A perspective on infrastructure.
AWS
DynamoDB downtime, Sunday am, September 20, 2015
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn’t even know existed can render your own computer unusable. Leslie Lamport, 1987
Amazon Web Services DynamoDB experienced downtime
in the N Virginia availability zone early Sunday morning, September
20, 2015. As a result, a number of other AWS services inside N
Virginia that depend on DynamoDB also had downtime. Companies and
organizations that built services on top of those systems who didn’t
have geographic load balancing were having problems as well.
Affected services include at least CloudWatch,
SES, SNS, SQS, SWS, AutoScale, Cloud Formation, Directory Service,
Key Mgmt and Lambda, according to a report on Hacker News.
… There are a lot of applications built on AWS
and on Heroku, which are at risk of downtime. A comprehensive list
is probably impossible, but here are some reports, in alphabetical
order.
- Airbnb
- Amazon Instant Video
- IFTTT. “We have identified an issue with our service provider. We will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available.” http://status.ifttt.com/incidents/xnbwnqj608hg
- IMDB
- Nest. “We’re investigating a service outage with the Nest mobile app and Cam services, and the team is working on a fix. Details to come.” https://nest.com/support/#status
- Netflix. “We are currently experiencing issues streaming on all devices. We are working to resolve the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience.” https://help.netflix.com/help
- Reddit.
- Tinder.
- Walt Disney World app.
Local firm in a hot industry. My Computer
Security students should keep an eye on them.
Two D.C.
firms team up to invest in Colorado cybersecurity company
Private equity giant Carlyle Group has teamed with
Washington-based The Chertoff Group to buy a majority stake in
Coalfire Systems, a Colorado company that helps firms and governments
protect themselves against cyber threats.
“Cyber is a hot market,” said David Leach, who
leads private equity investments at Chertoff, which advises companies
and governments around the world on security and risk management.
Chertoff was founded by former U.S. Homeland Security secretary
Michael Chertoff.
… Coalfire, founded in 2001, is based near
Boulder, Colo., and has 1,500 customers, including more than 60
Fortune 500 companies. Leach said Coalfire will attempt to double
its revenue by 2017. It plans to aggressively expand beyond the
firm’s current headcount of 300 in the United States and United
Kingdom.
Suspicions confirmed.
Brian Krebs reports:
In December 2013, just days after a data breach exposed 40 million customer debit and credit card accounts, Target Corp. hired security experts at Verizon to probe its networks for weaknesses. The results of that confidential investigation — until now never publicly revealed — confirm what pundits have long suspected: Once inside Target’s network, there was nothing stop attackers from gaining direct and complete access to every single cash register in every Target store.
Read more on KrebsOnSecurity.com.
[From
the article:
In one instance, they were able to communicate
directly with cash registers in checkout lanes after compromising
a deli meat scale located in a different store.
I think I've posted this before, but it is worth
duplicating.
DOJ Policy
Guidance – Use of Cell-Sites Simulator Technology
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Sep 20, 2015
Did
they think they could get away with it?
Volkswagen
Drops 23% After Admitting Diesel Emissions Cheat
Volkswagen AG lost almost a quarter of its market
value after it admitted to cheating on U.S. air pollution tests for
years, putting pressure on Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn
to fix the damaged reputation of the world’s biggest carmaker.
The shares plunged as much as 23 percent to 125.40
euros in Frankfurt, extending the stock’s slump for the year to 31
percent. The drop wiped out about 15.6 billion euros ($17.6 billion)
in value.
Is this reasonable? Any country, any language,
pro or con, you have to find it and wipe it?
France
Rejects Google’s Efforts to Limit Application of Privacy Ruling
France’s privacy watchdog just will not take no
for an answer.
On Monday, the country’s data protection
authority rejected Google’s efforts to limit how a landmark
European privacy ruling may be applied worldwide.
That privacy decision was handed down last year by
Europe’s
top court, and allowed anyone with connections to Europe to
request that global search engines remove links to items about
themselves from queries.
Several European privacy regulators, particularly
in France, have
urged that this so-called right to be forgotten be applied to all
of Google’s search domains.
In contrast, Google has
argued that the privacy ruling should apply only to European
websites like Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France.
The standoff took another turn on Monday after the
Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or
C.N.I.L., the French privacy watchdog, said that it had rejected
Google’s appeal for the ruling to be limited to Europe.
Perspective. Worth a quick scan.
Here’s
what IoT will do for transportation
If we pooled our funds to invest, would the UK
offer us a guarantee?
UK
guarantees £2bn nuclear plant deal as China investment announced
Chancellor George Osborne has announced that the
UK will guarantee a £2bn deal under which China will invest in the
Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
… Energy Secretary Amber Rudd told the
Financial Times she wanted Beijing to take the lead in
developing new nuclear plants in Britain.
She said China was expected to lead the
construction of a Beijing-designed nuclear station at the Essex site.
The carnival begins!
Kim Dotcom's lawyer says New Zealand's copyright
law provides a safe harbour for his client which should end the
United States' extradition bid.
… Ron Mansfield said Megaupload was
effectively an internet service provider and as such, under the
Copyright Act, could not be prosecuted.
It was the first time the issue had been raised in
reference to Dotcom's case.
Mr Mansfield expected the Crown - on behalf of the
US government - to forward a "competing interpretation" of
the law but he said if the court saw it from Dotcom's point of view
it would put the kybosh on extradition proceedings.
… Ortmann's lawyer Grant Illingworth, QC, said
he and other counsel had been deliberately restricted from accessing
US expertise by Crown lawyers.
"This case is being touted as the biggest
copyright case in the history of the United States," Mr
Illingworth said.
"It inevitably involves the need for us to
engage advisers in US law and advisers concerning the way cloud
storage facilities operate. Those issues are embedded in the US
case."
They had asked for clarification regarding funding
to retain the overseas experts in April but only received a response
from the Crown in September.
He said the amount involved was proportionately
small compared to the large sums the on which the case was based.
Mr Illingworth called it a "deliberate
tactical decision" to hinder their defence and was an abuse of
process.
Does anyone think ye olde paper books are going to
become rare?
New app
offers 'books for the Snapchat generation'
"Umm...why do u have Claires phone?"
"Well if u must know i sat down on this park bench to read"
"And sat right on someone's phone. Claire's I'm guessing"
"What r u reading?"
That's an excerpt from a book meant to be read on
an iPhone or Apple Watch. It's available on an app that launched this
week called Hooked.
Prerna Gupta describes her app as "books for
the Snapchat generation."
Hooked will feature short fiction for young-adult
readers. Gupta said that 80% of young-adult novels are read
digitally. So the teen-set seemed like the most natural audience.
Each book will be roughly 1,000 words and is
designed to be read in about five minutes. The stories will be told
entirely through dialogue and read like texts. Messages show up on
screen when readers click "Next."
… The app is free to download and features one
free story a day. Readers can unlock more stories with the
subscription service. A week of unlimited stories costs $2.99. A
month is $7.99 and a year is $39.99.
Something for my Enterprise Data Management
students.
Empirical
Big Data Research: A Systematic Literature Mapping
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Sep 20, 2015
Empirical
Big Data Research: A Systematic Literature Mapping – Leendert
Wienhofen, Bjørn Magnus Mathisen, Dumitru Roman (Submitted on 10 Sep
2015) arXiv.org
“Background: Big Data is a relatively new field
of research and technology, and literature reports a wide variety of
concepts labeled with Big Data. The
maturity of a research field can be measured in the number of
publications containing empirical results. In this paper
we present the current status of empirical research in Big Data.
Method: We employed a systematic mapping method with which we mapped
the collected research according to the labels Variety, Volume and
Velocity. In addition, we addressed the application areas of Big
Data. Results: We found that 151 of the assessed 1778 contributions
contain a form of empirical result and can be mapped to one or more
of the 3 V’s and 59 address an application area. Conclusions: The
share of publications containing empirical results is well below the
average compared to computer science research as a whole. In order
to mature the research on Big Data, we recommend applying empirical
methods to strengthen the confidence in the reported results. Based
on our trend analysis we consider Variety to be the most promising
uncharted area in Big Data.”
And for my Spreadsheet students.
Tips &
Templates for Creating a Work Schedule in Excel
… Excel
templates remain one of the most useful tools in the history of
computing. They’re great for managing
tasks and projects, keeping
finances in order, tracking
fitness progress, and just staying
organized in general — but scheduling is one area where Excel
really shines.
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