US congress rules Huawei a ‘security threat’

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The US congressional panel launched its investigation over concerns that Beijing could use the fast-growing firms for economic or military espionage, or cyber attacks.

via US congress rules Huawei a ‘security threat’.

From the Chicago Tribune via Reuters:

Employee-owned and unlisted Huawei is the world’s second-biggest maker of routers, switches and telecoms equipment by revenue after Sweden’s Ericsson. ZTE ranks fifth. In the global mobile phone sector, ZTE is fourth and Huawei sixth.

A blast from the past (1999):

Giant US software manufacturer Lotus has been lowering the profile of information about how they have installed an NSA-only trapdoor into e-mail and conference systems used by many European governments, including the German Ministry of Defence, the French Ministry of Education and Research and the Ministry of Education in Latvia.

Ruckus Wireless Goes for an IPO

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Ruckus sells its Wi-Fi access points, controllers and gateways to service providers as well as enterprise customers. The company says it has 45 carrier customers, among which are Bright House Networks , The Cloud , KDDI Corp. , Tikona Digital Networks Pvt. Ltd. , Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) and Towerstream Corp. (Nasdaq: TWER). (See Ruckus Makes Over KDDI With Wi-Fi Offload.)

via Light Reading Mobile – Broadband – Ruckus Wireless Goes for an IPO – Telecom News Analysis.

Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Ruckus had 559 employees at the end of June 2012 and offices in China, India, Japan, Taiwan and the U.K.

cHTeMeLe is a board game about HTML

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Despite cHTeMeLe’s technical theme, its developers claim you don’t need any web programming experience to play. The game takes web design standards and boils them down into game rules that even children can learn. To help less technical players keep everything straight, the tag cards use syntax highlighting that different parts of code have unique colors — just like an Integrated Developer Environment. No one is going to completely pick up HTML5 purely by playing cHTeMeLe, but it does have some educational value for understanding basic tags and how they fit together.

via cHTeMeLe is a board game about HTML – Video Games Reviews, Cheats | Geek.com.

That smooth SpaceX launch? Turns out one of the engines came apart

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The Falcon 9, as its name implies, has nine engines, and is designed to go to orbit if one of them fails. On-board computers will detect engine failure, cut the fuel supply, and then distribute the unused propellant to the remaining engines, allowing them to burn longer. This seems to be the case where that was required, and the computers came through. The engines are also built with protection to limit the damage in cases where a neighboring engine explodes, which appears to be the case here.

via That smooth SpaceX launch? Turns out one of the engines came apart | Ars Technica.

Shopping or browsing on Main St? India’s Big Data firms know

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The business of storing, decoding and analyzing unstructured data – think video, Facebook updates, Tweets, Internet searches and public cameras – along with mountains of facts and figures can help companies increase profits, cut costs and improve service, and is now one of the world’s hottest industries.

It’s called Big Data, and although much of the work is done in the United States, India is getting an increasing slice of the action, re-energizing an IT sector whose growth has begun to falter.

via Shopping or browsing on Main St? India’s Big Data firms know – chicagotribune.com.

An Introduction to Computer Networks

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This is an introductory course on computer networking, specifically the Internet. It focuses on explaining how the Internet works, ranging from how bits are modulated on wires and in wireless to application-level protocols like BitTorrent and HTTP. It also explains the principles of how to design networks and network protocols. Students gain experience reading and understanding RFCs (Internet protocol specifications) as statements of what a system should do. The course grounds many of the concepts in current practice and recent developments, such as net neutrality and DNS security.

via Stanford Online | An Introduction to Computer Networks | Preview.

This is a free course for online but the first class starts tomorrow.

Prerequisites

Students need an introductory course in probability, a strong understanding of bits and bytes, and knowledge of how computers lay out data in memory.

Entire Cities in World of Warcraft Dead, Hack Suspected

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Some particular user going by the name ‘Jadd’ has posted a video claiming to have nuked entire cities. There is no official news of Blizzard as yet about the reason behind the dead cities. We have got the videos [below].

[Update]: There is a lot of chatter on Ycombinator and WOWInsider about this story.

via Entire Cities in World of Warcraft Dead, Hack Suspected – ParityNews.com: …Because Technology Matters.

Microsoft DMCA Notice ‘Mistakenly’ Targets BBC, Techcrunch, Wikipedia and U.S. Govt

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Claiming to prevent the unauthorized distribution of Windows 8 Beta the software company listed 65 “infringing” web pages. However, nearly half of the URLs that Google was asked to remove from its search results have nothing to do with Windows 8.

via Microsoft DMCA Notice ‘Mistakenly’ Targets BBC, Techcrunch, Wikipedia and U.S. Govt | TorrentFreak.

Judging from the page titles and content the websites in question were targeted because they reference the number “45″.

Zynga’s weak pivot to mobile, loss of casual gamers turns serious

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Wall Street’s excitement over a game publisher once counted among the stars of the new social Internet has cooled since its December initial public offering. On Friday, analysts slashed their price targets on a stock that dived as much as 22 percent, to $2.21 – more than three-quarters off its $10 debut.

via Zynga’s weak pivot to mobile, loss of casual gamers turns serious – chicagotribune.com.