Director of Amazon's 'Tandav' Cuts Scenes After Pressure From India's Hindu Nationalists

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/business/india-amazon-tandav.html
January 22, 2021 at 10:20PM

Faced with boycotts and criminal complaints, the director of “Tandav” made the edits this week. But that did not appear to satisfy some of the show’s critics, who called for him to be jailed.

Intelligence Analysts Use U.S. Smartphone Location Data Without Warrants, Memo Says

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/dia-surveillance-data.html
January 22, 2021 at 09:34PM

The disclosure comes amid growing legislative scrutiny of how the government uses commercially available location records.

Facebook Invokes Its ‘Supreme Court’

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/technology/facebook-oversight-board-trump.html
January 22, 2021 at 08:39PM

The site asks its oversight body to rule on Trump. But its justice system doesn’t work for everyone.

Can an Executive in Kansas Save Movie Theaters?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/business/media/adam-aron-movie-theaters-amc.html
January 22, 2021 at 07:56PM

For Adam Aron, who runs AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest movie theater chain, the past year has been filled with twists and turns. And no one knows the ending.

An Australia With No Google? The Bitter Fight Behind a Drastic Threat

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/business/australia-google-facebook-news-media.html
January 22, 2021 at 12:09PM

The big tech platforms are facing a challenge unlike any other as Australia moves to make them pay for news.

Google Shuts Loon Helium Balloon Project

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/technology/loon-google-balloons.html
January 22, 2021 at 11:16AM

Begun nearly a decade ago, Loon was one of the company’s high-profile, cutting-edge efforts. But it was difficult to turn into a business.

Google Shuts Loon Hot-Air Balloon Project

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/technology/loon-google-hot-air-balloons.html
January 22, 2021 at 05:04AM

Begun nearly a decade ago, Loon was one of the company’s high-profile, cutting-edge efforts. But it was difficult to turn into a business.

What Internet Censorship Looks Like

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/technology/internet-censorship-uganda.html
January 21, 2021 at 08:34PM

In East Africa, too much Facebook has been awful. So has too little Facebook.

Amid One Pandemic, Students Train for the Next

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/health/coronavirus-education-high-school.html
January 21, 2021 at 01:00PM

Researchers have banded together to find safe, virtual ways to teach the principles of microbiology and epidemiology.

‘A Total Failure’: The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/technology/proud-boys-trump.html
January 21, 2021 at 12:17AM

Members of the far-right group, who were among Donald Trump’s staunchest fans, are calling him “weak” as more of them were charged for storming the U.S. Capitol.

QAnon believers struggle with inauguration.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/technology/qanon-inauguration.html
January 20, 2021 at 09:13PM

As President Biden took office, some QAnon believers tried to rejigger their theories to accommodate a transfer of power.

President Biden’s Tech To-do List

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/technology/president-biden-tech-priorities.html
January 20, 2021 at 08:17PM

The new administration will try to restrain Big Tech, manage China and expand internet access.

NASA's Decision for S.L.S. Moon Rocket: Test Again, or Prepare for Launch?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/science/nasa-moon-rocket.html
January 20, 2021 at 04:39AM

The booster of the Space Launch System was in good condition after a test was cut short, officials said.

Parler Tries to Survive With Help From Russian Company

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/technology/parler-russian-company.html
January 20, 2021 at 04:23AM

The social network, popular with President Trump’s supporters, went offline last week after it was kicked off Amazon’s servers.

Newsroom: Insider Intelligence names Aaron St. George SVP, Technology & Product

Source: https://www.emarketer.com/newsroom/index.php/insider-intelligence-names-aaron-st-george-svp-technology-product/
January 19, 2021 at 07:01AM

January 19th, 2020 (New York, NY) – Insider Intelligence today announces that Aaron St. George is joining the company as Senior Vice President of Technology & Product. He is a […]

Could a Small Test Screen People for Covid-19?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/health/smell-test-for-covid.html
January 20, 2021 at 01:49AM

A new modeling study hints that odor-based screens could quash outbreaks. But some experts are skeptical it would work in the real world.

How to Make Data Privacy Real

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/technology/how-to-make-data-privacy-real.html
January 19, 2021 at 08:26PM

We need control over how our data is used. Thanks to California, there’s a promising new path.

When Joe Biden Takes the White House, He’ll Also Take @WhiteHouse Twitter

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/technology/biden-white-house-twitter-account.html
January 19, 2021 at 07:52PM

The transition of official White House social media handles is more complicated now than four years ago.

The Next Tesla? Investors Bet Big on Electric Truck Maker Rivian

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/business/rivian-tesla-electric-cars.html
January 19, 2021 at 07:08PM

Rivian, which has raised another $2.65 billion, plans to sell a pickup truck and S.U.V. it has worked on for more than a decade.

How Joe Biden Will Take Over the Trump Administration’s Twitter Accounts

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/technology/white-house-social.html
January 19, 2021 at 04:01PM

The transition of official White House social media handles is more complicated now than four years ago.

Why T-Shirts Promoting the Capitol Riot Are Still Available Online

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/business/qanon-maga-merchandise-amazon-etsy-shopify.html
January 19, 2021 at 11:00AM

Merchandise with phrases like “Battle for Capitol Hill Veteran” could still be purchased on major e-commerce sites, a sign of how the platforms have struggled to remove the goods.

What’s New at DRYiCE? How Do They Fit In the Emerging Multi-Cloud Enterprise?

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/18/whats-new-at-dryice-how-do-they-fit-in-the-emerging-multi-cloud-enterprise/
January 18, 2021 at 07:51PM

I attended the DRYiCE analyst day to look in on the progress of this relatively young part of HCL. Clearly, no moss is growing on their developers as they push a number of products in the marketplace, including an AIOps offering that is growing in popularity and sales, according to Amit Gupta, EVP and Global Head at DRYiCE.

The company has experienced almost 50% year-over-year growth, with DRYiCE Lucy, MyCloud, iAutomate, and iControl rounding out the best-selling products. Currently, Lucy has 2.1 million active users, and over 3,000 use cases, just to look at one of their products.

One can explain the success of DRYiCE around the emerging need for operationally focused tools, including those supporting emerging AIOps concepts. This will continue to grow through 2021 and 2022 as applications and data migrate to the cloud—most from organizations lacking a good understanding as to how they will deploy and operate these workloads effectively.

Companies today need to deal with widely distributed systems that are connected via a wide range of ISPs. When 10% of employees were traveling or working remotely from time to time, the task of managing systems was not that difficult. Today, with the vast majority of employees working from home, the complexity of IT operations has grown ten-fold, and that complexity is not going away. IT operations have had to adapt to a new normal where the environments they manage are often not under their direct control.

At the core of the journey is the simplification of IT operations and recreating them using an AIOps tool. This means we are no longer married to manual processes. The cost center becomes proactive instead of reactive, as the tool can pragmatically predict the future.

When using AIOps, the focus is on the business and the elimination of higher risk delays and inconsistencies to achieve fully automated processes that reduce risk. The journey requires that we move from inefficient processes to automated processes that are consistent. Finally, there’s a move to self-service models, where IT is not dependent on people and functions that are likely to fail.

Also presented during the analyst day was a case study highlighting how a pharmaceutical company leveraged DRYiCE products as force multipliers. Specifically, Clayton Ching introduced a new product called ROAR, a data-oriented path to advanced operational management of distributed data.

This product does a few things that are emerging in the market but not yet in other systems, including:

• Robust computational engine, meaning it has the ability to scale.
• Single source of truth, which aggregates data from siloed multi-sourced data to a single reference record.
• Database for billables, which maps Contractual RU against golden datasets to create a single source of truth here as well.
• Out-of-the-box reports, enabling the use of standard analytics within the product.

If there was one suggestion I would give DRYiCE, it is to normalize their products a bit. The company seems to have too many (10 in total), and those attempting to figure out which product does what can find it confusing.

If that’s all there is to complain about, that’s not bad. Indeed, HCL’s innovative, operationally focused companies are leading the way to better operations both inside and outside of the cloud. Indeed, as deployments grow more complex, this kind of capability is no longer an option but table stakes.

Performance Testing with K6

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/18/performance-testing-with-k6/
January 18, 2021 at 04:43PM

The problem is not that testing is the bottleneck. The problem is that you don’t know what’s in the bottle. That’s a problem that testing addresses.

— Michael Bolton, author, “Rapid Software Testing.”

You won’t find a lot of engineers out there who say they get excited about testing. Quality assurance (QA) is the kind of unglamorous chore that developers often approach with reluctance—like leg day at the gym. But forgive me if I wax enthusiastic about k6, the performance testing package that is the latest addition to my tool belt. K6 is a modern open-source testing tool written in Go. However, it provides JavaScript libraries to write test cases, so engineers and testers can use the k6 libraries to test their APIs and applications.

In this blog post, I explore what I have learned from my brief rendezvous with k6, which is said to make load testing as easy as unit testing. And I am pleased to report that I am thoroughly enjoying it! Here I’ll describe my experience with the tool as part of an application modernization project, detailing what I learned and the steps I took along the way.

Background

In the past couple of quarters, my team was working on a project to decompose a legacy monolith service. Our goal was to replace it by developing new micro/mini RESTFul web services. Because of the day-to-day support overhead, performance issues, and difficulties delivering any change in production quickly, we made a strategic decision to split the legacy project. One MySQL database was supporting the three different services and multiple MapReduce processing jobs, creating a single point of failure for several products.

My team and I started with the smallest and independent API resources to disintegrate them from the monolith. After thoroughly reviewing all the pieces, we started working on our schema design and made necessary changes in the internal APIs design while making sure that all the features of our public APIs remained passive. Soon our new service was ready.

The main challenges to address ahead of deployment were:

• Conduct passivity check
• Improve performance and performance measurement
• Reduce maintenance and support overhead
• Estimate resource utilization for cost optimization
• Plan release to production with little to no downtime

Why K6?

“Write a load test like a unit test.” It’s a phrase from k6’s web site that immediately grabbed my attention when I explored the tool after a colleague introduced me to it. I started reading the documentation and the first thing that I liked was that I can use JavaScript to write a performance test. It was a winning moment for me being a Java developer—I already knew how to write JavaScript.

I used Home Brew to install the k6 libraries on my MacBook and was ready to roll in less than a minute. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Home Brew Install

As a Java developer, the learning curve is gentle, and I found the k6 documentation both robust and well-written. I was able to bang out my first unit test in just a few minutes and to later enhance the code to load test the service. It was love at first sight. Even better, k6 isn’t a browser-based utility—I could run the test on a command-line tool with a simple one-line command.

I have used other testing tools like Apache Benchmark, Jmeter, Gatling, and Postman, but k6 outshines them all with its ease of writing workflows using various operations provided by a service. Adding field validations, asserting outputs, generating dynamic dataset, and debugging the tests were all likewise very easy compared to other tools I have used in the past.

My First K6 Test

I wrote two JavaScript functions and my first load test was ready, like so:

Figure 2. First Load Test

Note that I skipped other parts of my test to focus on the important details and show the ease of writing a test.

Now to run the test, I used k6 options to call a GET /Consumers API and run 10 iterations for 10 virtual users. I used the check function provided by the k6 library to assert the response HTTP code. For more available options, please refer to k6 Options.

Figure 3. Running the Test

The summary provided by k6 is self-explanatory, we can see how many requests k6 generated, the success request rate, and many other important metrics. The result summary looks like this (Figure 4):

Figure 4. The Result Summary

For more details about each metric please check Metrics. This resource also manifests many other output metrics based on your test configuration.

I used k6 and its features to work through with the challenges mentioned above. Over time I was able to increase the level and complexity of testing, as follows:

• For the passivity check, I asserted the API response under various load conditions and by using all known workflows.
• I have used k6 while local, dev, and QA environment to perform unit and load testing. After running the performance test using k6, I used NewRelic to compare the performance of legacy and new services by feeding the service logs to it. I presented the before and after performance comparison to all the stakeholders using the service.
• Because I can dynamically generate the test data using JavaScript functions and classes, I used the load test to create production-level traffic in our staging environment during the deployment of newer artifacts. That not only helped me to find out if we will face challenges during our product delivery, but it also let me better plan the delivery schedule. We were able to monitor system performance and avoid last-minute deployment-time surprises. I used Github to source control my testing code.
• I ran a k6 test with a heavier load than our production traffic to identify the resources that we will need to run the service effectively and efficiently. I used the Grafana dashboard to generate a report of resource utilization and cost to run the service.
• I documented the timelines needed to roll out the changes to production by running various test scenarios. This helped me successfully communicate the plan to all the stakeholders.
• After production deployment and before enabling the service to end-users, I was able to run my test in production without affecting other businesses. This allowed me to test the correctness of the software and clean up the test data at the end of the testing cycle.

K6 integrates with many test visualization tools, though I have yet to explore them as my k6 journey has just started. In fact, that’s my biggest complaint. Unlike Gatling, k6 lacks a graphical result summary that does not require a third-party integration.

Conclusion

Overall, k6 has helped me up my game in performance testing—it turns out I had nothing to worry about! I was able to pick up the following pro tips, which helped me during my journey:

• Use environment variables to make your test dynamically accept Dev/Staging/Prod Configs, if there are any.
• If you want to run long-running tests, do not forget to use the Duration option by using an environment variable (K6_DURATION) or CLI param (–duration/ -d) or programmatically in your JavaScript file.
• If k6 cannot reach out to your API running behind a proxy server, export the HTTP_PROXY option before running the test, as shown in Figure 5:

  

Figure 5. Exporting the HTTP_Proxy Option

Finally, I learned there is nothing to stop me, as a developer, from adopting testing tools that can speed me up at the same time they help me deliver higher quality results.

References: k6: Load Testing for Engineering Teams

About The Author

Shradha Khard is an Associate Lead Software Engineer at Cerner Corporation. An industry leader cloud evangelist who is customer obsessed, product focused, and detail oriented, Khard is passionate about workplace equality and women’s growth in the IT sector. Her most precious possessions are her two daughters.

What’s New at DRYiCE? How Do They Fit In the Emerging Multi-Cloud Enterprise?

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/18/whats-new-at-dryice-how-do-they-fit-in-the-emerging-multi-cloud-enterprise/
January 18, 2021 at 07:51PM

I attended the DRYiCE analyst day to look in on the progress of this relatively young part of HCL. Clearly, no moss is growing on their developers as they push a number of products in the marketplace, including an AIOps offering that is growing in popularity and sales, according to Amit Gupta, EVP and Global Head at DRYiCE.

The company has experienced almost 50% year-over-year growth, with DRYiCE Lucy, MyCloud, iAutomate, and iControl rounding out the best-selling products. Currently, Lucy has 2.1 million active users, and over 3,000 use cases, just to look at one of their products.

One can explain the success of DRYiCE around the emerging need for operationally focused tools, including those supporting emerging AIOps concepts. This will continue to grow through 2021 and 2022 as applications and data migrate to the cloud—most from organizations lacking a good understanding as to how they will deploy and operate these workloads effectively.

Companies today need to deal with widely distributed systems that are connected via a wide range of ISPs. When 10% of employees were traveling or working remotely from time to time, the task of managing systems was not that difficult. Today, with the vast majority of employees working from home, the complexity of IT operations has grown ten-fold, and that complexity is not going away. IT operations have had to adapt to a new normal where the environments they manage are often not under their direct control.

At the core of the journey is the simplification of IT operations and recreating them using an AIOps tool. This means we are no longer married to manual processes. The cost center becomes proactive instead of reactive, as the tool can pragmatically predict the future.

When using AIOps, the focus is on the business and the elimination of higher risk delays and inconsistencies to achieve fully automated processes that reduce risk. The journey requires that we move from inefficient processes to automated processes that are consistent. Finally, there’s a move to self-service models, where IT is not dependent on people and functions that are likely to fail.

Also presented during the analyst day was a case study highlighting how a pharmaceutical company leveraged DRYiCE products as force multipliers. Specifically, Clayton Ching introduced a new product called ROAR, a data-oriented path to advanced operational management of distributed data.

This product does a few things that are emerging in the market but not yet in other systems, including:

• Robust computational engine, meaning it has the ability to scale.
• Single source of truth, which aggregates data from siloed multi-sourced data to a single reference record.
• Database for billables, which maps Contractual RU against golden datasets to create a single source of truth here as well.
• Out-of-the-box reports, enabling the use of standard analytics within the product.

If there was one suggestion I would give DRYiCE, it is to normalize their products a bit. The company seems to have too many (10 in total), and those attempting to figure out which product does what can find it confusing.

If that’s all there is to complain about, that’s not bad. Indeed, HCL’s innovative, operationally focused companies are leading the way to better operations both inside and outside of the cloud. Indeed, as deployments grow more complex, this kind of capability is no longer an option but table stakes.

Performance Testing with K6

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/18/performance-testing-with-k6/
January 18, 2021 at 04:43PM

The problem is not that testing is the bottleneck. The problem is that you don’t know what’s in the bottle. That’s a problem that testing addresses.

— Michael Bolton, author, “Rapid Software Testing.”

You won’t find a lot of engineers out there who say they get excited about testing. Quality assurance (QA) is the kind of unglamorous chore that developers often approach with reluctance—like leg day at the gym. But forgive me if I wax enthusiastic about k6, the performance testing package that is the latest addition to my tool belt. K6 is a modern open-source testing tool written in Go. However, it provides JavaScript libraries to write test cases, so engineers and testers can use the k6 libraries to test their APIs and applications.

In this blog post, I explore what I have learned from my brief rendezvous with k6, which is said to make load testing as easy as unit testing. And I am pleased to report that I am thoroughly enjoying it! Here I’ll describe my experience with the tool as part of an application modernization project, detailing what I learned and the steps I took along the way.

Background

In the past couple of quarters, my team was working on a project to decompose a legacy monolith service. Our goal was to replace it by developing new micro/mini RESTFul web services. Because of the day-to-day support overhead, performance issues, and difficulties delivering any change in production quickly, we made a strategic decision to split the legacy project. One MySQL database was supporting the three different services and multiple MapReduce processing jobs, creating a single point of failure for several products.

My team and I started with the smallest and independent API resources to disintegrate them from the monolith. After thoroughly reviewing all the pieces, we started working on our schema design and made necessary changes in the internal APIs design while making sure that all the features of our public APIs remained passive. Soon our new service was ready.

The main challenges to address ahead of deployment were:

• Conduct passivity check
• Improve performance and performance measurement
• Reduce maintenance and support overhead
• Estimate resource utilization for cost optimization
• Plan release to production with little to no downtime

Why K6?

“Write a load test like a unit test.” It’s a phrase from k6’s web site that immediately grabbed my attention when I explored the tool after a colleague introduced me to it. I started reading the documentation and the first thing that I liked was that I can use JavaScript to write a performance test. It was a winning moment for me being a Java developer—I already knew how to write JavaScript.

I used Home Brew to install the k6 libraries on my MacBook and was ready to roll in less than a minute. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Home Brew Install

As a Java developer, the learning curve is gentle, and I found the k6 documentation both robust and well-written. I was able to bang out my first unit test in just a few minutes and to later enhance the code to load test the service. It was love at first sight. Even better, k6 isn’t a browser-based utility—I could run the test on a command-line tool with a simple one-line command.

I have used other testing tools like Apache Benchmark, Jmeter, Gatling, and Postman, but k6 outshines them all with its ease of writing workflows using various operations provided by a service. Adding field validations, asserting outputs, generating dynamic dataset, and debugging the tests were all likewise very easy compared to other tools I have used in the past.

My First K6 Test

I wrote two JavaScript functions and my first load test was ready, like so:

Figure 2. First Load Test

Note that I skipped other parts of my test to focus on the important details and show the ease of writing a test.

Now to run the test, I used k6 options to call a GET /Consumers API and run 10 iterations for 10 virtual users. I used the check function provided by the k6 library to assert the response HTTP code. For more available options, please refer to k6 Options.

Figure 3. Running the Test

The summary provided by k6 is self-explanatory, we can see how many requests k6 generated, the success request rate, and many other important metrics. The result summary looks like this (Figure 4):

Figure 4. The Result Summary

For more details about each metric please check Metrics. This resource also manifests many other output metrics based on your test configuration.

I used k6 and its features to work through with the challenges mentioned above. Over time I was able to increase the level and complexity of testing, as follows:

• For the passivity check, I asserted the API response under various load conditions and by using all known workflows.
• I have used k6 while local, dev, and QA environment to perform unit and load testing. After running the performance test using k6, I used NewRelic to compare the performance of legacy and new services by feeding the service logs to it. I presented the before and after performance comparison to all the stakeholders using the service.
• Because I can dynamically generate the test data using JavaScript functions and classes, I used the load test to create production-level traffic in our staging environment during the deployment of newer artifacts. That not only helped me to find out if we will face challenges during our product delivery, but it also let me better plan the delivery schedule. We were able to monitor system performance and avoid last-minute deployment-time surprises. I used Github to source control my testing code.
• I ran a k6 test with a heavier load than our production traffic to identify the resources that we will need to run the service effectively and efficiently. I used the Grafana dashboard to generate a report of resource utilization and cost to run the service.
• I documented the timelines needed to roll out the changes to production by running various test scenarios. This helped me successfully communicate the plan to all the stakeholders.
• After production deployment and before enabling the service to end-users, I was able to run my test in production without affecting other businesses. This allowed me to test the correctness of the software and clean up the test data at the end of the testing cycle.

K6 integrates with many test visualization tools, though I have yet to explore them as my k6 journey has just started. In fact, that’s my biggest complaint. Unlike Gatling, k6 lacks a graphical result summary that does not require a third-party integration.

Conclusion

Overall, k6 has helped me up my game in performance testing—it turns out I had nothing to worry about! I was able to pick up the following pro tips, which helped me during my journey:

• Use environment variables to make your test dynamically accept Dev/Staging/Prod Configs, if there are any.
• If you want to run long-running tests, do not forget to use the Duration option by using an environment variable (K6_DURATION) or CLI param (–duration/ -d) or programmatically in your JavaScript file.
• If k6 cannot reach out to your API running behind a proxy server, export the HTTP_PROXY option before running the test, as shown in Figure 5:

  

Figure 5. Exporting the HTTP_Proxy Option

Finally, I learned there is nothing to stop me, as a developer, from adopting testing tools that can speed me up at the same time they help me deliver higher quality results.

References: k6: Load Testing for Engineering Teams

About The Author

Shradha Khard is an Associate Lead Software Engineer at Cerner Corporation. An industry leader cloud evangelist who is customer obsessed, product focused, and detail oriented, Khard is passionate about workplace equality and women’s growth in the IT sector. Her most precious possessions are her two daughters.

Inside Twitter's Decision to Cut Off Donald J. Trump

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/technology/twitter-donald-trump-jack-dorsey.html
January 16, 2021 at 01:00PM

Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, had reservations about locking the president’s account. But the calls for violence that his tweets provoked were too overwhelming.

Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html
January 17, 2021 at 05:00PM

Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.

Peloton’s Rapid Rise Is Threatened by Its Slow Delivery

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/business/peloton-slow-delivery.html
January 17, 2021 at 01:00PM

The company has boomed in popularity during the pandemic but getting its exercise bikes delivered has proved a struggle, one that is angering new customers.

A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/qanon-meme-queen.html
January 17, 2021 at 01:00PM

Valerie Gilbert posts dozens of times a day in support of an unhinged conspiracy theory. The story of this “meme queen” hints at how hard it will be to bring people like her back to reality.

Snapchat Wants You to Post. They’re Willing to Pay Millions.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/style/snapchat-spotlight.html
January 16, 2021 at 12:55PM

Top performers are raking in cash as the company seeks to compete against TikTok and similar platforms.

Inside Twitter’s Decision to Cut Off Trump

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/technology/inside-twitter-decision-trump.html
January 16, 2021 at 01:00PM

Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, had reservations about locking the president’s account. But the calls for violence that his tweets provoked were too overwhelming.

NASA’s Space Launch System Hot-Fire Test: When to Watch

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/science/nasa-rocket-fire-test.html
January 16, 2021 at 08:01AM

Before NASA’s giant Space Launch System can go to the moon, it needs to ignite its engine in a “hot fire” stationary test.

Hypersonic Superweapons Are a Mirage, New Analysis Says

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/science/hypersonic-missile-weapons.html
January 16, 2021 at 12:42AM

Two scientists find revolutionary claims about the evasion of detection and defenses to be “nonsense.”

WhatsApp Delays Privacy Changes Amid User Backlash

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/technology/whatsapp-privacy-changes-delayed.html
January 16, 2021 at 12:32AM

The company faced a backlash from users who worried the changes made the messaging service less secure.

When Tech Antitrust Failed

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/technology/when-tech-antitrust-failed.html
January 15, 2021 at 09:20PM

How did a case meant to lower prices instead possibly lead to higher prices?

As Trump Clashes With Big Tech, China’s Censored Internet Takes His Side

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/business/trump-china-censorship.html
January 15, 2021 at 11:00AM

Blurring the distinction between companies and government, official propaganda outlets use President Trump’s ouster from Twitter and Facebook to argue that nobody in the world enjoys free speech.

TikTok Is Poised to Outlast Trump, and to Test Biden

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/technology/tiktok-biden.html
January 15, 2021 at 01:00PM

It is unclear how the president-elect will approach the Chinese tech industry.

Need a New Knee or Hip? A Robot May Help Install It

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/health/joint-replacement-baby-boomers-technology.html
January 15, 2021 at 01:00PM

As more people strive to stay active on aging frames, robots and other technologies are likely to play a wider role in helping surgeons replace joints.

Consumer Groups Target Amazon Prime’s Cancellation Process

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/world/europe/amazon-prime-cancellation-complaint.html
January 14, 2021 at 10:08PM

A Norwegian group filed a complaint with regulators, saying Amazon had deliberately made it difficult to end memberships to its Prime service. Groups in Europe and the U.S. back the effort.

Facebook and Twitter Face International Scrutiny After Trump Ban

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/technology/trump-facebook-twitter.html
January 14, 2021 at 10:05PM

Human rights groups and activists have spent years urging the companies to do more to remove content that encouraged violence.

The Alternate Reality of Fringe Apps

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/technology/telegram-gab.html
January 14, 2021 at 08:37PM

Facebook and Twitter have kicked out the online horribles. Are they going where we can’t find them?

San Francisco's Tech Workers Make the Big Move

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/technology/san-francisco-covid-work-moving.html
January 14, 2021 at 07:50PM

As a tech era draws to an end, more workers and companies are packing up. What comes next?

They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/technology/leaving-san-francisco.html
January 14, 2021 at 07:50PM

As a tech era draws to an end, more workers and companies are packing up. What comes next?

Talking DevSecOps on the CISO Series Podcast

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/12/talking-devsecops-on-the-ciso-series-podcast/
January 12, 2021 at 04:27PM

When GigaOm VP of Research Jon Collins published his latest report, “GigaOm Radar for Evaluating DevSecOps Tools,” it kicked off a discussion on the popular CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast co-hosted by David Spark and Mike Johnson. In that podcast, available here, Spark and Johnson discussed the report with Doug Cahill, vice president and group director of cybersecurity at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Cahill talked about Collins’ approach to evaluating the DevSecOps tool space and the dynamics involved in assessing and selecting DevSecOps solutions. As Cahill noted, modern application development is all about “agility and moving quickly—it’s continuous everything.” And in that context, Cahill said, security needs to be integrated into every phase of the application lifecycle—something DevSecOps solutions are designed to do.

“A lot of traditional cybersecurity controls don’t integrate natively into build tools like Jenkins or they don’t provide alerts vis a vis Jenkins PagerDuty in Slack, they may not open a ticket automatically in Jira, they may not have the ability to assign a policy by integrating with orchestration tools like Jenkins or Kubernetes,” Cahill explains. “That’s just a short list of the types of tools that those teams use. The controls have to snap in, they have to support those types of environments. You get less friction and the result is you can automate security by integration with those tools.”

Spark noted that the Radar report and related “Key Criteria for Evaluating DevSecOps” report provide a framework for decision making, defining selection criteria and evaluation metrics to assess solutions. Johnson weighed in with his thoughts on the approach.

“I looked at the report and I was really impressed with the framework. I don’t have this finely crafted of a framework,” Johnson told Spark during the podcast. “I look for fit with purpose. What is the problem that I am trying to solve or the set of problems I am trying to solve.”

One aspect of the reports that stood out to Johnson was the emphasis of ROI in DevSecOps. ROI is not often weighed as a critical decision factor in security solutions, Johnson said, but he found that Collins offered a compelling angle that can help organizations assess the efficiency and value of tools.

“They actually had a really good definition here, which was ‘Gains of the tooling significantly outweigh the costs and overhead of using it,’” Johnson said. “So it’s not saying it’s going to save you X amount of dollars. “It’s helping you answer [the question], ‘Is it worth it?’.

Connecticut is investigating Amazon’s practices in the e-books market.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/technology/connecticut-investigation-amazon-ebooks-antitrust.html
January 14, 2021 at 04:12AM

Millions Flock to Telegram and Signal as Fears Grow Over Big Tech

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/technology/telegram-signal-apps-big-tech.html
January 14, 2021 at 01:59AM

The encrypted messaging services have become the world’s hottest apps over the last week, driven by growing anxiety over the power of the biggest tech companies and privacy concerns.

Intel, Under Pressure to Rethink Its Business, Ousts Its Chief Executive

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/technology/intel-ceo-swan-gelsinger.html
January 13, 2021 at 11:27PM

Robert Swan, who has held the job for two years, is leaving the Silicon Valley chip giant after an activist investor pressed for change.

Is Letterboxd Becoming a Blockbuster?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/movies/letterboxd-growth.html
January 13, 2021 at 08:14PM

The social media network has finally left the cinephile niche and entered the mainstream.

The Truth About Your WhatsApp Data

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/technology/whatsapp-data.html
January 13, 2021 at 08:08PM

Why there was a backlash this week to WhatsApp, and what, if anything, has changed.

4 Ways to Do More With Your Smartphone Camera

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/technology/personaltech/smartphone-camera-do-more.html
January 13, 2021 at 05:00PM

If you are still using your phone’s camera only for selfies and quick videos, you’re barely touching its potential.

Jobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still Struggling

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/onlyfans-pandemic-users.html
January 13, 2021 at 05:00PM

OnlyFans, a social media platform that allows people to sell explicit photos of themselves, has boomed during the pandemic. But competition on the site means many won’t earn much.

Lack of Tiny Parts Disrupts Auto Factories Worldwide

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/auto-factories-semiconductor-chips.html
January 13, 2021 at 02:45PM

Carmakers can’t buy the semiconductors they need because home electronics are taking all the supply.

Uganda Blocks Facebook Ahead of Contentious Election

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/africa/uganda-facebook-ban-elections.html
January 13, 2021 at 10:24AM

President Yoweri Museveni accused the company of “arrogance” after it removed fake accounts and pages linked to his re-election campaign.

YouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel for at Least Seven Days

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/youtube-suspends-trump.html
January 13, 2021 at 08:08AM

YouTube is the latest tech company to bar the president from posting online, following Twitter, Facebook and others.

What Is Most Popular on Streaming Platforms? Old Network TV Shows

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/business/media/most-streamed-shows-nielsen.html
January 12, 2021 at 11:55PM

“The Office,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Criminal Minds,” each accounted for more viewing time than any other show or movie on streaming platforms last year, according to Nielsen.

Donald Trump's Twitter: What Happened?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/style/trump-twitter-ban.html
January 12, 2021 at 10:22PM

“I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all,” Donald Trump told us in 2016. Something else happened.

Therapists Are on TikTok. And How Does That Make You Feel?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/well/mind/tiktok-therapists.html
January 12, 2021 at 08:30PM

Mental health professionals are going viral on the app, captivating an anxious generation.

The Problem With Vaccine Websites

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/the-problem-with-vaccine-websites.html
January 12, 2021 at 08:14PM

If you’re struggling to register for a vaccine, don’t (only) blame bad tech and local officials.

Netflix Announces 2021 Film Slate

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/business/media/netflix-2021-movies.html
January 12, 2021 at 05:00PM

The streaming service’s movies feature Oscars winners and box office stars and are a reminder of its power in a Hollywood that has been irrevocably changed during the pandemic.

Talking DevSecOps on the CISO Series Podcast

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/12/talking-devsecops-on-the-ciso-series-podcast/
January 12, 2021 at 04:27PM

When GigaOm VP of Research Jon Collins published his latest report, “GigaOm Radar for Evaluating DevSecOps Tools,” it kicked off a discussion on the popular CISO Series Podcast hosted by David Spark. In that podcast, available here, Spark discussed the report with Mike Johnson, producer of the CISO Series, and Doug Cahill, vice president and group director of cybersecurity at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Spark and Cahill talked about Collins’ approach to evaluating the DevSecOps tool space and the dynamics involved in assessing and selecting DevSecOps solutions. As Cahill noted, modern application development is all about “agility and moving quickly—it’s continuous everything.” And in that context, Cahill said, security needs to be integrated into every phase of the application lifecycle—something DevSecOps solutions are designed to do.

“A lot of traditional cybersecurity controls don’t integrate natively into build tools like Jenkins or they don’t provide alerts vis a vis Jenkins PagerDuty in Slack, they may not open a ticket automatically in Jira, they may not have the ability to assign a policy by integrating with orchestration tools like Jenkins or Kubernetes,” Cahill explains. “That’s just a short list of the types of tools that those teams use. The controls have to snap in, they have to support those types of environments. You get less friction and the result is you can automate security by integration with those tools.”

Spark notes that the Radar report and related: “Key Criteria for Evaluating DevSecOps” report provide a framework for decision making, defining selection criteria and evaluation metrics to assess solutions.

“I looked at the report and I was really impressed with the framework. I don’t have this finely crafted of a framework,” Johnson told Spark during the podcast. “I look for fit with purpose. What is the problem that I am trying to solve or the set of problems I am trying to solve.”

One aspect of the reports that stood out to Johnson was the emphasis of ROI in DevSecOps. ROI is not often weighed as a critical decision factor in security solutions, Johnson said, but he found that Collins offered a compelling angle that can help organizations assess the efficiency and value of tools.

“They actually had a really good definition here, which was ‘Gains of the tooling significantly outweigh the costs and overhead of using it,’” Johnson said. “So it’s not saying it’s going to save you X amount of dollars. “It’s helping you answer [the question], ‘Is it worth it?’.

On Factory Floors, a Chime and Flashing Light to Maintain Distance

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/business/kinexon-safezone-wearable-tech.html
January 12, 2021 at 02:03PM

Businesses like Henkel, a big German chemical company, are trying wearable sensors to prevent virus outbreaks among workers.

'Smart' Office Cushions Track Workers by the Seat of Their Pants

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/world/asia/china-office-cushion-surveillance.html
January 12, 2021 at 01:02PM

A Chinese tech company wanted to track its employees’ health, but a human resources manager began inquiring about time away from their work stations, setting off a debate about workplace surveillance.

As Bitcoin Prices Swing, Millionaires Lose Sleep Over Lost Keys

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html
January 12, 2021 at 01:00PM

Bitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you can’t access that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?

New Varjo XR-3

Source: http://timreha.com/new-varjo-xr-3/
January 12, 2021 at 09:01AM

The immersive media industry has take a while to mature since my work helping to launch the Samsung Oculus Gear VR and the world's first mobile healthcare worker training simulator. The entire "Experience Creation Pipeline" now looks to be at a ground breaking level.

On the content creation side Unreal Engine and Unity have now reach maturity for content creators to have the 3D spatial graphics tools to create viable training simulators. NVIDIA's new Omniverse platform has unified file formats (via PixarsUSD) and now enables distributed creative teams to develop content in a synchronized, unified work space.

Facebook's Oculus Quest has cornered the consumer virtual reality headset market with their "all-in-one" headset. While the middle tier professional grade virtual reality headsets battle ground is a battle between HTC Vive, Valve and others. 

On the augmented reality side of the device spectrum Magic Leap has stumbled while Microsoft's Hololens is leading the market for specific professional markets. Professionals still desire wider field of view and better resolution need to read text clearly.

On the high-end of the market Varjo has launched their new XR-3 Mixed Reality headset that looks to have solved many problems to create an impressive new visualization tool for the training simulator and industrial sector.

 

• Seamless blending of real and virtual. Achieved through 12-megapixel, low-latency video pass-through technology.

• Human-eye resolution Bionic Display. Highest resolution across a 115° field of view for unmatched realism and visibility.

• Pixel-perfect depth awareness through LiDAR and stereo RGB.

• Natural interactions. Integrated eye tracking (200 Hz) and Ultraleap (v5) hand tracking.

• Inside-out tracking. Vastly improving XR tracking accuracy without the need to set up base stations.

• Comfortable Design Hand selected materials and cooling system create a compact low weight product for extended use.

The Varjo XR-3 is an exciting new development. I spoke with executive and the product will be available in a few months. Stay tuned as I hope to test drive the product in 2021. Connect with me if you are interested to learn more.

NVIDIA Omniverse & Creators Group

Source: http://timreha.com/nvidia-omniverse-creators-group/
January 12, 2021 at 07:13AM

NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX™.

Omniverse aims for universal interoperability across different applications and 3D ecosystem vendors. It provides efficient real-time scene updatesand is based on open-standards and protocols. The Omniverse Platform is designed to act as a hub, enabling new capabilities to be exposed as micro-services to any connected clients and applications.

How NVIDIA Omniverse Impact my Business?

Think of the NVIDIA Omniverse as a new platform that enables business to collaborate across creative applications.

The system uses USD file format to create an interoperable file format to use across your creative applications. This benefits creative distributed teams to work in real-time using multiple applications and synchronizes work across your team.

NVIDIA Omniverse provides you with the ability to create custom applications highly specialized to solve industry specific problems.

NVIDIA Omniverse Resources

Platform Website: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-omniverse-platform

Download Open Beta: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/omniverse/

Join NVIDIA Omniverse Creators Group 

 

Video Remix Studio Demos

Source: http://timreha.com/video-remix-studio-demos/
January 12, 2021 at 06:29AM

Above is my Home Studio demonstration using my own DJ and Video DJ remixing styles. This approach enables me to have a totally flexible creative canvas to mix content from any program and any device.

• OBS Studio and NewTek NDI are used to layer content from my iPad and iPhone running NDI Application that sends the screen capture data over wireless to OBS Studio as a layer
• Blackmagic Designs ATEM Mini Pro ISO - This mixed four HMDI inputs (2) video cameras (1) PC (1) MacBook Pro
• Ableton Live - Music and Sound EFX
• Modul8 - Live visuals and video mapping
• AKAI APC-40 AKAI Mini Midi Controllers - Mapped to control Ableton Live and Modul8 
• iPad - Various video and audio mixing programs
• iPhone - Used as a camera using NDI Camera and NDI HX Capture

Twitter Removes Over 70,000 QAnon Accounts

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/technology/twitter-removes-70000-qanon-accounts.html
January 12, 2021 at 05:25AM

The actions followed the barring of President Trump from the service last week, as Twitter has moved to distance itself from violent content.

Fringe Groups Splinter Online After Facebook and Twitter Bans

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/technology/fringe-groups-splinter-online-after-facebook-and-twitter-bans.html
January 12, 2021 at 05:03AM

Tracking what may be planned in the coming days could become even more difficult as the groups take to lesser-known networks and apps that can’t be easily monitored.

Video Studio Demos

Source: http://timreha.com/video-studio-demos/
January 12, 2021 at 01:35AM

Studio Demo - Remixing Content

Demo mixing content on any device from PC, Mac laptop, iPads, iPhone, cameras and remote robotic cameras.

Tim Reha - Home Studio demonstration using DJ and Video DJ remixing styles

Home Studio demonstration using DJ and Video DJ remixing styles
-OBS Studio
-Blackmagic Designs ATEM Mini Pro ISO
-Ableton Live
-Modul8 for live visuals
-AKAI APC-40 and Mini Midi Controllers

Events

Source: http://timreha.com/events/
January 11, 2021 at 10:30PM

Who Should Make the Online Rules?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/technology/twitter-facebook-parler-rules.html
January 11, 2021 at 09:23PM

A handful of unelected tech executives have tremendous influence on public discourse. Is that right?

Senator Klobuchar to Write Antitrust Book

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/books/amy-klobuchar-antitrust-book.html
January 11, 2021 at 01:00PM

The Minnesota Democrat and former presidential candidate said her book would call for reform in how the United States treats monopolies and competition.

How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/technology/parler-app-trump-free-speech.html
January 11, 2021 at 03:26AM

The app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler was set to go dark on Monday.

Stripped of Twitter, Trump Faces a New Challenge: How to Get Attention

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/trump-twitter.html
January 11, 2021 at 02:19AM

Mr. Trump became a celebrity through television, but Twitter had given him a singular outlet for expressing himself as he is, unfiltered by the norms of the presidency.

He Created the Web. Now He’s Out to Remake the Digital World.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/technology/tim-berners-lee-privacy-internet.html
January 10, 2021 at 01:00PM

Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data. He has technology and a start-up pursuing that goal. Can he succeed?

Apple and Google Cut Off Parler, an App That Drew Trump Supporters

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-parler.html
January 10, 2021 at 03:46AM

The companies removed the “free speech” social network from their app stores, limiting its reach just as many conservatives are seeking alternatives to Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter's Ban on Trump Shows Where Power Now Lies

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/trump-twitter-ban.html
January 09, 2021 at 09:17PM

The ability of a handful of people to control our public discourse has never been more obvious.

The facial-recognition app Clearview sees a spike in use after Capitol attack.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/facial-recognition-clearview-capitol.html
January 09, 2021 at 08:42PM

Law enforcement has used the app to identify perpetrators, Clearview AI’s C.E.O. said.

Hong Kong Website Doxxing Police Gets Blocked, Raising Censorship Fears

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/hong-kong-website-blocked.html
January 09, 2021 at 08:08PM

Users of major mobile carriers can no longer access a service that detailed the personal information of police officers, a possible sign that the city is turning to tactics used in mainland China.

Parler Pitched Itself as Twitter Without Rules. Apple and Google Said Not Anymore.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/parler-apple-google.html
January 09, 2021 at 04:11AM

Google and Apple told Parler, a social network popular with conservatives, that it must better police its users if it wants a place in their app stores.

Trump's Twitter Account Permanently Suspended

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/twitter-trump-suspended.html
January 09, 2021 at 02:56AM

Twitter, the president’s preferred megaphone, cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” and said two tweets he posted on Friday violated its Glorification of Violence Policy.

Pro-Trump Mob Livestreamed Its Rampage, and Made Money Doing It

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/dlive-capitol-mob.html
January 09, 2021 at 12:25AM

A site called Dlive, where rioters broadcast from the Capitol, is benefiting from the growing exodus of right-wing users from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Trump Isn’t the Only One

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/trump-misinformation-superspreaders.html
January 08, 2021 at 09:10PM

Facebook and Twitter should target others who have large followings and spread misinformation.

Coronavirus Vaccine Demand Has Health Officials Turning to Eventbrite

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/covid-vaccine-eventbrite.html
January 08, 2021 at 08:40PM

Public health officials are using Eventbrite’s online ticketing platform to schedule shots. But appointments are still hard to find, and not everyone knows how to use the website.

The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/business/sperm-donors-facebook-groups.html
January 08, 2021 at 01:00PM

Many people want a pandemic baby, but some sperm banks are running low. So women are joining unregulated Facebook groups to find willing donors, no middleman required.

Is Graphic Design the C.I.A.’s Passion?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/style/cia-rebrand.html
January 08, 2021 at 01:00PM

The agency’s website rebrand has sparked chatter about its visual reference points, and whether the new look is good.

The Impractical but Indisputable Rise of Retrocomputing

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/style/retrocomputing.html
January 08, 2021 at 01:00PM

Prices for vintage PCs in need of repairs and hard-to-find parts have shot up on resale sites.

Predictions for 2021 and Beyond

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/07/predictions-for-2021-and-beyond/
January 08, 2021 at 01:20AM

Here at Gigaom we’re looking at how leading-edge technologies impact the enterprise, and what organizations can do to gear up for the future. Here are some views from several of our analysts about what to watch for in enterprise IT in 2021 and beyond.

A Time for Reflection – Paul Stringfellow

We will see a broad re-assessment of our technology usage, as enterprises that scrambled to make rapid changes in response to global events now look back to assess the work they have done – have they done it correctly, have they placed information at risk? It’s a theme you’ll see repeated among some of the predictions that follow. More positively, organizations will continue to explore the possibilities of how technology investment and change can be used to help them innovate.

The Cost of Failure – Michael Delzer

The year 2020 was many things (few of them good, alas), and among them was a parade of large-dollar security failures. For many organizations reeling from events like the SolarWinds debacle, the new year will be about changing the keys we use and confirming that the locks (security processes and tools) are still working. More ominously, we can expect the fallout from some of these security hacks to impact global GDP as stolen information is weaponized.

Spend Drivers – William McKnight

Corporate technology spend will rise and the majority of that will go toward data and analytics—think, data management, data privacy, data intensive projects, and the like. Cloud computing capabilities will make it possible to rapidly try and deploy these projects like never before, and innovations by hyperconverged vendors will further propel this trend. For example, AWS recently announced EBSio2 Block Express volumes. This is SAN for the cloud. It also announced Gp3 volumes, which let you set SLAs for IOPS. Another big announcement is Automatic Tiering and Replication, which automatically moves data to colder storage tiers.

Vulnerability Management – Iben Rodriguez

2021 will be the year of vulnerability management programs, as it becomes a top concern across all engineering departments and not just for the CyberSec team. Everyone from software developers to site reliability engineers (SRE) to product managers and finance will need to ensure that applications are patched frequently and that scans for vulnerabilities are dealt with in a timely manner. As we’ve seen with recent compromises, one attack vector alone is typically not enough to break in, collect, and exfiltrate sensitive intellectual property. While one system might end up being compromised by a zero-day vulnerability, it’s important to seal the cracks in other systems that have known weaknesses. This includes not just software patches but also policy compliance to ensure that the platform configuration only allows known-good trusted traffic between authorized clients and servers.

Pandemic as Change Agent – Stowe Boyd

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technologies that were popular before but which are now essential. One example has been the combination of work chat tools and video conferring, as exemplified by Microsoft Teams and Slack. Microsoft has seen a dramatic uptick in usage, and the release of Google’s new take on the former GSuite, now known as Google Workspace, which also integrates work chat and video conferencing, represents another challenge for Slack. As the two leaders in what we might think of as “business operating systems,” Google and Microsoft present a difficult challenge for Slack, since companies will not want to pay extra for functionality they already have access to in their communications and file storage platforms. Salesforce acquiring Slack only accelerates the competitive pressures in the space, and may lead Salesforce to additional acquisitions to build out their own business operating system, based on Slack, Quip, and the many pieces of Salesforce tech.

Data-Centric Strategies – Paul Stringfellow

Data-centric strategy will become the norm. Enterprises that have defined their IT strategies around infrastructures and locations are starting to realize that it is crucial to establish data-centric strategies that focus on the use and access to information, and address issues related to portability, security, scale, and agility. This is a subtle shift that looks at data-focused outcomes and will impact the way we design our IT and data platforms to deliver services to our enterprises and customers.

Onramp to Machine Learning – William McKnight

Collaborative ML will begin its multi-year journey as a preferred machine learning (ML) approach. It uses ML as an augmentation to human thought in data-driven decision-making. By combining human expertise and ML, the approach allows organizations to become comfortable with ML solutions and to establish a bridge to greater reliance on ML in future years. Collaborative ML will be mostly evidentiary in customer interaction initiatives in 2021.

DevOps’ Next Step: Automation – Jon Collins

While it may appear that organizations across the board are already full-on DevOps, and doing everything right, the fact remains that most organizations still struggle to scale the core notions of continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. Getting this right requires the automation of core elements of best practice, including review gates and feedback loops, such that pipeline bottlenecks can be unblocked and throughput increased.

Security Gets Smart – Paul Stringfellow

We will see increased use of smart security and management tools as companies adapt traditional security methods and information management to their increasingly distributed workforces. The way we manage the end user experience is no longer suitable—we need to re-imagine our ideas of enterprise IT and understand that our enterprise tech teams cannot be on hand to work with our users. Strategy and processes need to evolve.

DevOps Consolidation – Jon Collins

A welcome evolution of the DevOps space is a vendor move from best-of-breed to consolidation-through-acquisition. While choice is a good thing, current pipelines can be fragmented and complex, and a level of standardization would be very welcome as well as bringing in governance features such as DevSecOps and overall visibility, for example via Value Stream Management.

Detection and Deception – Iben Rodriguez

Detection of compromise will be front and center in 2021. Last year the headlines were full of news about the supply chain attacks made through a trusted software vendor. Organizations now understand that while prevention isn’t always possible, there’s no excuse not to have a comprehensive set of detection controls in place. At a minimum, collecting the system event logs and network flows information for 90 days allows an investigation team to know the extent of any possible compromise. Even better would be using deception technology to dynamically setup honeypots to detect and alert on nefarious network probes and illicit activity from malicious actors.

Work Management’s Future – Stowe Boyd

Keep an eye on standalone work management tools, like Trello and Asana, which are suddenly facing a stiff challenge. Now that Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer similar functionality, why will companies pay for a standalone solution, unless it is vastly better than what is built into the business operating systems they use every day?

Mutual Authentication – Michael Delzer

With the ability to obtain digital certificates quickly, it is high time to stop sharing keys across development groups. Each app should have its own keys and all system-to-system calls should require clients to provide a digital public key and not just the service. Will 2021 be the year of mutual authentication? I certainly hope so.

Terraform-Based Infrastructure as Code Models – Jon Collins

We are seeing increasing numbers of organizations look to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in general, and Terraform in particular. While this means that vendor-specific features are less available, it also reduces lock-in. The use of IaC is also driving interest in tools that can secure, manage, and control its delivery.

A Return to Normalcy? – Paul Stringfellow

The phrase “return to normalcy,” was coined by US President Warren Harding after World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic, and it will very much apply to 2021. While technical shifts will continue and even accelerate, socially we can expect a broad movement to return to pre-pandemic practices and lifestyles. Yes, remote work and migration to the cloud will continue, but we will also see workers returning to offices and large on-site conferences resuming. Fingers crossed 2021 brings us that choice!

How Trump is Losing his Social Media Platforms

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/technology/trump-social-media.html
January 08, 2021 at 12:20AM

After years of gentle wrist slaps, social media companies are finally revoking President Trump’s megaphone.

Trump Is Banned on Facebook 'at Least' Until His Term is Over

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/technology/facebook-trump-ban.html
January 07, 2021 at 11:41PM

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said.

Narinder S. Kapany, ‘Father of Fiber Optics,’ Dies at 94

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/technology/narinder-s-kapany-dead.html
January 07, 2021 at 11:10PM

A physicist and entrepreneur who cut an imposing figure, he did more than anyone to make optical research a priority in government and corporate budgets.

NVMe/TCP: Bridging Traditional and Composable Data Center Architectures

Source: https://gigaom.com/2021/01/07/nvme-tcp-bridging-traditional-and-composable-data-center-architectures/
January 07, 2021 at 10:59PM

I’ve been writing a lot lately about NVMe/TCP and other enabling data center technologies. I used the approach taken by Lightbits Labs as an example, thanks to the ability of this solution to combine efficiency and modern protocols on commodity hardware, as well as its ability to leverage modern data center accelerators. I like solutions that offer multiple options to the user, especially now that IT needs additional flexibility to respond to an increasing number of challenges.

New Year, New Challenges

Last year was crazy. The COVID pandemic had a huge impact on IT budgets and enterprise organizations were forced to shift investments to keep up with the new user necessities. Most organizations were initially caught flat-footed, struggling to support work-from-home initiatives and to drive critical digital transformation processes. We saw an initial halt of IT investment, followed quickly by a sharp acceleration and diversification in spending—albeit, always with a keen eye on cost savings and efficiency.

As a sector, we moved quickly from an initial adoption phase to production for new platforms like Kubernetes, even as many enterprises still struggle to properly manage hybrid storage infrastructures providing resources to different types of environments. For example, Kubernetes requires fast resource provisioning, many small volumes, and persistent data storage that may last only a few minutes at a time. On the other hand, we maintain slower moving physical and virtual environments where the capacity of the single volume is important while the lifespan of the single storage volume is much longer. Combining these two needs is all but easy, especially when we add parameters, such as:

• Size of the infrastructure
• Performance and latency
• Infrastructure configurability (or composability)

The last item is particularly important in modern hybrid scenarios, especially if the IT organization doesn’t know how quickly its infrastructure will change over time.

Building Flexible Storage Infrastructures

IT infrastructure teams are struggling with the limitations of traditional architectures. In the past, resources were consolidated in a single scale-up or scale-out system, but today we have technology and protocols like NVMe/TCP that enable us to design storage infrastructures that take advantage of the resources available across the entire data center and see them as local.

Thanks to NVMe/TCP, it is now possible to build hyper-scalable and high-performance storage systems with commodity hardware, without the resource and topology limitations imposed by traditional solutions. It’s like having the flexibility and efficiency of public cloud storage, on premises and for organizations of all sizes. In fact, the main benefit of the added flexibility is to join the performance advantages of direct access storage with the efficiency and optimizations of storage area networks.

To give you a better understanding about this kind of next generation infrastructure design and its benefits let’s talk about its common application. The majority of modern applications, like NoSQL databases or AI and big data frameworks, are architected to work in a scale-out fashion. High-availability mechanisms embedded in the application and every node in the cluster directly access their own resources without relying on a traditional shared storage system. This enables simplicity, performance, and scalability while negatively impacting resource utilization. With a flexible, and more configurable, storage infrastructure every node has access to network resources like they were local, while the storage system optimizes capacity utilization and improves overall availability. NVMe/TCP takes this a step further thanks to its ability to run on standard network interfaces, simplifying the entire hardware stack and associated costs. At the end of the day, the goal is to achieve the best of both worlds in terms of performance, resource utilization, and cost savings.

Enhanced flexibility and Kubernetes

Kubernetes is becoming the de facto standard for deploying most of the applications I mentioned above. It is an orchestrator that simplifies deployment and management of complex container-based applications. Kubernetes allocates resources depending on application needs and releases them when they are no longer necessary. This means that a single Kubernetes cluster is a highly volatile environment with thousands of containers and storage volumes continuously spun up and down.

The benefits of the enhanced flexibility introduced by modern NVMe/TCP-based infrastructures are even more visible in a Kubernetes environment. When multiple applications are consolidated in a single cluster, local storage utilization increases and becomes a source of concern for the potential risk of data loss or long rebuilding processes that may impact performance consistency and service availability. In enterprise environments this is even more of an issue, as lift and shift migrations can bring forward traditional applications not designed with embedded availability and data protection mechanisms.

Kubernetes now offers a standard interface to deal with storage systems (the container storage interface or CSI), and many vendors have already developed the necessary plug-ins to make their storage compatible with the orchestrator. Associating the benefits of this improved infrastructure configurability with a CSI plug-in enables users to build extremely scalable next-generation infrastructures able to serve several types of applications concurrently while keeping TCO down.

Wrapping Up

Once again, I single out Lightbits Labs as an example, if you want to investigate further on this topic. The LightOS CSI plug-in supports Kubernetes, extending the benefits of NVMe/TCP composable storage to a larger universe of applications, and allowing for additional simplification, consolidation, and cost savings throughout the entire datacenter infrastructure. Additionally, the recent addition of snapshots and thin clones in LightOS simplifies the migration of legacy applications to Kubernetes as the persistent storage can support traditional enterprise workflows as well as database devops and snapshot-based backup integration.

NVMe/TCP is a great protocol to bridge traditional data centers to the coming era. Its flexibility enables organizations to plan for fast-evolving scenarios while keeping costs down. When correctly implemented, NVMe/TCP enables the user to support multiple configuration layouts on different generations of Ethernet networks. Organizations can start small, protect their existing investments and grow over time while helping IT respond swiftly to new business needs.