IBM Brings Anaconda Open Data Science Platform to its Cognitive Systems

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April 19, 2017

IBM is working with Continuum Analytics to offer the latter’s Anaconda open data science platform as part of IBM’s Cognitive Systems. Anaconda will also integrate with IBM’s PowerAI software for machine learning and deep learning.

IBM Cognitive Systems are based on the company’s own Power8 processors, which uses Nvidia’s high-speed NVLink interface to work in conjunction with Nvidia’s Tesla Pascal P100 GPU accelerators. The combination is designed to give a performance boost to deep learning and analytics applications.

Docker Debuts Containerized Kit for Building Linux Distros

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InfoWorld

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April 19, 2017

Today Docker unveiled LinuxKit and the Moby Project, a pair of projects that are intended to allow operating system vendors, do-it-yourselfers, and cutting-edge software creators to create container-native OSes and container-based systems.

The do-it-yourself kit

LinuxKit, which Docker has been using internally to create Docker Desktop and Cloud, uses containers as a building block for assembling custom Linux distributions. It provides a minimal system image—35MB at its absolute smallest—with all its system daemons containerized. Both system components and the software it ships with are delivered in containers.

GStreamer 1.12: Intel Media SDK Support and More

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Mark Filion

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April 19, 2017

With GStreamer 1.12’s first release candidate out for testing and the final release expected soon, here’s a brief preview of some of the (many) new features, bugfixes and improvements that will be arriving with this release. Of course, keep an eye out for the official release notes as they’ll provide considerably more information around these changes.

Written by Olivier Crete, Multimedia Lead at Collabora.

As usual, this latest stable release will come loaded with new features, notably support for the EGL extension used by the i.MX6 Vivante proprietary driver, support for waylandsink DMABuf importation (which means you can get zerocopy media display under Wayland) and support for the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder and decoder. However, one of the higlights will undoubtedly be the addition of support for Intel’s Media SDK*, the cross-platform API to access Intel’s hardware accelerated video encoder and decoder functions on Windows and Embedded Linux.

Along with a large cleanup of OpenCV elements, more controls and voice activity information for webrtcdsp, and more support for 10bits and 12bits pixel formats, one of the key new features is videoconvert now supporting the multi-threaded scaling and conversion, a big plus for real-time software manipulation of 4K and 8K streams.

Python programmers will rejoice as more features are natively accessible, in particular, GstCaps describing format can now be fully programmatically modified, thanks to new handwritten overrides.

Continue reading on Collabora’s blog.

The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

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Netflix Blog

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April 19, 2017

Containers are already adding value to our proven globally available cloud platform based on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. We’ve shared pieces of Netflix’s container story in the past (video, slides), but this blog post will discuss containers at Netflix in depth. As part of this story, we will cover Titus: Netflix’s infrastructural foundation for container based applications. Titus provides Netflix scale cluster and resource management as well as container execution with deep Amazon EC2 integration and common Netflix infrastructure enablement.

This month marks two major milestones for containers at Netflix. First, we have achieved a new level of scale, crossing one million containers launched per week. Second, Titus now supports services that are part of our streaming service customer experience. We will dive deeper into what we have done with Docker containers as well as what makes our container runtime unique.

Hadoop: The Rise of the Modern Data Lake Platform

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Information Age

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April 19, 2017

Hadoop, while it may be synonymous with big data, and while it may be free to access and work with, engineering teams globally will admit that behind every Hadoop undertaking is a major technical delivery project.

Failures are so commonplace that even the experts don’t have great expectations of 2017: at the recent Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney, research director Nick Heudecker claimed that 70% of Hadoop deployments in 2017 will either fail to deliver their estimated cost savings or their predicted revenue.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Hadoop was designed for big data storage, but it wasn’t designed as an actual big data application. Hadoop and Spark are incredible enabling technologies.

Dive Into Connected Car and Open Source at Automotive Linux Summit 2017

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The Linux Foundation

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April 18, 2017

Next month, the world’s leading automotive experts and engineers will gather at Automotive Linux Summit in Japan to discuss the future of connected cars and collaborate on the open source technologies driving innovation in the automotive arena.

Automotive Linux Summit, taking place May 31-June 2 in Tokyo, gathers automotive systems engineers, Linux experts, R&D managers, business executives, open-source licensing and compliance specialists and community developers, among others. The goal is to connect the developer community which is leading automotive innovation with the vendors and users providing and using the code. Together they will drive the future of embedded devices in the auto industry.

The full agenda for Automotive Linux Summit 2017 is now available. Session highlights include:

Introducing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Application in AGL Charming Chinook, Sri Maldia Hari Asti, Alps Electric Co., Ltd
Vehicle to Cloud: Connecting Cars to Non Automotive Internet Services, Fulup Ar Foll, IoT.bzh
Power Management for Car Infotainment, Takahiko Gomi, Renesas
Securing Vehicle-to-Cloud Data and Privacy with Digital Identity, Ashley Stevenson, ForgeRock
Cockpit System: Collaboration with Applications in AGL Ecosystem, Nobuhiko Tanibata, DENSO
Multi-Screen UX: New GUI Architecture for Next Generation Cockpit System, Takashi Tsubone, Panasonic

Keynote speakers will be revealed in the coming weeks. View the full agenda.

Automotive Linux Summit is co-located with Open Source Summit Japan, and attendees may add on registration to that event at no additional charge. Register now! Linux.com readers can save 5% on the “attendee” pass with discount code LINUXRD5.

Applications for diversity and needs-based scholarships are also being accepted.

Implementing DevOps: 5 Obstacles to Overcome

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ZDNet

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April 18, 2017

DevOps implementation is currently “all over the map,” said Jeff Sussna, founder and principal of Ingineering.IT and author of Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy. “There are some companies that we see at the enterprise DevOps conferences that are all in and making really comprehensive progress. In general though, the majority of companies I see are sort of grappling with it bit by bit, still trying to understand what it is and how to do it.”

Research shows that positive results — including faster deployments, fewer service problems, and more employee loyalty — await those who get it right.

Here are five common challenges enterprises encounter on their DevOps journeys, to help prepare you to tackle any difficulties that may arise.

Versioning a REST API in Kubernetes with Nginx Ingress Controller

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Anthony Chu

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April 18, 2017

An ingress makes it easy to route traffic entering a Kubernetes cluster through a load balancer like NGINX. Beyond basic load balancing and TLS termination, an ingress can have rules for routing to different backends based on paths. The NGINX ingress controller also allows more advanced configurations such as URL rewrites.

In this post, we’ll use ingress rules and URL rewrites to route traffic between two versions of a REST API. Each version is deployed as a service (api-version1 and api-version2). We will route traffic with path /api/v1 to api-version1, and /api/v2 to api-version2.

The sample application

We’ll be using a super simple ASP.NET Core application. Here’s the Configure() method in Startup.cs:

Explained: Neural Networks

By

MIT News

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April 18, 2017

In the past 10 years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems — such as the speech recognizers on smartphones or Google’s latest automatic translator — have resulted from a technique called “deep learning.”

Deep learning is in fact a new name for an approach to artificial intelligence called neural networks, which have been going in and out of fashion for more than 70 years. Neural networks were first proposed in 1944 by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts, two University of Chicago researchers who moved to MIT in 1952 as founding members of what’s sometimes called the first cognitive science department.

Neural nets were a major area of research in both neuroscience and computer science until 1969, when, according to computer science lore, they were killed off by the MIT mathematicians Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, who a year later would become co-directors of the new MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

9 Superheroes for Crack Security Teams

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InfoWorld

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April 18, 2017

Every great computer security team has a synergistic collection of skilled professionals who work well together to meet common goals. The team may debate a solution, but once a decision is made, everyone works hard to execute with no hard feelings. Good teams expect constant change and disruption. They know whatever it is they are trying to accomplish will likely be harder than anticipated.

When I encounter successful teams, distinct roles emerge among the group. Different organizations require different mixes of players, but these archetypes pop up again and again.