Technology

Backblaze's Q3 2020 hard drive stats: As of September 30, 2020, Backblaze had 153,727 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across four data centers. Of that number, there were 2,780 boot drives and 150,947 data drives. This review looks at the Q3 2020 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way. [...] There are several models with zero drive failures in the quarter. That's great, but when we dig in a little we get different stories for each of the drives. The 18TB Seagate model (ST18000NM000J) has 300 drive days and they've been in service for about 12 days. There were no out of the box failures which is a good start, but that's all you can say. The 16TB Seagate model (ST16000NM001G) has 5,428 drive days which is low, but they've been around for nearly 10 months on average. Still, I wouldn't try to draw any conclusions yet, but a quarter or two more like this and we might have something to say. The 4TB Toshiba model (MD04ABA400V) has only 9,108 drive days, but they have been putting up zeros for seven quarters straight. That has to count for something. The 14TB Seagate model (ST14000NM001G) has 21,120 drive days with 2,400 drives, but they have only been operational for less than one month. Next quarter will give us a better picture. The 4TB HGST (model: HMS5C4040ALE640) has 274,923 drive days with no failures this quarter.

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Adobe issues out-of-band patches, too, for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, etc

Sysadmins responsible for VMware deployments should test and apply the latest security updates for the software.…

A hacking group is donating stolen money to charity in what is seen as a mysterious first for cyber-crime that's puzzling experts. smooth wombat writes: Darkside hackers claim to have extorted millions of dollars from companies, but say they now want to "make the world a better place." In a post on the dark web, the gang posted receipts for $10,000 in Bitcoin donations to two charities. One of them, Children International, says it will not be keeping the money. The move is being seen as a strange and troubling development, both morally and legally. In the blog post on 13 October, the hackers claim they only target large profitable companies with their ransomware attacks. The attacks hold organisations' IT systems hostage until a ransom is paid. They wrote: "We think that it's fair that some of the money the companies have paid will go to charity. No matter how bad you think our work is, we are pleased to know that we helped changed someone's life. Today we sended (sic) the first donations." The cyber-criminals posted the donation along with tax receipts they received in exchange for the 0.88 Bitcoin they had sent to two charities, The Water Project and Children International.

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Imagine parallel parking a 15-passenger van into just two to three parking spaces surrounded by two-story boulders. On Oct. 20, a University of Arizona-led NASA mission 16 years in the making will attempt the astronomical equivalent more than 200 million miles away. A NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx will soon attempt to touch the surface of an asteroid and collect loose rubble. bobbied writes: OSIRIS-REx is the United States' first asteroid sample return mission, aiming to collect and carry a pristine, unaltered sample from an asteroid back to Earth for scientific study. The spacecraft will attempt to touch the surface of the asteroid Bennu, which is hurtling through space at 63,000 miles per hour. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will deploy an 11-foot-long robotic arm called TAGSAM -- Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism -- and spend about 10 seconds collecting at least two ounces of loose rubble from the asteroid. The spacecraft, monitored remotely by a team of scientists and engineers, will then stow away the sample and begin its return to Earth, scheduled for 2023. You can watch this sample collection "Touch-And-Go" maneuver Oct. 20 at 5 p.m. EDT/ 2 p.m. PDT on NASA Television and the agency's website. As senior vice president for research and innovation at UArizona and a mechanical engineer with a long career in space systems engineering, I believe this milestone for OSIRIS-REx captures perfectly the spirit of research and innovation, the careful balance of problem-solving and perseverance, of obstacle and opportunity.

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In a report published today by cyber-security firm Rapid7, the company said it worked with Pakistani security researcher Rafay Baloch to disclose ten new address bar spoofing vulnerabilities across seven mobile browser apps. From a report: Impacted browsers include big names like Apple Safari, Opera Touch, and Opera Mini, but also niche apps like Bolt, RITS, UC Browser, and Yandex Browser. The issues were discovered earlier this year and reported to browser makers in August. The big vendors patched the issues right away, while the smaller vendors didn't even bother replying to the researchers, leaving their browsers vulnerable to attacks. "Exploitation all comes down to 'JavaScript shenanigans'," said Rapid7's Research Director, Tod Beardsley. The Rapid7 exec says that by messing with the timing between when the page loads and when the browser gets a chance to refresh the address bar URL, a malicious site could force the browser to show the wrong address.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same in HPC storage. …

Divide Deepens Between HPC and Enterprise Storage was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Search engine giant has officially become 1990s Microsoft

Analysis  The US Department of Justice has launched its long-awaited antitrust action against Google, accusing the tech giant of unlawfully protecting its search monopoly through “anti-competitive and exclusionary practices.”…

Sweden banned Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE from its 5G mobile networks on Tuesday, citing China's "extensive intelligence gathering and theft of technology." From a report: Since the Trump administration announced its own ban last year, the U.S. government has increasingly pressured allies to follow its lead amid growing tensions between the West and China. In July, the United Kingdom became the first European country to announce plans to exclude Huawei from its networks by 2027. The Swedish government has given telecom companies until 2025 to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from their infrastructure. "China is one of the biggest threats to Sweden," said Klas Friberg, head of Sweden's security services. He said Beijing's "extensive intelligence gathering and theft of technology, research and development" is key to its economic and military development, according to the Financial Times. "This is what we must consider when building the 5G network of the future. We cannot compromise with Sweden's security."

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In space, no one can hear you scream, 'Office 365 is down again!' If only there was a way to minimize outages on Earth...

Although it may be struggling to keep bits of the Azure cloud vertical in recent weeks, Microsoft continues to eye off-planet applications and connectivity for its data centres.…

For more than a year, Dell Technologies has been putting together the pieces of its hybrid cloud strategy, a combination of its own hardware – in particular, the VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure appliance – and software and VMware technologies, including its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform and, more recently, the virtualization vendor’s Tanzu, a platform for Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native applications. …

Blurring The Lines Between Your Cloud And Their Clouds was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Google Photos is reviving its photo printing subscription service and introducing same-day prints. The company earlier this year had briefly tested a new program that used A.I. to suggest the month's 10 best photos, which were then shipped to your home automatically. But Google ended the test on June 30. From a report: During the trial, Google had offered users a $7.99 per month subscription that would automatically select 10 photos from one of three themes, including people and pets, landscapes, or "a little bit of everything" mix. The 4x6 photos were printed on matte, white cardstock with a 1/8-inch border. The new subscription, launching soon, leverages feedback from the early tests to now give users more control over which prints they receive and how they look. It also drops the price to $6.99 per month, including shipping and before tax. With the new Premium Print Series, as the subscription is called, Google Photos will use machine learning techniques to pick 10 of your recent photos to print. But users can edit the photo selection and they can choose either a matte or glossy finish or add a border before the photos ship.

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Falls short as a generalist database playa, though, says analyst

MongoDB - NoSQL database purveyor of the document-store variety - is rolling out a multi-cloud cluster it said will let users deploy a single distributed database across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.…

From a report: There's a myriad of reasons to replace cow's milk with alternatives like nut milks, oat milk, or soy milk, but for those who enjoy the experience of consuming animal-sourced dairy products, the alternatives just aren't the same. So Impossible Foods, makers of the Impossible Burger and other plant-based meat alternatives, are working on another food replacement that looks, tastes, and behaves like cow's milk. During a virtual press conference this morning where Impossible Foods revealed it was doubling the size of its Silicon Valley-based research and development team over the next year while also launching what it calls the "Impossible Investigator project" to entice leading scientists to contribute to its cause, the company also gave the world its first look at its new plant-based cow's milk alternative that hasn't yet been dubbed with a catchy marketing name. (Although you can probably safely assume that Impossible Milk is an option being considered.) Like the company's flagship Impossible Burgers, Impossible Foods' new milk alternative is made with stable proteins sourced from plants. The idea is that it not only properly mixes with other liquids (like hot coffee) without forming precipitates that can alter the texture and drinking experience, but that it can also be whipped into a foam and used as an ingredient in other food products without having to modify a recipe as is often required with other substitutes.

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Lucky old us. Plus: Azure Edge biz service software bundled in

US telco Verizon has linked arms with Nokia to build enterprise-oriented private 5G networks.…

Intel has agreed to sell its Nand memory unit to South Korea's SK Hynix for about $9 billion, a deal that allows the U.S. chipmaker to concentrate on its main business while shoring up the Asian company's position in a booming market. From a report: The chipmaker will pay 10.3 trillion won for the Intel unit, which makes flash memory components for computers and other devices. The acquisition, which will take place in stages through 2025, includes Intel's solid-state drive, Nand flash and wafer businesses, as well as a production facility in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. The deal should shore up Hynix's position in a business that's boomed after Covid-19 drove demand for the chips used in everything from Apple's iPhones to data centers. It whittles down another player in an industry the Korean company dominates alongside Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology, potentially buoying Nand flash prices.

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With competition among Earth's telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia has announced its expansion into a new market, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the moon. From a report: The Finnish equipment manufacturer said it was selected by NASA to deploy an "ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened" wireless 4G network on the lunar surface, as part of the US space agency's plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030. The $14.1m contract, awarded to Nokia's US subsidiary, is part of Nasa's Artemis programme which aims to send the first woman, and next man, to the moon by 2024. The astronauts will begin carrying out detailed experiments and explorations which the agency hopes will help it develop its first human mission to Mars. Nokia's network equipment will be installed remotely on the moon's surface using a lunar hopper built by Intuitive Machines in late 2022, Nokia said. "The network will self-configure upon deployment," the firm said in a statement, adding that the wireless technology will allow for "vital command and control functions, remote control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation and streaming of high definition video."

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ENISA annual report also calls for better use of threat intel by frontline bods

Insider threats, ransomware and cyber espionage were all in decline in the early part of 2020, according to the EU’s cybersecurity agency – though the risk of an “uncontrolled cyber arms race” among nation states is growing.…

by Charles Fisher Introduction

The btrfs filesystem has taunted the Linux community for years, offering a stunning array of features and capability, but never earning universal acclaim. Btrfs is perhaps more deserving of patience, as its promised capabilities dwarf all peers, earning it vocal proponents with great influence. Still, none can argue that btrfs is unfinished, many features are very new, and stability concerns remain for common functions.

Most of the intended goals of btrfs have been met. However, Red Hat famously cut continued btrfs support from their 7.4 release, and has allowed the code to stagnate in their backported kernel since that time. The Fedora project announced their intention to adopt btrfs as the default filesystem for variants of their distribution, in a seeming juxtaposition. SUSE has maintained btrfs support for their own distribution and the greater community for many years.

For users, the most desirable features of btrfs are transparent compression and snapshots; these features are stable, and relatively easy to add as a veneer to stock CentOS (and its peers). Administrators are further compelled by adjustable checksums, scrubs, and the ability to enlarge as well as (surprisingly) shrink filesystem images, while some advanced btrfs topics (i.e. deduplication, RAID, ext4 conversion) aren't really germane for minimal loopback usage. The systemd init package also has dependencies upon btrfs, among them machinectl and systemd-nspawn. Despite these features, there are many usage patterns that are not directly appropriate for use with btrfs. It is hostile to most databases and many other programs with incompatible I/O, and should be approached with some care.

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Microsoft is teaming with Elon Musk's SpaceX and others as the software giant opens a new front in its cloud-computing battle with Amazon.com targeting space customers. From a report: Microsoft would help connect and deploy new services using swarms of low-orbit spacecraft being proposed by SpaceX [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], and more traditional fleets of satellites circling the earth at higher altitudes. Microsoft's initiative targeting commercial and government space businesses, formally launched Tuesday, comes about three months after Amazon Web Services, the e-retailer's cloud unit, disclosed its space-focused effort. Some analysts have projected that overall revenue from space-related cloud services could total about $15 billion by the end of the decade, at least several times higher than current levels. Competition in the cloud between Amazon, the market leader, and No. 2 Microsoft has been heating up in recent years. The pandemic has intensified the fight as companies accelerate their shift to the cloud and make vendor choices that could last for years. [...] SpaceX, which is in the process of deploying its Starlink project consisting of thousands of high-speed internet satellites intended to provide connectivity around the globe, makes a natural partner for Microsoft. A major reason is that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is pursuing his own low-orbit satellite constellation. Mr. Bezos also owns Blue Origin, a rocket company competing with SpaceX.

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Can help build more efficient recommendation algos, amongst other stuff it hopes users want

Neo4j has added graph embeddings to its machine learning workbench in the hopes data scientists using its graph database will gain a productivity boost.…