Friday, May 09, 2014

What I am reading 5/9/2014

Gizmodo - 300,000 servers remain vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. -

A new scan of the Internet—or at least the important bits: port 443 of IPv4 addresses—by Robert Graham at security researchers Errata reveals that 318,239 systems are still vulnerable to the OpenSSL. That's admittedly down from over 600,000 a month ago, but clearly there's still a long way to go. Graham explains what he found:

Not quite as bad as it sounds because when you read his report it becomes apparent there has been quite a bit of patching going on. 

Quartz - America's new wealthy have so little to offer society -

One disturbing implication of Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital, is that the American economy is slipping into a form of “rentier” capitalism, in which passive income from wealth, increasingly in the form of inherited fortunes, is supplanting dynamism, hard work and innovation. The term rentier came into use in the mid-19th century to describe people who lived off income from property rather than creating something of value. And now the rentiers have found a way to protect their gains—buying influence in the political system.

As I understand it Piketty doesn't say we are slipping into rentier capitalism; he says we are returning to it, but that is quibbling.  The basic question is - is he correct in his assertions.  I don't think so, but I don't have the background or research to prove it.  

Gizmodo - NYC will turn 7000 payphones into a huge free WiFi network -

The idea, says one city spokesperson to the New York Times, is to "level the playing field" for New Yorkers who can't afford broadband. It's doubtless also to figure out a way to make street-level advertising more lucrative, guaranteeing at least $17.5 million in annual ad revenue for the city.

But there's also a more vital purpose, as the DoITT explains. "While public payphone usage has decreased in recent years, the phones served a critical role during power outages following Hurricane Sandy, as public payphones receive electricity via the phone line and not external power sources," the office explains. These new stations would provide the city with Wi-Fi and access to 911, even if another superstorm takes out our electricity

YouTube - Build your own VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 Datacenter Starting with One PC

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