How Facebook threatens HP, Cisco, and more with its “vanity free” servers

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Facebook, Amazon, and Google are all very picky about their server hardware, and these tech giants mostly build it themselves from commodity components. Frank Frankovsky, VP of hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook, was instrumental in launching the Open Compute Project because he saw the waste in big cloud players reinventing things they could share. Frankovsky felt that bringing the open-source approach Facebook has followed for software to the hardware side could save the company and others millions—both in direct hardware costs and in maintenance and power costs.

via How Facebook threatens HP, Cisco, and more with its “vanity free” servers | Ars Technica.

The OCP hardware designs are “open” at a higher level. This way anyone can use standards-based components to create the motherboards, the chassis, the rack-mountings, the racks, and the other components that make up servers.

Motorola Is Listening

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Most subsequent connectivity to both services (other than downloading images) is proxied through Motorola’s system on the internet using unencrypted HTTP, so Motorola and anyone running a network capture can easily see who your friends/contacts are (including your friends’ email addresses), what posts you’re reading and writing, and so on. They’ll also get a list of which images you’re viewing, even though the actual image download comes directly from the source.

via Motorola Is Listening – Projects – Beneath the Waves.

The Underhanded C Contest

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The goal of the contest is to write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil. Every year, we will propose a challenge to coders to solve a simple data processing problem, but with covert malicious behavior. Examples include miscounting votes, shaving money from financial transactions, or leaking information to an eavesdropper. The main goal, however, is to write source code that easily passes visual inspection by other programmers.

via The Underhanded C Contest.

XenServer 6.2 is now fully open source!

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It’s an exciting day for Citrix, our customers and the open source community as we announce some BIG news for Citrix XenServer. Today we cross another major milestone as XenServer moves to a full open source model beginning with the new XenServer 6.2. Cutting right to the chase, here are the highlights that I’ll go into more detail on:

  • XenServer 6.2 is available as a free open source virtualization platform for all users
  • Citrix is also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal
  • Citrix provides a paid version of XenServer that includes support and maintenance
  • New CPU socket licensing
  • New simplified packaging and pricing

via XenServer 6.2 is now fully open source! | Citrix Blogs.

MIT researchers can see through walls using ‘Wi-Vi’

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Every time a Wi-Fi signal is reflected off an object, the shape and makeup of that object affects the signal that comes back. But when Wi-Fi hits a wall, most of the signal gets reflected off the wall and only a faint bit of it reflects off the people on the other side.

To get around this, Wi-Vi transmits two Wi-Fi signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. When one signal hits a stationary object, the other cancels it out. But because of the way the signals are encoded, they don’t cancel each other out for moving objects. That makes the reflections from a moving person visible despite the wall between that person and the Wi-Vi device. Wi-Vi can translate those faint reflections into a real-time display of the person’s movements.

via MIT researchers can see through walls using ‘Wi-Vi’ | ITworld.

Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips

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An FAQ and an in-depth design document provide more information than most people would want to know about QUIC. Besides running multiplexed connections over UDP, QUIC was “designed to provide security protection equivalent to TLS/SSL, along with reduced connection and transport latency,” the FAQ states.

via Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips | Ars Technica.

Patent troll that sues public transit systems gets hauled into court

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ArrivalStar doesn’t want to litigate; it wants fast cash. The company has never taken a case to trial, and last year it admitted it had only seen one case through to the early “claim construction” phase.

via Patent troll that sues public transit systems gets hauled into court | Ars Technica.

This patent troll recently settled with Metra for $50K, Chicago’s local train operator.  Here’s a Chicago Tribune article:

Metra paid $50,000 in ‘frivolous’ patent suit, officials say – chicagotribune.com

NASA’s NEXT ion thruster runs five and a half years nonstop to set new record

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NEXT is a solar electric propulsion system where electricity from the spacecraft’s solar panels is used to power a a 7-kW class ion thruster. In this, particles of xenon gas are electrically charged and then accelerated to speeds up to 90,000 mph (145,000 km/h). Such thrusters have already been used on spacecraft, such as NASA’s Dawn probe, and engineers are very interested in them because of their much higher performance compared to conventional chemical rocket engines.

via NASA’s NEXT ion thruster runs five and a half years nonstop to set new record.