IT seems to be growing again. Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending will increase 4.5% this year to $3.68 trillion, driven by artificial intelligence, big data analytics, blockchain technology, and the IoT.
Digital transformations are fashionable. You won’t find an enterprise that isn’t leveraging some combination of cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to better serve customers or streamline operations. But here’s a hard truth about digital transformations: Many are failing outright or are in danger of failing. Typical reasons for failing are not understanding what is digital transformation (different people understand it differently), lack of CEO sponsorship, talent deficiency, resistance to change. Usually a technology-first approach to digital transformation is a recipe for disaster. Truing to just push trough technically unfeasible transformation idea is another way to fail.
The digital era requires businesses to move with speed, and that is causing IT organizations to rethink how they work. A lot of IT is moving off premises to SaaS providers and the public cloud. Research outfit 451 standout finding was that 60 per cent of the surveyed enterprises say they will run the majority of their IT outside the confines of enterprise data centres by the end of 2019. From cost containment to hybrid strategies, CIOs are getting more creative in taking advantage of the latest offerings and the cloud’s economies of scale.
In 2018 there seems to be a growing Software Engineering Talent Shortage in both quantity and quality. For the past nine years, software engineers have been at the top of the hardest to fill jobs in the United States. And same applies to many other countries including Finland. Forrester projects that firms will pay 20% above market for quality engineering talent in 2018. Particularly in-demand skills are data scientists, high-end software developers and information security analysts. There is real need for well-studied, experienced engineers with a formal and deep understanding of software engineering. Recruiting and retaining tech talent remains IT’s biggest challenge today. Most CIOs are migrating applications to public cloud services, offloading operations and maintenance of computing, storage and other capabilities so they can reallocate staff to focus on what’s strategic to their business.
The enterprise no longer is at the center of the IT universe. It seems that reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated and the long and painful decline in PC sales of the last half-decade as tailed off, at least momentarily. As the sales of smartphones and tablets have risen, consumers had not stopped using PCs, but merely replaced them less often. FT reports that PC is set to stage a comeback in 2018, after the rise of smartphones sent sales of desktop and laptop computers into decline in recent years. If that does not happen, then PC market could return to growth in 2019. But the end result is that PC is no longer seen as the biggest growth driver for chip makers. An extreme economic shift has chipmakers focused on hyperscale clouds.
Microservices are talked about a lot. Software built using microservices is easier to deliver and maintain than the big and brittle architectures or old; these were difficult to scale and might take years to build and deliver. Microservices are small and self-contained, so therefore easy to wrap up in a virtual machine or a container (but don’t have to live in containers). Public cloud providers increasingly differentiate themselves through the features and services they provide. But it turns out that microservices are far from being one-size-fit-for-all silver bullet for IT challenges.
Containers will try to make break-trough again in 2018. Year 2017 was supposed to be the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe year 2018 is better. Immature tech still has a bunch of growing up to do. Linux Foundation’s Open Containers Initiative (OCI) finally dropped two specifications that standardise how containers operate at a low level. The needle in 2018 will move towards containers running separately from VMs, or entirely in place of VMs. Kubernates gains traction. It seems that the containers are still at the point where the enterprise is waiting to embrace them.
Serverless will be talked about. Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Serverless architectures refer to applications that significantly depend on third-party services (knows as Backend as a Service or “BaaS”) or on custom code that’s run in ephemeral containers (Function as a Service or “FaaS”), the best known vendor host of which currently is AWS Lambda.
Automation is what everybody with many computers wants. Infrastructure automation creates and destroys basic IT resources such as compute instances, storage, networking, DNS, and so forth. Security automation helps keeping systems secure. It bosses want to create self-driving private clouds. The journey to self-driving clouds needs to be gradual. The vision of the self-driving cloud makes sense, but the task of getting from here to there can seem daunting. DevOps automation with customer control: Automatic installation and configuration, Integration that brings together AWS and VMWare, workflows migration controlled by users, Self-service provisioning based on templates defined by users, Advanced machine learning to automate processes, and Automated upgrades.
Linux is center of many cloud operations: Google and Facebook started building their own gear and loading it with their own software. Google has it’s own Linux called gLinux. Facebook networking uses Linux-based FBOSS operating system. Even Microsoft has developed its own Linux for cloud operations. Software-defined networking (SDN) is a very fine idea.
Memory business boomed in 2017 for both NAND and DRAM. The drivers for DRAM are smartphones and servers. Solid-state drives (SSDs) and smartphones are fueling the demand for NAND. NAND Market Expected to Cool in Q1 from the crazy year 2017, but it is still growing well because there is increasing demand. Memory — particular DRAM — was largely considered a commodity business.
Lots of 3D NAND will go to solid state drives in 2018. IDC forecasts strong growth for the solid-state drive (SSD) industry as it transitions to 3D NAND. SSD industry revenue is expected to reach $33.6 billion in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%. Sizes of memory chips increase as number of layer in 3D NAND are added. The traditional mechanical hard disk based on magnetic storage is in hard place in competition, as the speed of flash-based SSDs is so superior
There is search for faster memory because modern computers, especially data-center servers that skew heavily toward in-memory databases, data-intensive analytics, and increasingly toward machine-learning and deep-neural-network training functions, depend on large amounts of high-speed, high capacity memory to keep the wheels turning. The memory speed has not increased as fast as the capacity. The access bandwidth of DRAM-based computer memory has improved by a factor of 20x over the past two decades. Capacity increased 128x during the same period. For year 2018 DRAM remains a near-universal choice when performance is the priority. There is search going on for a viable replacement for DRAM. Whether it’s STT-RAM or phase-change memory or resistive RAM, none of them can match the speed or endurance of DRAM.
PCI Express 4.0 is ramping up. PCI-standards consortium PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) has ratified and released specifications for PCIe 4.0 Specification Version 1. Doubling PCIe 3.0’s 8 GT/s (~1 GB/s) of bandwidth per lane, PCIe 4.0 offers a transfer rate of 16 GT/s. The newest version of PCI Express will start appearing on motherboards soon. PCI-SIG has targeted Q2 2019 for releasing the finalized PCIe 5.0 specification, so PCIe 4.0 won’t be quite as long-lived as PCIe 3.0 has been. So we’ll See PCIe 4.0 this year in use and PCIe 5.0 in 2019.
USB type C is on the way to becoming the most common PC and peripheral interface. The USB C connector has become faster more commonplace than any other earlier interface. USB C is very common on smartphones, but the interface is also widespread on laptops. Sure, it will take some time before it is the most common. In 2021, the C-type USB connector has almost five billion units, IHS estimates.
It seems that the after-shocks of Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities on processors will be haunting us for quite long time this year. It is now three weeks since The Register revealed the chip design flaws that Google later confirmed and the world still awaits certainty about what it will take to get over the silicon slip-ups. Last pieces of farce has been that Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code and Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches. Computer security will not be the same after all this has been sorted out.
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing. Many can agree that those technologies will be important. Public cloud providers increasingly provide sophisticated flavours of data analysis and increasingly Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy. Over the past few years, machine learning (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. 2018 will be the start of what could be a longstanding battle between chipmakers to determine who creates the hardware that artificial intelligence lives on.
ARM processor based PCs are coming. As Microsoft and Qualcomm jointly announced in early December that the first Windows 10 notebooks with ARM-based Snapdragon 835 processors will be officially launched in early 2018, there will be more and more PCs with ARM processor architecture hitting the market. Digitimes Research expects that ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market, but don’t hold your breath on this. It is rumoured that “wireless LTE connectivity” function will be incorporated into all the entry-level Window 10 notebooks with ARM processors, branded by Microsoft as the “always-connected devices.” HP and Asustek have released some ARM-based notebooks with Windows 10S.
Sources:
Ohjelmistoalan osaajapula pahenee – kasvu jatkuu
PC market set to return to growth in 2018
PC market could return to growth in 2019
PC sales grow for the first time in five years
PCI-SIG Finalizes and Releases PCIe 4.0, Version 1 Specification: 2x PCIe Bandwidth and More
Hot Chips 2017: We’ll See PCIe 4.0 This Year, PCIe 5.0 In 2019
Outsourcing remains strategic in the digital era
8 hot IT hiring trends — and 8 going cold
EDA Challenges Machine Learning
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018
How to create self-driving private clouds
ZeroStack Lays Out Vision for Five-Step Journey to Self-Driving Cloud
2017 – the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe next year
2018′s Software Engineering Talent Shortage— It’s quality, not just quantity
How Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy
Digitimes Research: ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market
Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code
Spectre and Meltdown: Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches
Meltdown/Spectre week three: World still knee-deep in something nasty
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing.
PCI Express 4.0 as Fast As Possible
Microsoft has developed its own Linux!
Microsoft Built Its Own Linux Because Everyone Else Did
Facebook has built its own switch. And it looks a lot like a server
Googlella on oma sisäinen linux
Is the writing on the wall for on-premises IT? This survey seems to say so
12 reasons why digital transformations fail
7 habits of highly effective digital transformations
857 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/8492-linux-kehitys-nayttaa-jatkuvan-normaalisti
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clearing HDR Confusion in PC Display Market
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1333797
HDR delivers significantly improved video quality, but it is still not well understood by consumers.
High dynamic range (HDR) displays are designed to provide a more vivid picture quality compared to standard dynamic range (SDR) displays – with greater brightness and contrast levels as well as a wider range of colors. Think of “darker” black tones and “brighter” white tones.
Within the past several years, HDR displays have gained significant traction within the consumer television market. Yet even today when consumers buy an HDR TV, they have no idea what performance level they are getting.
There seems to be nearly as many HDR logos and standards as there are brands. No brand is sharing details of their HDR performance. There is no fully transparent testing methodology nor fully public performance metrics. Typically, what consumers see is just a marketing sticker on a device with no real meaning behind it.
While the PC industry lagged behind the TV industry in adopting HDR, it has experienced a surge in HDR display product introductions during the past twelve months.
To help avoid a similar fate of confusion around HDR, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA)
established a new tiered HDR compliance test standard in December 2017, called DisplayHDR. It provides a very clear and easy to understand logo system representing different performance levels for both laptop and desktop PC displays.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel toi lisää vauhtia datakeskukseen
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8483&via=n&datum=2018-09-26_15:03:25&mottagare=31202
FPGA
Intel kutsuu korttejaan PAC-kiihdyttimiksi (Programmable Acceleration Card). Niistä uusimmalla on Stratix 10 SX -piiri. Kortin tehtävänä on tehostaa haluttuja prosesseja Xeon-palvelinprosessorien rinnalla.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel acknowledges supply issues, will prioritize premium chips
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/intel-acknowledges-supply-issues-will-prioritize-premium-chips/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Intel interim CEO Bob Swan issued an uncharacteristically frank letter today, highlighting the company’s supply issues. The executive blames the surprising growth of an unexpectedly rebounding PC industry for the shortage. Swan says that rebound is driven by “strong demand for gaming as well as commercial systems.”
It’s a bit of a perfect storm here. Higher demand coupled with the longstanding yield issues for its 10nm architecture have spread things thin for Intel.
“[S]upply is undoubtedly tight,” Swan acknowledged in the letter, “particularly at the entry-level of the PC market.”
In the short term, Intel plans to prioritize the premium market, including Xeon and Core processors
These issues have left the broader PC industry in a rough spot.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fedora Linux 29 beta rolls out
The latest version of Fedora Linux is coming out.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/fedora-linux-29-beta-rolls-out/
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 dying IT jobs
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/9/4-dying-it-jobs
R.I.P. project managers and sysadmins? IT recruiters say these roles are vanishing due to factors including AI and DevOps
The IT industry is nothing if not dynamic. At the current rate of technology change, in fact, it may be the most – dare we say – disrupted function in the organization.
We talked to CIOs, analysts, and recruiters to discuss which roles CIOs are less likely to hire for in the years ahead. A few of their answers may surprise you:
1. The project manager
“As companies adopt an agile framework and move to a product management operating model, small nimble cross-functional teams will have accountability for project delivery, lessening the need for a separate project management function,”
2. The pure coder
While the old-school front-end or back-end developer may not be marked for death yet, this role is certainly at risk. Those specialists are much less in demand today than full-stack developers who possess problem-solving and critical thinking skills
3. The quality assurance (QA) tester
Full-time manual QA testing roles could soon be extinct thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.
4. The systems administrator
“If you can’t write and deploy code as well as understand systems configuration, you will lose your job.”
9 “Future-Proof” Careers, According To The World’s Largest Job Site
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/9-future-proof-careers-according-to-the-worlds-largest-job-site/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech employees can make up for executives
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/tech-employees-can-make-up-for-executives/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey — representing Facebook and Twitter, respectively — recently testified before Congress, this time evading questions about bias on their platforms. We frequently turn to tech executives to answer for such issues because they have the agency to make changes. But they are not alone.
Overlooked are the tech employees — the 10,000 or so at Facebook — that build the platforms executives defend. Tech’s reach makes employees’ agency clear. Consider the two billion active Facebook users — 200,000 per employee. The average U.S. Congressperson serves only three times as many people.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why developers must disrupt themselves
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/9/why-developers-must-disrupt-themselves
AT&T’s Satish Alapati explores developer survival skills and training strategies as organizations blur the lines between technologists and product managers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are you too rigid at work? 5 questions to ask
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/9/emotional-intelligence-test-are-you-too-rigid-work
CIOs say adaptability is the new power skill in IT. Assess your ability to go with the flow
IT organizations today – at least the ones that are paying attention – operate under the assumption that disruption of their business is right around the corner. They work in more agile ways, getting more comfortable with failure, and experimenting often in an effort to move faster and work smarter. Along the way, one must-have skill has risen to the surface in IT: Adaptability.
Adaptability is a key component of emotional intelligence. IT leaders are now calling it a power skill
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using Grails with jQuery and DataTables
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/using-grails-jquery-and-datatables?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Learn to build a Grails-based data browser that lets users visualize complex tabular data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/compiler/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Linux users should try Rust
https://www.networkworld.com/article/3308162/linux/why-you-should-try-rust.html
Installing the Rust programming language on your Linux systems could turn out to be one of the more rewarding things you’ve done in years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Playing with REST API
https://cloudformsblog.redhat.com/2018/07/30/playing-with-rest-api/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 7 most important announcements from Microsoft Ignite
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/the-7-most-important-announcements-from-microsoft-ignite-today/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Tomi Engdahl says:
Continuous Integration: A “Typical” Process
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/09/06/continuous-integration-a-typical-process/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Continuous Integration (CI) is a phase in the software development cycle where code from different team members or different features are integrated together. This usually involves merging code (integration), building the application and carrying out basic tests all within an ephemeral environment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
volkswagen
https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen
Volkswagen detects when your tests are being run in a CI server, and makes them pass.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What containers can teach us about DevOps
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/containers-can-teach-us-devops?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
The use of containers supports the three pillars of DevOps practices: flow, feedback, and continual experimentation and learning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 command-line tools for data analysis in Linux
https://opensource.com/article/17/2/command-line-tools-data-analysis-linux?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Why load everything into a spreadsheet when the terminal can be faster, more powerful, and more easily scriptable?
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to use the Scikit-learn Python library for data science projects
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/how-use-scikit-learn-data-science-projects?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Versatile Python library offers powerful machine learning tools for data analysis and data mining.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA – Vector Engine
NEC Vector Engine Models
https://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/hpc/sx/vector_engine.html
The NEC Vector Engine Processor was developed using 16 nm FinFET process technology for extreme high performance and low power consumption. The Vecor Engine Processor has the world’s first implementation of one processor with six HBM2 memory modules using Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate technology, leading to the world-record memory bandwidth of 1.2 TB/s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Installing Windows 10′s October Update Could Result In A Nightmare, Here’s How To Avoid It
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2018/09/23/installing-windows-10s-october-update-could-result-in-a-nightmare-heres-how-to-avoid-it/?utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1795579280&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB#224bbb56512e
Microsoft issues Windows 10 updates frequently, much to the chagrin of those who don’t enjoy being interrupted with a request to reboot and install another one. There’s a big one coming in October but this one is different in two ways. First, it’s one of Windows 10’s twice yearly mega-upgrades that bring a host of new features and take a long time to install. Second, Microsoft warns that it could fail and crash your computer with the company giving no advice about what to do if this happens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10 now has its own exclusive Linux distro — WLinux
https://betanews.com/2018/09/24/windows-10-now-has-its-own-exclusive-linux-distro-wlinux/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s new Windows Virtual Desktop lets you run Windows 10 in the cloud
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/microsofts-new-windows-virtual-desktop-lets-you-run-windows-10-in-the-cloud/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Crichton / TechCrunch:
Gremlin, whose tools help app and online service providers simulate failure scenarios like storage error, database congestion, and outages, raises $18M Series B
Chaos engineering service Gremlin raises $18M, launches new resiliency tools
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/gremlin-series-b/
“Slack is down.” It’s a headline we have had blaring at TechCrunch on numerous occasions (mostly because we actually get work done when not distracted by a constant waterfall of GIFs). But Slack is not alone — issues with uptime and reliability plague modern web services, from Alexa to WhatsApp to Apple Maps.
As any software engineer can attest, web application development is extraordinarily complicated. Databases, storage services and business logic all need to work together perfectly so that users can buy their goods or watch their films.
But what happens when one piece of that application breaks down?
tagline is “break things on purpose” (something of a rift of Facebook’s “move fast and break things”).
Resiliency is clearly on investors’ minds,
Gremlin is pioneering a field of software development dubbed “chaos engineering.” Rather than using formal verification to test whether code is accurate and performant, chaos engineers throw deliberate and systematic errors at an application in an attempt to simulate various types of failure and find brittle parts of software programs.
That sounds easy on the surface, but extremely complicated in practice: You want to simulate an outage without actually creating an outage on a mission-critical system
Gremlin’s platform provides something of a sandbox for engineers to slowly ramp up errors, and then more importantly, ramp down errors if a breakage is detected. So a DevOps engineer can add a few milliseconds of latency to a program and see how it responds, and then add a few more.
With the rise of serverless services like AWS Lambda, the complexity around applications gets even more challenging.
Gremlin’s work is to not just sell a service, but to reshape how developers think about building and testing applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Morgan Little / CNET:
Google announces Project Stream, a partnership with Ubisoft to stream the publisher’s upcoming game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to the Chrome browser on PCs
Google’s Project Stream lets you play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in Chrome
https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-project-stream-lets-you-play-assassins-creed-odyssey-in-chrome/
Sign up to potentially get access to the test starting Oct. 5.
In a surprise announcement Monday, Google revealed a partnership with Ubisoft to bring the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to your Chrome Browser.
On the same day the game comes out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, a limited number of users will be able to put Google’s new streaming technology, Project Stream, to the test in what could be a big step forward for efforts to bring blockbuster AAA games to streaming platforms.
“The idea of streaming such graphically-rich content that requires near-instant interaction between the game controller and the graphics on the screen poses a number of challenges,” Google said in its blog post announcing Project Stream.
Google isn’t alone in bringing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to streaming platforms.
Pushing the limits of streaming technology
https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-streaming-technology/
Streaming media has transformed the way we consume music and video, making it easy to instantly access your favorite content. It’s a technically complex process that has come a long way in a few short years, but the next technical frontier for streaming will be much more demanding than video.
We’ve been working on Project Stream, a technical test to solve some of the biggest challenges of streaming. For this test, we’re going to push the limits with one of the most demanding applications for streaming—a blockbuster video game.
The idea of streaming such graphically-rich content that requires near-instant interaction between the game controller and the graphics on the screen poses a number of challenges. When streaming TV or movies, consumers are comfortable with a few seconds of buffering at the start, but streaming high-quality games requires latency measured in milliseconds, with no graphic degradation.
There are limited spaces available for Project Stream
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Wagner / Chromium Blog:
Starting in Chrome 70, users will be able to restrict extensions’ access to a custom list of sites or require a click to grant access on a page-by-page basis
Trustworthy Chrome Extensions, by default
https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-default.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shrinking shipments, hidden money: IDC studies the martial art of EMEA server market
Market sucks up $4bn in Q2 alone
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/02/idc_q2_fy2018_server_market_shipments/
Stats from analyst house IDC show that the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) server revenues are growing even as fewer units are shipped.
HPE led in Europe by market share and revenue, though Dell EMC’s 54 per cent year-on-year growth is closing the gap. ODM direct sales were third by revenue and market share, accounting for 10 per cent of the market.
“ODM growth has been driven by data centre buildout of several hyperscale public cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft, Google – in Western Europe,” said Kamil Gregor, IDC’s senior research analyst for Western Europe. “This growth has slowed down somewhat in recent quarters. France is the major exception, with both AWS and Microsoft opening new data centres around Paris and Marseille.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software
Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub
Remember 1981? You should…
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/01/microsoft_msdos_source_on_github/
After original author Tim Paterson found the source for MS-DOS 1.25 (along with a six-inch stack of assembly print-outs), Microsoft handed the code for 1.25 and 2.0 to the Computer History Museum back in 2014.
Turner has now uploaded the code to GitHub to make it easier to find, although he’d really like it if you didn’t suggest modifications to the hand-crafted assembly.
https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAP on Azure vies with Salesforce on AWS to break data out of silos
Data silos are bad, but strategies differ on the best way to break out of them.
https://www.cio.com/article/3309923/data-management/sap-on-azure-vies-with-salesforce-on-aws-to-break-data-out-of-silos.html
The good news: Six of the biggest companies in IT are setting out to eliminate the silos in which enterprises store customer data.
The bad news? They’re doing it in two different ways, and both ways will miss a lot of the silos holding enterprise data.
On the one hand we have the Open Data Initiative, unveiled by Microsoft, SAP and Adobe. This gathers data from Adobe’s Customer Experience Platform, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 and SAP’s S/4HANA database and C/4HANA CRM system onto Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform using a single data model.
Tomi Engdahl says:
All 700 employees at this startup work remotely. Here’s why one of its top execs says it’s given them a major edge on the competition
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/invision-startup-all-employees-work-remotely-2018-9?r=US&IR=T
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is Microsoft’s Surface Studio 2
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/02/this-is-microsofts-surface-studio-2/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
One last piece of hardware from today’s Microsoft event. The company issued an update to what is arguably the most compelling member of the Surface family. The company’s innovative iMac competitor, the Surface Studio got a refresh today, as expected.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 top work-from-home jobs for IT professionals
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/9/6-top-work-home-jobs-it-professionals?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Remote-working options let employers cast a wider net for good people. Check out these IT roles with increasing opportunities
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft announces app mirroring to let you use any Android app on Windows 10
Helping fill the gap left by the Windows Phone
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/2/17929908/microsoft-app-mirroring-android-windows-10-desktop
Microsoft announced a new feature for Windows 10 today that will let Android phone users view and use any app on their device from a Windows desktop. The feature, which Microsoft is referring to as app mirroring and shows up in Windows as an app called Your Phone, seems to be work best with Android for now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Promises to Boost 14nm Production
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333809
Seeking to allay fears of revenue shortfall amid tight supply, Intel said Friday that the company believes it has the supply to meet its full-year sales target of $69.5 billion. The company also reiterated plans to increase its capital spending for the year to a record $15 billion and to be in volume production of 10nm chips next year.
The strength of the PC market — which Intel now expects to grow for the first time since 2011 — has put pressure on the company’s network of fabs, Swann said. Intel is prioritizing the production of Xeon and Core processors to serve the high-performance computing segments of the market, Swann said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LinkedIn Racks Target Edge Nets
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333806
LinkedIn contributed as open-source hardware a set of designs for computer racks to the Open19 Foundation that it helped form. They aim to raise the flexibility while lowering the cost and time to build both large data centers and an emerging class of smaller edge-network hubs that carriers and others are planning.
The designs define deep 19-inch cages linked by data and power cables to a 3.2-terabits/second (Tbits/s) Broadcom-based switch. It initially provides two 25-Gbits/second Ethernet links to 400-W chip-agnostic servers. A future 6.4-Tbits/s switch will deliver dual 50-Gbits/s links to servers ultimately populated by a wide range of processors and accelerators.
LinkedIn used the gear to install a single rack in less than 90 minutes and a cluster of 1,536 servers in three days. That’s nine times faster than current methods with significant savings in cost and power, said Yuval Bachar, a LinkedIn principal architect and Open19 president who helped design similar systems for the Open Compute Project (OCP) while at Facebook.
The Open19 approach is seen as a fresh opportunity for initial server providers Celestica, Flex, and Inspur as well as a new class of hosting companies including startup VaporIO and Packet. They are chasing an estimated build-out of 40,000 metro computer hubs over the next few years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Hortonworks and Cloudera announce all-stock merger valuing the new company at $5.2B; the two companies helped commercialize Hadoop open-source big data software — Cloudera stock jumped 17 percent on Wednesday after it announced an all-stock merger of equals with competitor Hortonworks.
Cloudera and Hortonworks shares skyrocket as rivals merge
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/cloudera-and-hortonworks-announce-all-stock-merger.html
Hortonworks and Cloudera have gone public in the past few years.
The two companies compete in the Hadoop big data software market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Owen Williams / Charged Tech Blog:
After years of trying, and as Apple increasingly drops the ball, Microsoft’s hardware event showed a coherent and appealing lineup of PCs, desktops, and tablets
Microsoft now has the best device lineup in the industry
https://char.gd/blog/2018/microsoft-has-the-best-device-lineup-in-the-industry
At a low-key event held in a New York City warehouse, Microsoft unveiled its next iterations in the Surface lineup. Sitting in the audience, I saw the most coherent device strategy in the industry, from a company that’s slowly built a hardware business from the ground up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple is using proprietary software to lock MacBook Pros and iMac Pros from third-party repairs
Affecting display and logic board repairs
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17938820/apple-macbook-pro-imac-pro-third-party-repair-lock-out-software
Apple is reportedly using new proprietary software diagnostic tools to repair MacBook Pros and iMac Pros that, if not used on key part repairs, will result in an “inoperative system and an incomplete repair,” reads a document distributed to Apple’s Authorized Service Providers last month. A copy of the document was obtained by MacRumors and Motherboard today, both of which reported on the contents of the document and the apparent implications on third-party repair services.
It would seem that, without the proprietary software, third-party repair services will not be able to fix MacBook Pros that suffer from issues with the display assembly, the logic board, the keyboard and trackpad, and the Touch ID board, according to Motherboard.
The measures are presumably there to ensure security. Apple’s proprietary chips have taken on increasing responsibilities over various functions inside the Mac, including storing secure enclave data and handling disc encryption. Especially on a day where hardware security is very much in the news, it seems reasonable to expect that Macs need to go through an Apple-approved diagnostic. But it’s also not traditionally how we like to think of PCs, which have historically not been sealed appliances. The Mac is apparently moving a little more in that direction. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/8483-intel-toi-lisaa-vauhtia-datakeskukseen
FPGA-piiriin.
Intel kutsuu korttejaan PAC-kiihdyttimiksi (Programmable Acceleration Card). Niistä uusimmalla on Stratix 10 SX -piiri. Kortin tehtävänä on tehostaa haluttuja prosesseja Xeon-palvelinprosessorien rinnalla.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft says it’s pausing the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update while it investigates reports of some users missing files after updating — Microsoft cites problems with the latest update package deleting user files. — Microsoft has paused the rollout of Windows 10 October 2018 Update …
Microsoft pulls Windows 10 October Update (version 1809)
Microsoft cites problems with the latest update package deleting user files.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-pulls-windows-10-october-update-version-1809/
Wayne Williams / BetaNews:
After Windows 10 October 2018 upgrade, some users are reporting problems like their files and profiles getting deleted, issues with Microsoft Store apps, more — Every time Microsoft rolls out a new Windows 10 feature update we hear of problems being encountered by early adopters …
Windows 10 October 2018 Update breaks Microsoft Edge and Windows Store apps for some users
https://betanews.com/2018/10/05/windows-10-october-2018-update-breaks-microsoft-edge/
After installing the Windows 10 October 2018 update (version 1809), Microsoft Store apps are no longer able to connect to the Internet.
Non-Store apps, such as Internet Explorer, are still able to connect to the Internet.
A Microsoft employee in the forum says the problem is to do with IPv6 settings, going on to explain:
Although the company is working on a proper solution, for now you can get around the issue by simply enabling IPv6.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge:
An inside look at the tragic end of Telltale Games, the award-winning studio whose sudden closure left many employees blindsided and financially vulnerable
The tragic end of Telltale Games
How an award-winning studio abruptly shuttered, as told by the people who were there
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17934166/telltale-games-studio-closed-layoffs-end-the-walking-dead
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox and Edge add support for Google’s WebP image format
https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-and-edge-add-support-for-googles-webp-image-format/
WebP image format gets new life courtesy of Microsoft and Mozilla. Apple is last browser maker without WebP support.
The WebP image format developed by Google for the past eight years has found a home this week in Microsoft’s Edge browser, and will also be added in Firefox next year.
WebP is a lossy and lossless image compression format that was born as a derivate project from Google’s work on the VP8 video format. It was released in 2010, and it was advertised as a replacement for PNG, JPEG, and GIF at the same time, supporting good compression, transparency, and animations.
Early benchmarks showed that WebP cut down PNG size by as much as 45 percent and animated GIF size with up to 65 percent.
The format was initially supported only by Google Chrome, but it was later also adopted by the Opera and Pale Moon browsers.
Major Google sites, such as Gmail, Google Search, Google Play, Picasa, and others were modified to use WebP, and defaulted to existing image formats if users’ browsers didn’t support it.
But despite its early success, WebP’s spread hit a wall in 2016, when both Apple and Mozilla showed initial interest in supporting it, but later backed down.
Apple similarly added WebP support in iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra, but later replaced it with HEIF, an image format based on the HEVC video compression standard (also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2).
The latest version of the Edge browser that was launched this week with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update now fully supports WebP in all its glory.
“Mozilla is moving forward with implementing support for WebP,” a Mozilla spokesperson confirmed to CNET yesterday.
Apple has not announced plans to support WebP, leaving Safari as the last major browser not to support it. But with WebP supported in almost all major browsers and image editing software, Apple has little choice left.
Mozilla also said that besides WebP, Firefox would get support next year for AVIF, an even better image format based on the AV1 open-source video compression format developed by Google, Cisco, Mozilla, and other tech giants
Tomi Engdahl says:
9th Gen Intel Core CPUs Take Aim at AMD’s Ryzen
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333847
Intel officially unveiled its ninth-generation Core desktop processors, clearly targeted at smaller rival AMD’s Ryzen devices with a focus on PC gaming and creative professionals.
At a New York City even that was webcast globally, Intel also provided more details on its new Core X-series high-performance processors for content creators such as animators and provided updates on its 28-core Xeon workstation chip for compute intensive workloads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/8531-taman-takia-linux-ei-parjaa-tyopoydilla
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Intel unveils 9th-gen Core i5, i7, and i9 chips including the i9-9900K (8-core) for gaming; preorders start today, ships October 19
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13401/intel-9th-gen-cpus-9900k-9700k-9600k
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s 9th-gen processors bring 8 cores and a 5 GHz i9 chip
https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2018/10/08/intels-9th-gen-processors-bring-8-cores-and-a-5-ghz-i9-chip/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft says it fixed a Windows 10 update bug that deleted folders
And it’s tweaking the Insider feedback program as a result.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/09/windows-10-october-update-missing-folders/
Last week the October 2018 update for Windows 10 had barely arrived before Microsoft was forced to pause its rollout, as a few users complained of missing files. Now Microsoft says it has identified and fixed the problem, which was related to a feature called “Known Folder Redirection (KFR)” and an attempt to remove extra duplicate folders that could cause lost files in three specific scenarios.
It isn’t ready to begin delivering the fixed 1809 update to most users yet (a test version is rolling out to its Slow and Release preview rings first), but a change that’s already noticeable is in its Windows Insider Feedback Hub.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business
More than a third of Euro IT pros worry about keeping server lights on
IT shifts from a back office to core of operations, says survey
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/10/it_pro_survey/
Half of senior IT bods across Europe agree that their departments are struggling to cope with new tech while keeping core gear running, according a recent survey.
The wave of “innovation” and ever-growing pile of largely similar buzzword-driven products on the market has meant that IT departments are struggling to figure out what they actually want to do and the kit they need to do it, according to a report by Insight Enterprises.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Puppet Insights arrives to shine uncomfortably bright light on DevOps
Want to know if all that cash you spent on consultants is paying off?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/09/puppet_insights/
DevOps heavyweight Puppet took the opportunity afforded by its Puppetize Live shindig to fling out a new product to measure DevOps performance.
Due to hit private beta in October, Puppet Insights aims to give a dashboard-like representation, familiar to sales and finance, of the DevOps performance of a business. This is no bad thing, since working out what is actually going on within the bowels of DevOps can be challenging to say the least as managers wade through presentations put together by developers better suited to wrangling code than polishing PowerPoints.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Redis Labs and the “Common Clause”
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/redis-labs-and-common-clause
So, the short version is that with the recent licensing changes to several Redis Labs modules making them no longer free and open source, GNU/Linux distributions, such as Debian and Fedora, are no longer able to ship Redis Labs’ versions of the affected modules to their users.
As a result, we have begun working together to create a set of module repositories forked from prior to the license change.