85835091
submission
alphadogg writes:
It’s become increasingly common over the past decade or so to see laws being passed to either mandate the use of open-source software or, at the very least, encourage people in government who make procurement decisions to do so. Here’s a map of the status of open-source laws around the world.
85268209
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alphadogg writes:
Cyber-reasoning platform Mayhem pulled down the $2 million first prize in a DARPA-sponsored Cyber Grand Challenge competition that pitted entrants against each other in the classic hacking game Capture the Flag, never before played by programs running on supercomputers. A team from Carnegie Mellon University spin-out All Secure entered Mayhem in the competition against six other programs played in front of thousands in the ballroom of the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. Most of the spectators were in town for the DEF CON hacker conference starting Friday at the same site.
85249609
submission
alphadogg writes:
Google Chief Education Evangelist called on universities this week at the Campus Technology 2016 conference in Boston to embrace cultural change to better synch their services with the needs of tech-savvy students. “I’ve been in education for 10 years and I remember talking to CIOs at universities saying technology is not a differentiator for their schoolsthat students don’t pick schools based on their technology,” Casap said. “I can tell you that’s starting to change.”
84684313
submission
alphadogg writes:
The new documentary about Stuxnet, ‘Zero Days’, says the U.S. had a far larger cyber operation against Iran called Nitro Zeus that has compromised the country’s infrastructure and could be used as a weapon in any future war. Quoting unnamed sources from inside the NSA and CIA, the movie says the Nitro Zeus program has infiltrated the systems controlling communications, power grids, transportation and financial systems, and is still ready to “disrupt, degrade and destroy” that infrastructure if a war should break out with Iran. The movie, by academy award winning director Alex Gibney, opened in U.S. theaters this weekend.
84644661
submission
alphadogg writes:
Researchers are adding bugs to experimental software code in order to ultimately wind up with programs that have fewer vulnerabilities. The idea is to insert a known quantity of vulnerabilities into code, then see how many of them are discovered by bug-finding tools. By analyzing the reasons bugs escape detection, developers can create more effective bug-finders, according to researchers at New York University in collaboration with others from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and Northeastern University. http://www.ieee-security.org/T... They created large-scale automated vulnerability addition (LAVA), which is a low-cost technique that adds the vulnerabilities.
84450457
submission
alphadogg writes:
As the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying the latest gigabit-speed products to work together, users may not get as excited as they did for some earlier standards. On Wednesday, the industry group launched its certification program for IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2, a technology that’s been on the market for more than a year. Wave 2 can deliver up to 6.8Gbps (bits per second) and lets an access point talk to more than one device at a time. But due to issues like timing and wired backhaul, Wave 2 adoption has been relatively slow.
84420211
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JG0LD writes:
U.S. data centers have used about the same amount of energy annually over the past five years or so, despite substantial growth in the sector, according to a new report published by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
84135159
submission
alphadogg writes:
For a giant 30-plus-year-old company, Cisco has a reputation for keeping things fresh via spin-ins, buyouts and venture investments. But late last year, the vendor launched the Innovate Everywhere Challenge — inspired in part by Adobe's open-source Kickbox program — just to make sure it wasn’t overlooking any great new ideas among its 74,000 employees. About half the company got involved, more than 1,100 ideas were submitted and 3 grand winners were selected, with projects focused on virtual reality, remote access for the disabled and logistics for priority digital media campaigns.
83823797
submission
alphadogg writes:
Just because your wireless equipment is authorized for use by the FCC doesn't mean you can do whatever the heck you please with it, according to a new enforcement advisory issued by the commission. This would apply to things like WiFi hotspot blocking or setting up pirate radio stations. While the advisory might appear to be stating the obvious, an FCC spokesman elaborates that "the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau is taking proactive measures to decrease the number of complaints about the use of authorized equipment in a manner that is not compliant with their authorizations. Reducing complaint volume helps us handle those that do come in in a timely manner. The issue is an ongoing, steady problem."
83210023
submission
alphadogg writes:
Google, Verizon and others are partnering with NASA on an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) traffic management scheme. Microsoft has been working with universities on drone-enabled mosquito traps in an effort to stall infectious diseases from spreading. Cisco has shown off drones whose cameras feed into the company’s collaboration technologies. And AT&T, IBM and Intel have all demonstrated advanced drone-based research. All of this activity by enterprise IT vendors in the commercial drone field is a far cry from what was being done — or at least being publicly discussed — back in late 2014, when the FAA first started approving exemptions to fly commercial drones.
83042461
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alphadogg writes:
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey https://www.blackducksoftware.... released by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.
82896203
submission
alphadogg writes:
Reflecting on the popular musician's uneasy relationship with the Internet and social media upon the 57-year-old surprising death.
82701665
submission
alphadogg writes:
After more than a year of rancor over whether it would hurt Wi-Fi, a technology that lets LTE networks use unlicensed spectrum may have already missed its window of opportunity. LTE-Unlicensed is designed to improve cellular service by tapping into some of the frequencies used by Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies. But almost as soon as LTE-U was proposed in late 2014, Wi-Fi supporters pounced. They charged that it would drown out Wi-Fi signals because LTE didn’t know how to make room for other users. Now carriers may be getting ready to bypass LTE-U altogether in favor of another system, called LAA (Licensed Assisted Access), that does the same thing but with additional protections for Wi-Fi. The LAA standard is complete, and products are expected to start shipping later this year.
82604463
submission
alphadogg writes:
An open-source project dedicated to cataloguing a huge range of computer security flaws has closed its doors as of Tuesday, according to an announcement on the Open-Source Vulnerability Database’s blog. The OSVDB, which was founded in 2002, was meant to be an independent repository for security information, allowing researchers to compare notes without oversight from large corporate software companies.
82576507
submission
alphadogg writes:
The second largest car manufacturer in the world, Volkswagen Group, will use the open-source cloud computing platform OpenStack to build a private cloud that will host websites for its brands VW, Audi and Porsche, and be a platform for innovating automotive technology. For the past two years VW officials at the company’s Wolfsburg, Germany, headquarters debated what platform to use.
