Intel Invests in Big Switch

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“There’s a clear trend toward white box — getting away from the model where everything comes pre-integrated from one vendor,” says Guido Appenzeller, Big Switch’s CEO. Any of the “hyperscale” Web/cloud players — the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon Web Services LLC — have “at least tried out white boxes in the data center,” he says.

via Light Reading – Intel Invests in Big Switch.

This is the first I heard of the term white box.  The article is very informative.  Here’s one more blurb that may help describe it better:

“You will see some of the largest customers in the world demanding some very specific mandates, one of which is standardization, which implies white boxes,” says Jason Matlof, Big Switch’s vice president of marketing.

The bottom line:  The largest customers want open standards  — probably to create a more competitive marketplace for the massive amount of boxes they need to buy.  More competition = lower prices or better features or simply lower total cost of ownership.

Security Firm Bit9 Hacked, Used to Spread Malware

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An hour after being contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, Bit9 published a blog post acknowledging a break-in. The company said attackers managed to compromise some of Bit9′s systems that were not protected by the company’s own software. Once inside, the firm said, attackers were able to steal Bit9′s secret code-signing certificates.

via Security Firm Bit9 Hacked, Used to Spread Malware — Krebs on Security.

Power company says Super Bowl blackout was caused by device designed to prevent power outages

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In a follow-up statement, Entergy said that tests conducted by S&C and Entergy on the two relays at the Superdome showed that one worked as expected, the other did not.

via Power company says Super Bowl blackout was caused by device designed to prevent power outages – The Washington Post.

I would hope most devices in the distribution of power are designed to prevent outages.

Samsung laptop bug is not Linux specific

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This is pretty obviously a firmware bug. Writing UEFI variables is expressly permitted by the specification, and there should never be a situation in which an OS can fill the variable store in such a way that the firmware refuses to boot the system. We’ve seen similar bugs in Intel’s reference code in the past, but they were all fixed early last year. For now the safest thing to do is not to use UEFI on any Samsung laptops. Unfortunately, if you’re using Windows, that’ll require you to reinstall it from scratch.

via mjg59 | Samsung laptop bug is not Linux specific.

The Linux Foundation Secure Boot Pre-bootloader Released

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The Linux Foundation started work on Secure Boot last year and announced back in October that its plan involved development of a pre-bootloader, which it will get signed by Microsoft. A signed pre-bootloader will allow for chain-loading of boot-loader of any other operating system thereby enabling users to install non-signed Linux distros on Windows 8 UEFI hardware. This signed pre-bootloader will greatly help smaller distributions that don’t have either the resources or time to get their own Microsoft-verified key.

via The Linux Foundation Secure Boot Pre-bootloader Released – ParityNews.com: …Because Technology Matters.

Source code of EveryBlock.com

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Overview

In an effort to make the code useful to as many people as possible, we’ve split it into several packages:

  • The main package (probably the thing you’re looking for) is the publishing system, known as ebpub.
  • Second, the packages ebdata and ebgeo contain Python modules for processing data and making maps.
  • Third, the packages ebinternal and everyblock round out the code that powers EveryBlock.com. They’re internal tools and are likely not of general use, but we’re including them to be complete.
  • Finally, ebblog and ebwiki are our blog and wiki software, respectively. Because, dammit, the world needs another Django-powered blogging tool.

via ebcode – Source code of EveryBlock.com – Google Project Hosting.

This might make for an interesting read through.

China’s radical new space drive

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It may not sound very much, less than three ounces, but in space a little thrust goes a long way. Boeing’s advanced XIPS thruster, which fires out Xenon ions at high speed, generates less than a quarter as much thrust from twice as much power. It’s used to maintain satellites in position, or move them to a slightly different orbit. Crucially, Xips weights about twenty kilos, more than an equivalent EmDrive, and the propellant for prolonged operation can weigh much more.

via EmDrive: China’s radical new space drive (Wired UK).

Start-Up Tawkon Rides Radiation Scare To Build Phone Coverage Maps

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It also gives other data. According to the findings, Latin Americans tended to answer their calls significantly quicker than the rest of the world. In Panama, the average time the phone is left ringing before an answer is 6.42 seconds, while in Libya it’s almost double that – 11.16 seconds.

via Start-Up Tawkon Rides Radiation Scare To Build Phone Coverage Maps.

Data is the new currency.

For superfast 4G LTE Advanced smartphone and tablet connections, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile plan new network tests, and rollouts use chipsets from Qualcomm and others

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Current phones generally use only one antenna taking one stream of data at a time. LTE Advanced devices will also need more energy storage to do the necessary onboard computation. Without new breakthroughs in batteries or reductions in power consumption by other means (see “Efficiency Breakthrough Promises Smartphones that use Half the Power”), phones will simply get larger.

via For superfast 4G LTE Advanced smartphone and tablet connections, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile plan new network tests, and rollouts use chipsets from Qualcomm and others | MIT Technology Review.

Will ubiquitous mobile data bring down its cost for low bandwidth users?  We shall see.