June 09, 2014

IoT, IPv6 Coming To The Connected Home
The only current shortcoming to IPv6 is how slowly it's being rolled out, but I see this changing. The latest World IPv6 Launch measurements published by the Internet Society (ISOC) show an increase in network operator deployment. For example, Comcast is currently at 28%, about 10 times its rate from a year ago. As service providers bring IPv6 connectivity to the home, users need to make sure the appliances and other devices they buy are capable of using IPv6 as a transport. Your service provider might not be supplying IPv6 yet, but it will soon. Make sure that shiny new connected device won't become a paperweight when IPv6 is brought to your house.


Optimism, pessimism, and fatalism — fault-tolerance, Part 2
Finally, let’s consider fault-tolerance within a single long-running job, whether that’s a big query or some other kind of analytic task. In most systems, if there’s a failure partway through a job, they just say “Oops!” and start it over again. And in non-extreme cases, that strategy is often good enough. Still, there are a lot of extreme workloads these days, so it’s nice to absorb a partial failure without entirely starting over.Hadoop MapReduce, which stores intermediate results anyway, finds it easy to replay just the parts of the job that went awry; and Spark, which is more flexible in execution graph and data structures alike, has a similar capability.


Why I’m Betting on Julia
Normally I use one language to make something work, and a second language to make it fast, and a third language to make it scream. This pattern is fairly common. ... Julia's only drawback at this point is the relative dearth of libraries — but the language makes it unusually easy to interface with existing C libraries. Unlike with native interfaces in other languages, you can call C code without writing a single line of C, and so I anticipate that Julia's libraries will catch up quickly. From personal experience, I was able to access 5K lines of C code using about 150 lines of Julia — and no extra glue code in C.


Using Tools to Create Mobile Apps Quickly
With the shift comes a need for speed, but not so much so that security and performance requirements suffer. How to maintain the balance between rapid delivery and quality assurance falls to the testing teams. Into the fray comes cloud-based testing efficiencies. Our next innovation case study interview therefore highlights how Perfecto Mobile is using a variety of cloud-based testing tools to help its developers rapidly create the best mobile apps for both enterprises and commercial deployment. BriefingsDirect had an opportunity to learn first-hand how rapid cloud testing begets better mobile development when we interviewed Yoram Mizrachi, CTO and Founder of Perfecto Mobile, based in Woburn, Mass.


Sensitivity Analysis in Multiple Imputation for Missing Data
This paper reviews the concepts of multiple imputation and explains how you can apply the pattern-mixture
model approach in the MI procedure by using the MNAR statement, which is new in SAS/STAT® 13.1.
You can specify a subset of the observations to derive the imputation model, which is used for pattern
imputation based on control groups in clinical trials. You can also adjust imputed values by using speciļ¬ed
shift and scale parameters for a set of selected observations, which are used for sensitivity analysis with a
tipping-point approach.


Supercomputer passes Turing Test by posing as a teenager
The event has been labelled as "historic" by the organisers, who claim no computer has passed the test before. "Some will claim that the Test has already been passed," said Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at the University of Reading and deputy vice-chancellor for research at Coventry University. "The words Turing test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However, this event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted.


XPocalypse, not now
Fossen's thesis -- that cyber criminals would "bank" Windows XP vulnerabilities and put them to use onlyafter April 8, 2014 -- was not his alone. Microsoft believed it, too. Several times in the last 12 months, the Redmond, Wash. company warned Windows XP customers to get the lead out, ditch the creaky, leaky OS or face a certain surge in attacks. The most notable was in October 2013, when Tim Rains, director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, cited statistics from the firm's own telemetry to suggest that post-retirement Windows XP malware infection rates could jump dramatically. So far, nothing.


UK's financial services 'at risk' without greater effort on cybersecurity
According to a report published by the BBA and PwC, seen by The Telegraph, 93pc of large organisations suffered security breaches in the past year, and seven in 10 banking chief executives see cybersecurity as a key risk to growth. British financial companies spent £700m on cybersecurity last year, the document says. “Many BBA members participate in sector and cross-sector collaboration initiatives, however some do not and this needs to change,” the report says. “Though this can be in part explained by the sensitivities of some of the issues, there is also an element of lack of awareness and cultural resistance.


A new approach in luring top tech talent: a streamlined hiring process
Getting managers to hone in on a candidate's necessary background helps recruiters better understand what type of person the business needs and allows them to identify the right people up front. "There are some managers who really need to get in the thick of it and start interviewing candidates before they have that moment when they say 'I thought I need these five things, but now I only need three of those, but there's another piece I need instead," said Gaines. Defining a job's vital skills before the talent search starts can avoid looking for an IT worker who may not exist, said Gaines. For instance, finding a Windows engineer who is a technical project manager and .Net expert would prove challenging, he said.


Upsurge in hacking makes customer data a corporate time bomb
"Information has become toxic for retailers because the more they have, the bigger a target they become," said Lamar Bailey, security researcher at IT security firm Tripwire. "The ongoing rash of attacks brings into question what information an organisation should be keeping." U.S. retailer Target ousted its CEO Gregg Steinhafel in May after the firm said foreign hackers had stolen up to 70 million items of customer data including some PIN numbers late last year. Industry watchers said purchases on its website dropped noticeably in the run-up to Christmas with the breach also sparking lawsuits and official investigations.



Quote for the day:

"The businesses and creative people I'm fascinated by have something in common: failure." -- Mad Men's Matthew Weiner

No comments:

Post a Comment