gamification, reactive programming, augmented reality, transient computing electronics and Named Data Networking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)