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Submission + - Cloud database debased: Keyboard app leaks 31M users' sensitive data (techbeacon.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Once again, it’s time to play “spot the unsecured cloud data.” In this week’s episode...

A popular virtual keyboard app on iOS and Android, a.i.type, left a huge Mongo database just kinda lying around and exposed to the Internet. Not only that, but the leak revealed the amazing extent to which the app collected users’ personal, sensitive data.

Will stories like this ever stop?

Submission + - Data science and the search for MH370

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: How often are mathematicians heroes? Here's an example where scientists are... not exactly saving the day. But employing technology for good, certainly.

In the absence of physical evidence, scientists are employing powerful computational tools to attempt to solve the greatest aviation mystery of our time: the disappearance of flight MH370.

For example:

A DSTG team led by mathematician Dr. Neil Gordon set about developing a new technique to extract a path from a subset of the Inmarsat data called the Burst Timing Offset (BTO). This measured how quickly the aircraft responded each time the satellite pinged it, and was used to determine the distance between the satellite and the plane. Investigators used these calculations to draw a set of rings on the earth’s surface.

...The DSTG used its computers to generate a huge number of possible routes and then test them to see which best fit the observed data. Their endpoints were pooled to generate a probabilistic “heat map” of the plane’s most likely resting places using a technique called Bayesian analysis. These calculations allowed the DSTG team to draw a box 400 miles long and 70 miles across, which contained about 90 percent of the total probability distribution.

Cool stuff, even if we still don't know where the plane ended up.

Submission + - What If Kubernetes Is One Big Google Conspiracy?

Submitted by mwagner
mwagner writes: "Grab your tin foil hat and read on," says Craig Matsumoto at Enterprise Cloud News: "Kubernetes is winning hearts and minds around the container and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) worlds, but what if Google has a deeper master plan behind it? Boris Renski, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Mirantis Inc. , thinks he's lined up the clues. He's outlined the theory in a blog posting due to be published this week. 'I'd like to postulate that K8S [Kubernetes] was the first move in a longer chess game... one where the end goal is to destroy costs associated with moving workloads between clouds,' he writes. Specifically, it's about moving workloads away from Amazon Web Services (AWS), he thinks."

Submission + - The space station gets a new supercomputer

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: By NASA's rules, not just any computer can go into space. Their components must be radiation hardened, especially the CPUs. Otherwise, they tend to fail due to the effects of ionizing radiation. The customized processors undergo years of design work and then more years of testing before they are certified for spaceflight. As a result, the ISS runs the station using two sets of three Command and Control Multiplexer DeMultiplexer (C&C MDM) computers whose processors are 20MHz Intel 80386SX CPUs, right out of 1988.

The traditional way to radiation-harden a spacecraft computer is to add redundancy to its circuits or by using insulating substrates instead of the usual semiconductor wafers on chips. That’s expensive and time consuming. HPE scientists believe that simply slowing down a system in adverse conditions can avoid glitches and keep the computer running.

So, assuming the August 15 SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch goes well, there will be a supercomputer headed into space — using off-the-shelf hardware. Let's see if the idea pans out. "We may discover a set of parameters with which a supercomputer can successfully run for at least a year without errors," says Dr. Mark R. Fernandez, the mission’s co-principal investigator for software and SGI's HPC technology officer. "Alternately, one or more components of the system will fail, in which case we will then do the typical failure analysis on Earth. That will let us learn what to change to make the systems more reliable in the future."

Submission + - A Tech Bubble Killed Computer Science Once, Can It Do So Again? (ieeeusa.org)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Enrollments in Computer Science are on a hockey stick trajectory and show no signs of slowing down. Stanford University declared computer science enrollments, for instance, went from 87 in the 2007-08 academic year to 353 in the recently completed year. It’s similar at other schools. Boston University, for instance, had 110 declared undergraduate computer science majors. This fall it will have more than 550. Prof. Mehran Sahami, who is the associate chair for education in the computer science department at Stanford, believes the enrollment trend will continue. “As the numbers bear out, the interest in computer science has grown tremendously and shows no signs of crashing,” said Sahami. But after the 2000 dot-com bust computer science enrollments fell dramatically and students soured on the degree. Could something like it happen again? Although there is some speculation of a bubble in tech, the academics believe too much has changed since that dot-com era in the economy.

Submission + - Steve Case on getting funding for innovation outside tech corridors

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Innovation occurs outside the Bay Area, New York, Boston, and Austin. So why is it so hard for a startup to get attention and acquire venture capital? Steve Case and Kara Swisher discussed this never-ending-topic recently, such as the fact 78% of U.S. venture capital last year went to just three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts. Case sees a "third wave" of venture capital funding and through his VC firm is investing in startups based outside major tech centers.

But, points out Stealthmode's Francine Hardaway, if you're in Boise or Baltimore you don't have to wait for Case to come to town. She shares advice about what's worked in other startup communities, focusing on the #YesPhx efforts.

Submission + - The real reasons companies won't hire telecommuters

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Those of us who telecommute cannot quite fathom the reasons companies give for refusing to let people work from home. But even if you don't agree with their decision, they do have reasons — and not all of them are, "Because we like to be idiots." In 5 reasons why the company you want to work for won’t hire telecommuters, hiring managers share their sincere reasons to insist you work in the office—and a few tips for how you might convince them otherwise.

Submission + - Would YOU Fire This Person? (certwise.com)

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: If “Tracy” were on your team, how would you handle her?

Among a project manager’s most painful tasks is firing an employee. Nobody enjoys the experience, even when the employee clearly deserves to be booted. But it’s much worse when an individual is a drag on the team, not a complete failure. Few of us are certain when it’s time to say, “I give up. I must get rid of this person.”

It’s an age-old management dilemma, but we can all learn from the way other people handle such situations. Here’s the story of a real team “problem child” and the troubles “Tracy” caused her manager. You get the opportunity to decide what you would do if you were the project manager. Then you can compare notes with other managers – before you learn how the story really ended.

Submission + - "Designing with LibreOffice" (designingwithlibreoffice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Designing with LibreOffice" is not a manual — it's a series of tutorials to help you get the most out of the leading free-licensed office suite. Endorsed by Michael Meeks, one of LIbreOffice's founders, as well as popular Linux writers Marcel Gagne and Carla Schroder, the book is released under a Creative Commons by SA license, and available both as a free download and a for-sale hard copy. It currently has over 12,000 downloads, and a translation into French is under way.

Submission + - 8 ways to become a kick-ass programmer

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: We all want to get better at our jobs (whether it's software development or something else), but how do you go from "good" to "great"? Too many people aim for improvement without any sense of how to get there. Esther Schindler offers eight actionable guidelines that can act as a flowchart to improving your programming skills, such as "Stop trying to prove yourself right" and "'The code works' isn’t where you stop; it’s where you start."

Submission + - 11 Things Computer Users Will Never Experience Again

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Why sure, who has resist geek nostalgia? Because "kids these days" only know about all-in-one computers, wherein you can destroy thousands of dollars of equipment by pouring a cup of coffee into a laptop keyboard. But, O Best Beloved, once upon a time, microcomputers weren't all-in-one devices. They were put together from standalone components, each with its technical merits. And we had to know all about every one of them. So take a short trip into the WayBack machine — via this collection of old computer hardware ads and photos of rats-nests of cables — to remind yourself how much better things are today.

Comment Re:EVEN WHEN??!!!! (Score 1) 57

Containers are even less separate than jails, of course they're near the bottom of the barrel in terms of security. Why the Container fad when the overhead of proper virtualization is now so very low it's negligible on any modern server processor?

Because you can run three to four more server apps on the same architecture than you can using even efficient VMs such as KVM. That, in turn, means you have o pay for fewer servers.

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