Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud hit by worldwide interruption

October 31, 2013

By Mikael Ricknäs | IDG News Service

Microsoft's Windows Azure suffered from an issue on Wednesday that affected a management feature in the compute section of the public cloud, and remained unresolved Thursday morning.

Microsoft first updated the Windows Azure Service Dashboard at 2:35 AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on Wednesday: "We are experiencing an issue with Compute in North Central US, South Central US, North Europe, Southeast Asia, West Europe, East Asia, East US and West US."

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About 17 hours later the company posted a message saying that manual actions to perform so-called swap deployment operations may fail, and users should therefore delay them. Microsoft was still struggling to solve the issue on Thursday morning. But the company seemed to be on the right track saying that it "was continuing to validate and deploy mitigation for this issue."

The swap deployment operation is related to how services are deployed on Microsoft's cloud. Azure offers two deployment environments for cloud services: a staging environment in which users can test their system, and a production environment. The two are separated only by the VIP (virtual IP) addresses used to access them, and the swap deployment operations are used to switch them and turn the staging environment into the production environment.

The company hasn't elaborated on what caused the issue, but the fact that it affected all regions raises questions about how Microsoft has constructed the management portion of its cloud. The time it has taken Microsoft to fix the issue also puts the company in a less than favorable light. But fortunately for Microsoft and users, the issue hasn't affected the ability to run applications on Azure.

Microsoft has apologized for any inconvenience this has caused its customers.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/microsofts-windows-azure-cloud-hit-worldwide-interruption-229912
Related Topics: Tara Lynn   chris brown   arian foster   Alexian Lien   Erbie Bowser  

NSA taps Yahoo, Google data flows -- SALESFORCE offers DIY app store -- Kids flee FACEBOOK -- SCHILLER: Goldman better than Google for grads

October 31, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC

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>> DRIVING THE DAY: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say, by Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani: "The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world... By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot... The NSA's principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency's British counterpart, GCHQ... From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants." WaPo
>>>> How the NSA is infiltrating private networks WaPo
>>>> PRISM already gave the NSA access to tech giants. Here's why it wanted more. WaPo The Switch
>>>> NSA issues non-denial denial of infiltrating Google and Yahoo's networks TechDirt
>>>> What's on tap at the NSA? Google's and Yahoo's private fiber backbones InfoWorld
>>>> No US action, so states move on privacy law NY Times (paywalled)

>> GOING PRIVATE: Salesforce.com to offer private version of its AppExchange app store, by Chris Kanaracus: "Salesforce.com has long had a public AppExchange software marketplace, but now it's going to give customers the ability to create their own private AppExchanges where employees can download applications to use in their jobs. Private AppExchange is generally available as of Friday to customers running Salesforce.com's Enterprise and higher editions." InfoWorld
>>>> Salesforce.com launches private AppExchange -- because the world loves appstores Forbes

>> SPY VS. SPY: Silent Circle, Lavabit unite for 'Dark Mail' encrypted email project: "Silent Circle and Lavabit abruptly halted their encrypted email services in August, saying they could no longer guarantee email would remain private after court actions against Lavabit, reportedly an email provider for NSA leaker Edward Snowden... Dark Mail would shield both the content of an email and its 'metadata,' including 'to' and 'from' data, IP addresses and headers. The email providers hope a version will be ready by next year." InfoWorld
>>>> Announcing the Dark Mail Alliance -- founded by Silent Circle & Lavabit Silent Circle blog
>>>> Lavabit to release code as open source, as it creates Dark Mail Alliance to build even more secure email TechDirt

>> CLOUDUS INTERRUPTUS: Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud hit by worldwide interruption, by Mikael Ricknäs: "Microsoft's Windows Azure suffered from an issue on Wednesday that affected a management feature in the compute section of the public cloud, and remained unresolved Thursday morning. Microsoft first updated the Windows Azure Service Dashboard at 2:35 AM UTC... About 17 hours later the company posted a message saying that manual actions to perform so-called swap deployment operations may fail, and users should therefore delay them. Microsoft was still struggling to solve the issue on Thursday morning." InfoWorld

>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: EU researchers create prototype for a server-free future internet, by David Meyer: "Today's Internet is based on client devices such as PCs or smartphones talking to centralized servers to get their data. If an EU-funded project called Pursuit takes flight, the future could be a whole lot more distributed... The Cambridge University prototype would represent a dramatic revamp of that way of doing things. Part of a wider EU-funded project called Pursuit, the putative protocol operates more like... BitTorrent, in that users share information directly with one another, rather than through a server." GigaOM
>>>> Future Internet aims to sever links with servers Phys.org

>> STAT DU JOUR: Sony slips into loss despite pick up in smartphone sales, by John Ribeiro: "Losses widened in the quarter to ¥19.3 billion (US$196 million) from ¥15.5 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the quarter was close to ¥1.8 trillion, a 10.6 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Revenue, however, decreased 9 percent in constant currency, reflecting the volatility of the Yen. Sony reported in the last quarter a modest profit of ¥3.5 billion which it attributed to improved sales of smartphones and the favorable impact of foreign exchange rates, continuing a turnaround that started in the last fiscal year, when it posted its first profit in many years... also revised downwards its revenue and net profit outlook for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, after revising its annual sales forecasts for certain product lines." PCWorld

>> PREMATURELY GRAY: Facebook beats on revenues and EPS but teen users show decline, by Jim Edwards: "It's a big beat on both revenues and EPS, and the stock popped up 15% immediately in after hours trading.... But then it gave up most of those gains when CFO David Ebersman said the company had seen a small reduction in use by teens.... But no one at Facebook has ever admitted before that it may be losing teens. Ebersman said the stats were not significant: 'We did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens. ... This is of questionable significance.'... The reason: Investors bet on the future, not what just happened. And if kids are losing interest in Facebook that could create headwinds in terms of future user growth." Business Insider
>>>> Facebook earnings show that desktop ads -- and Google -- may soon become irrelevant VentureBeat
>>>> Facebook may start logging your cursor movements Ars Technica

>> GONE TO PLAID: Sprint taps into its spectrum for fast LTE, with room to grow, by Stephen Lawson: "...demonstrated a high-speed service it calls Sprint Spark, with current peak speeds of 50-60Mbps (bits per second) and the potential to exceed 1Gbps. It also promoted three upcoming handsets that will be able to take advantage of all three of its spectrum bands. Sprint is in catch-up mode against its bigger rivals, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and is looking to use its huge spectrum holdings as an advantage. The company is deploying LTE in its 800MHz and 1.9GHz bands as well as the 2.5GHz spectrum it acquired with Clearwire, on which the Sprint Spark service runs." PCWorld
>>>> New cable broadband spec says 10 Gbps speeds possible Now if we could just come up with a better name than 'DOCSIS 3.1' Cable Tech Talk

>> MAN BITES DOG: Robert Shiller: Young people with a moral purpose should work for Goldman Sachs, not Google, by Alison Griswold: "In a debate titled 'Goldman Vs. Google: A career on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley?' at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering, the esteemed economist argued that young graduates with a 'moral purpose' and interest in the financial world should work for Goldman Sachs instead of Google.... 'When you study finance, you are studying how to make things happen, on a big scale, on a lasting scale,' Shiller said. 'That has to matter more than getting into Google and programming some little gimmick.' The way Shiller sees it, finance underscores every worthwhile pursuit. 'Every human activity that matters has to be financed,' he explained. 'You cannot do good things for the world all by yourself.'" Business Insider

>> CRASH: Google DNS departs Brazil ahead of new law, by Doug Madory: "Brazil is pressing ahead with a new law to require Internet companies like Google to store data about Brazilian users inside Brazil, where it will be subject to local privacy laws. The proposed legislation could be signed into law as early as the end of this week... By moving DNS resolution out of Brazil and back to the United States, Google DNS now operates outside of Brazilian jurisdiction. It still works just fine for Latin American users, just much more slowly... if Google leaves Brazil as they did in China, they could opt to make their local infrastructure investments in another country... with privacy laws more to their liking." Renesys

>> END OF LIFE CYCLE: The case against Gmail, by Ed Bott: "Google's flagship service has been showing signs that it's past its prime. In particular, Gmail's losing the ability to play nicely with third-party clients... Despite Google's lofty rhetoric about open standards, the Gmail protocols are undocumented and not available for licensing... in December 2012 Google dropped [Microsoft's] Exchange ActiveSync support for its nonpaying customers--including anyone with a free Gmail account and with a free (grandfathered) Google Apps account... Google wants you to interact with Gmail in a browser window--preferably Chrome--or in one of its iOS or Android apps." ZDNet
>>>> How I switched from Gmail to Outlook.com (and how you can too) ZDNet
>>>> Outlook.com calendar maintenance enters its second week PCWorld

>> GOING VIRAL: Waiting for the next great technology critic, by Pat Buchanan: "For well over a decade, the two most influential voices about consumer technology have been a sixty-six-year-old man who lives just outside of Washington, D.C. and a fifty-year-old man who resides in Westport, Connecticut. The former, Walt Mossberg, defined what it means to be a mainstream gadget reviewer when he started a weekly column, Personal Technology, for the Wall Street Journal, in 1991. The latter, David Pogue, began his column for the New York Times, State of the Art, in 2000. Every week, like a modern-day Prometheus handing down secret knowledge about arcane tools, they have dutifully informed millions of readers about the latest gadgets or services, and whether or not they are worth purchasing. Both of them will be gone soon: it was announced last month that Mossberg would leave the Journal at the end of the year, and Pogue revealed last week that he would be leaving the Times shortly." The New Yorker

>> MICROSOFT MISCHIEF: Microsoft Bing tests 'Hero' ads in Windows 8.1 search results, jousting with Google, by Todd Bishop: "Hero Ads... blend elements of display and search advertising. They are being tested by advertisers including Land Rover, Jaguar, Home Depot, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Radio Shack. During the pilot, the ads will be shown to a subset of people searching for the specific names of the companies or brands on Windows 8.1." GeekWire
>>>> Here come Windows 8.1's 'Hero' ads -- brought to you by stealthy snooping InfoWorld

>> IBM gives up fight to build CIA's $600m secret cloud, hands deal to Amazon The Register

>> Scott McNealy tells Hong Kong to go open, free and global Computerworld HK

>> Google's Glass accessory store is coming online (Wow. Stuff's expensive!) Marketing Land

>> What's it like to design the future of Microsoft? Ask this guy. TechNet

>> SAP confirms 20 customers live on HANA cloud, hundreds in the pipeline Computerworld UK

>> Steam rises to 65 million active users, eclipsing Xbox Live The Verge

>> 10 common tasks for MongoDB InfoWorld

>> Fantastical 2: The calendar Apple should have built… again 9to5Mac

>> Mobile saturation means innovation will slow InfoWorld

>> World's first Bitcoin ATM sees 81 exchanges, $10,000 in transactions during first day GeekWire

>> California woman gets the first ticket for driving with Google Glass Glass Almanac

>> SORRY, WE HAD TO RUN IT: Lenovo taps Ashton Kutcher in long-life battery challenge to Apple Bloomberg

>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "This is the only time the city of Boston has ever punished a Cardinal." @rilaws

FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.

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Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/nsa-taps-yahoo-google-data-flows-salesforce-offers-diy-app-store-kids-flee-facebook-schiller-goldman-be?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
Category: tampa bay rays   cnn   survivor   Espn College Football   oprah winfrey  

Chrome Canary now blocks recognized malware downloads

Google's stable Chrome release already has a reset tool in case malware hijacks the browser, but we're sure many would rather avoid that rogue code in the first place. Thankfully, a new build of Chrome Canary automatically blocks hostile apps. Try to download malware that Google recognizes and you'll get a polite warning instead of a rude surprise. The safeguard isn't likely to reach more reliable versions of Chrome for some time, but those willing to experiment in the name of security can grab the Canary browser at the source link.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/31/chrome-canary-now-blocks-malware-downloads/?ncid=rss_truncated
Tags: Doug Martin   st louis cardinals   new york times   Delbert Belton   Outside Lands  

The Virality of Evil

Students who sign up for Duolingo’s language courses will be tasked with translating BuzzFeed articles, one sentence at a time. The translated stories will then appear online.

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by STR/Reuters

The idea that electronic media would bring the world together is not particularly original—remember Marshall McLuhan’s “global village”?—but its proponents have always been hazy on the details. Are we to celebrate the fact that the “Gangnam Style,” a satire of South Korean hipster lifestyle, has garnered roughly 1.8 billion views on YouTube when most viewers probably never got the joke?

Thanks to social media, ideas can now spread at rapid-fire speed. Just look at “Kony2012,” last year’s ill-fated viral campaign to hunt the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. Alas, the speed doesn’t easily translate into action: Instead of deep engagement with an issue by a dozen committed people, we get rather shallow engagement by a few million—and in ways that might undermine efforts to promote global awareness about a problem like guerrilla warfare in Africa. Such viral campaigns might work for highly targeted interventions like fund-raising, but anything beyond that is tricky.

The latest innovation in digital cosmopolitanism comes from BuzzFeed, a site that has rapidly become one of the most visited online properties. In August 2013, BuzzFeed had 85 million visitors, three times more than just a year ago; by next year, it expects to become one of the most popular sites in the world. (For comparison, according to figures from January 2013, BBC News had just 64 million unique visitors per month on two of its properties—bbc.com and bbc.co.uk—combined.)

By and large, BuzzFeed’s stories are written to be shared—the site’s slogan is “The Viral Web in Real-Time”—which explains why, according to one recent study, its stories receive more shares on Facebook than stories by any other site, including those of the New York Times and the Guardian. (A typical BuzzFeed story: 10 quotations, with pictures of Kanye West and Freddie Mercury, presented in a quiz-like format under the headline “Who Said It: Kanye West Or Freddie Mercury?”)

Judging by the spectacular results, BuzzFeed has turned “virality” into a science: Thanks to advanced analytics and tools of Big Data, they know exactly what needs to be said—and how—to get the story shared by most people. Its approach is best described as Taylorism of the viral: Just like Frederick Taylor knew how to design the factory floor to maximize efficiency, BuzzFeed knows how to design its articles to produce most clicks and shares. The content of the article is secondary to its viral performance.

Until now, there was just one barrier to BuzzFeed’s plan for world domination: While many of its stories are highly visual, they still contain a fair amount of text—a barrier to non-English speakers. Well, this barrier is no more: BuzzFeed has struck a deal with Duolingo. Duolingo is a promising startup for studying languages that was founded by Louis von Ahn, the person we have to thank (or blame) for inventing the anti-spam CAPTCHA system that prompts us to type what we see in two pictures to make sure we are not robots on a spamming mission. Initially, the CAPTCHA system relied on random text, but then Von Ahn realized that he could get people to fight spam and help to digitize books at the same time: Why have people enter random text if they can be entering hard-to-read text from scanned books?

Internet guru Clay Shirky sees such logic—which he has dubbed “cognitive surplus”—at work in many other parts of digital culture. In his 2010 book of the same name, Shirky argued that we must find ways to harness this “cognitive surplus” and turn it into social good. Duolingo is Von Ahn’s attempt to build a business by leveraging “the cognitive surplus” that is inherent in language learning. Millions—perhaps billions—of sentences are translated every day by students of foreign languages. All those sentences tend to disappear into the void of language textbooks and student notebooks. This is where BuzzFeed comes in: Students who sign up for Duolingo’s language courses would be tasked with translating BuzzFeed articles, one sentence at a time. The translated stories will then appear online. The model is quite elegant: Students have to translate sentences anyway; Duolingo doesn’t charge students for language learning, but BuzzFeed does pay it for the final translations.

Here is BuzzFeed’s version of “global village”: If its plan works, more and more people around the globe will be reading about U.S. popular culture in their native languages. Note that BuzzFeed does not seem to be interested in finding overlooked stories in the foreign press and bringing them to the masses, in English or in any other language. No, what it is interested in is taking viral stories that have already proven their worth in English and taking them global, conquering even more eyeballs that were previously hard to reach due to language barriers.

Instead of deep engagement with an issue by a dozen committed people, we get rather shallow engagement by a few million.

In the process, it gains even more traffic and enters local advertising markets—BuzzFeed is launching local editions in Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese, too. National news players that produce genuine hard news—the kind that takes money to report and might not receive many likes and shares on social networks, as it focuses on issues that are grim rather than viral—would have a powerful new competitor. There’s no scenario in which BuzzFeed’s “cosmopolitan turn” is good for foreign news sites: They will be pressed to either soften up their own news coverage—to boost social media friendliness—or be faced with the prospect of making even less money off their online advertising.

In some respect, BuzzFeed is putting the toolkits of Big Data and crowdsourcing to logical use—assuming that it doesn’t really see itself as being in the news business. BuzzFeed’s goal, after all, is to get the maximum number of shares and likes on social media—for it’s the shares and likes that determine how much money the site is making. In this, BuzzFeed thinks more like a Silicon Valley startup rather than a traditional journalistic entity, with its outdated civic concerns that go beyond the need to maximize and monetize traffic.

The BuzzFeed-Duolingo partnership reveals the difficulty of operating with apolitical concepts like “cognitive surplus” that are not properly grounded in economics or theories of globalization. On the face of it, Duolingo and BuzzFeed are harnessing plenty of “cognitive surplus,” having found an effective way to tap into the vast market of people who want to learn English to succeed in today’s global economy. But what is here to celebrate?

This particular instance of harnessing of “cognitive surplus”—in the name of building a global village, with BuzzFeed as its most popular international news outlet—might actually undermine the work of news outlets that keep the world informed about news that do not revolve around Kanye West, Hollywood, or cats. 

Will there still be any serious news outlets in the “global village”? Or will it, like most villages, thrive on gossip alone? So far, the latter seems more likely—and for reasons that have everything to do with economics and little to do with technology.

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/duolingo_buzzfeed_partnership_the_translation_project_is_terrible_for_foreign.html
Category: mrsa   jennifer lawrence   darren sproles   broncos   How To Close Apps On Ios7  

‘True Blood’ Actor Luke Grimes Cast As Christian Grey’s Brother In ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’

A Little More Eye Candy To Round Out The Cast

Posted by: Shannon on October 26, 2013|

Okay, Fifty Shades Of Grey casting folks. You got me back… sort of. Y’all know I was devastated when Charlie Hunnam dropped out of the lead role as Christian Grey. I mean, devastated. And even though Jamie Dornan– a hottie in his own right– is the new Christian Grey, I was still nursing my Hunnam-related wounds. But now we have more good casting news! Luke Grimes from HBO‘s True Blood is now on board to play Christian Grey‘s brother, Elliot. I have yet to jump on the True Blood bandwagon (though I expect to binge-watch a few years from now on Netflix), so I don’t know much about this guy, but I have seen the pics, and well. Yes. I’m in. Click inside for more!

Entertainment Weekly has the deets:

True Blood star and Brothers & Sisters alum Luke Grimes has joined the cast of Fifty Shades of Grey, EW confirmed Friday.

Variety initially reported that Grimes will be playing the role of Christian Grey’s brother in director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s big-screen adaptation of E L James’ bestseller. Dakota Johnson is playing the lead role of Anastasia Steele, and Wednesday reports surfaced that Irish actor Jamie Dornan was in final talks to play the part of Christian Grey. Focus and Universal have yet to confirm Dornan’s casting, but James did tweet a warm welcome to the actor on Thursday.

And here’s the official confirmation tweet:

 

I’ll need the True Blood fans to fill me in on this guy’s acting prowess. But if the goal is to get people to watch this movie by casting a plethora of really hot guys, then yeah. They’re doing an excellent job, LOL.

Here’s hoping we get more good news about the production, and that I eventually, fully recover from the pain of losing Charlie Hunnam. It’s gonna be difficult, but a few more hotties will probably move the process along. They still have to cast Jose (Anastasia’s photographer friend), so here’s hoping they find some hot, Latin eye candy for that one. I know, it’s superficial but c’mon. It is the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.

[Source]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pinkisthenewblog/~3/Co5hnywSlxM/true-blood-actor-luke-grimes-cast-as-christian-greys-brother-in-fifty-shades-of-grey
Category: Dakota Johnson   Janet Yellen   julio jones   snl   rosh hashanah  

San Francisco Chronicle to stop using 'Redskins' in print

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The San Francisco Chronicle has joined a growing list of publications that will no longer use the term ''Redskins'' when referring to Washington's NFL team.

Managing Editor Audrey Cooper said Wednesday that the newspaper's style committee decided to eliminate the term because of a long-standing policy against using racial slurs.

''Not everyone has to be personally offended by a word to make it a slur,'' Cooper said in a statement titled ''A name unfit for print.''

''Make no mistake,'' she said, '''redskin' is a patently racist term.''

The newspaper's committee decided that though other team names, like the Chiefs and the Warriors, refer to Native Americans, they are not offensive in and of themselves and will continue to be used.

As for ''redskins,'' she said in a telephone interview, ''we are in the process of eliminating the use of the term in agate and stories.''

The debate about whether the term is in fact an epithet has raged for decades, particularly in sports and media. The Chronicle's style council revisited the issue last month at the request of Scott Ostler, one of its sports columnists, who has written advocating that the team change its name.

The Chronicle joins several other publications that have made the same decision over the years, including the Kansas City Star, Slate.com, and the Portland Oregonian, which dropped the term more than two decades ago. Sportscaster Bob Costas has also spoken out against the use of the word.

Cooper said the Chronicle will simply refer to the team as ''Washington'' in most cases. It will use the ''Redskins'' only when not using it would be confusing for readers, such as in a story about the controversy surrounding the term.

''We have a responsibility to set the tone for civil discourse,'' Cooper said. ''That doesn't mean we set the rules, but it does mean we can lead by example.''

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sf-chronicle-stop-using-redskins-013221604--nfl.html
Tags: Tom Clancy   foxnews   liberace   Mayweather   Million Muslim March  

Senate Dems Struggle to Defend Promises

As he stepped off an escalator leading from the Capitol's underground subway system to the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson opened up a yellow folder, pulled out a copy of the “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act," and handed it to fellow senator Chris Coons.

"I look forward to reading this," said Coons, a Democrat from Delaware.

"It's the president's exact language," replied Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/30/senate_dems_struggle_to_defend_promises_318875.html
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