AWS won serverless – now all your software are kinda belong to them (theregister.co.uk)

Leading Edge Forum’s Simon Wardley, never one to mince words, helps to parse what a 70 per cent (or 44 per cent) lead means: “Let me translate that for you. Amazon is currently positioned to own 70 per cent of the future of ALL software.” Developers, for their part, happily focus on writing business logic while AWS (or Microsoft/Google) handle all the server infrastructure. As Matt Wood, AWS general manager of Deep Learning and AI, told me: “With S3, DynamoDB, and Lambda, you can build apps without thinking about the underlying infrastructure.”

Just let that sink in for a minute, shall we? I’m very happy that there are alternatives to the walled gardens that seem to be oh-so-confortable.

Walmart has patented autonomous robot bees (weforum.org)

Walmart has just filed a patent for autonomous, robot bees. Yes, that Walmart — and no, you didn’t slip into another, stranger dimension. The mega-corporation’s patent specifically covers “pollination drones.” These tiny robots could act just like bees, pollinating crops autonomously.

Black mirror is it you?

Google YOLO (blog.innerht.ml)

Buttons are everywhere. Elevator buttons, machinery buttons, and even “Nuclear Button” that sits on the President’s office desk. But are you always sure the button you push really performs what you want it to do?

Fun with Buttons!

iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means for Mobile Forensics (blog.elcomsoft.com)

Apparently, iOS stores information about the date and time the device was last unlocked or had a data connection to a USB port. After the seven days elapse, the Lightning port will be disabled. Once this happens, you will no longer be able to pair the device to a computer or USB accessory, or use an existing lockdown record, without unlocking the device with a passcode. The only thing you’ll be able to do is charging.

A good move! Wondering when Google draws level disabling the USB ports after a while.

Russlands Staatsfeind Nummer eins (republik.ch)

Das russische Internet steht kopf, seitdem Moskau versucht, den Kurznachrichtendienst Telegram zu blockieren. Wer ist Telegram-Gründer Pawel Durow, der als «russischer Zuckerberg» gilt?

Good Longread on Telegram and how their Founder operates.

Conference Buddy (conferencebuddy.io)

The idea was born for a simple reason: While I love going to meetups, barcamps and conferences, I don’t like going on my own when I don’t know anyone. Even the thought is intimidating. And I can’t be the only one, right?

A thing we talked about at PHPDays Verona during the past week. Great initiative!

Now Is The Perfect Time For An RSS Renaissance (neflabs.com)

So the very idea of RSS – obtaining content from a website without having to visit the site itself – is due for a comeback. No ads. No suspicious javascript. Just the signal without the noise. It’s not perfect privacy, but it’s one step back and two steps forward in the right direction.

Still on RSS. Never went away from it… even if it feels a bit oldscool. Own your content.

Victory! Fourth Circuit rules that border officials can’t subject electronic devices to suspicionless forensic searches (boingboing.net)

Now, in U.S. v. Kolsuz, the first appellate ruling since Riley, the Fourth Circuit appeals court has held that it is unconstitutional for US border officials to subject visitors devices to forensic searches without individualized suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.

Win!

Passive Wi-Fi: Bringing Low Power to Wi-Fi Transmissions (usenix.org)

We build prototype hardware and implement all four 802.11b bit rates on an FPGA platform. Our experimental evaluation shows that passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on off-the-shelf smartphones and Wi-Fi chipsets over distances of 30–100 feet in various line-of-sight and through-the-wall scenarios. Finally, we design a passive Wi-Fi IC that shows that 1 and 11 Mbps transmissions consume 14.5 and 59.2 µW respectively. This translates to 10000x lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets and 1000x lower power than Bluetooth LTE and ZigBee.

Impressive presentation!

120+ WordPress-Plugins im DSGVO-Check (mit Lösungen, Alternativen und Plugin-Tipps!) (blogmojo.de)

Because GDPR/DSGVO && WordPress

Everything old is new again: Microservices (blogs.dxc.technology)

Well, it depends. If you got your start programming in the 90s, you’d say I just defined a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). But, if you’re younger and cut your developer teeth on the cloud, you’d say: “Oh, you’re talking about microservices.”

Serverless, Microservices – Isn’t that all just SOA?

Translations of My hovercraft is full of eels in many languages (omniglot.com)

Mis Luftchüssiboot isch volle Aal

The most useful phrase in many languages 😉

This is what it’s like using only open-source software on Android (androidpolice.com)

Four years ago, Ars Technica wrote a detailed analysis of using Android without all the proprietary Google software. It wasn’t a great experience, as you can probably guess. But plenty can change in four years, so is the situation any better in 2018? That’s what I wanted to find out.

If you want to go Google-Free that’s a good article here!

New Rowhammer Attack Can Hijack Computers Remotely Over the Network (amp.thehackernews.com)

Since triggering a bit flip requires hundreds of thousands of memory accesses to specific DRAM locations within tens of milliseconds, a successful Throwhammer attack would require a very high-speed network of at least 10Gbps.
In their experimental setup, researchers achieved bit flips on a targeted server after accessing its memory 560,000 times in 64 milliseconds by sending packets over LAN to its RDMA-enabled network card.

Nerdy, i know but Rowhammer attacks are intersting!

Remediating Fukushima—“When everything goes to hell, you go back to basics” (arstechnica.com)

To further limit groundwater flow into reactors buildings, TEPCO actually froze the ground around them, creating a kind of frozen wall down to a depth of about 30 meters. Approximately 1,500 meters long, the wall is kept frozen by pipes filled with an aqueous solution of calcium chloride cooled to -30ºC. Freezing commenced in March 2016 and is now “99 percent complete,” according to Kohta.

Just one piece in the puzzle of cleaning up the Aftermath of Fukushima – And yes it’s already 7 years since the accident happened.