NY Court blocks the FBI!!

Here is what @VMNomad liked about it:

• it is very easy to deploy
• Minimum requirements are very loose.
• you can use second hand servers to build HA setup
• it comes with all flavours of cool storage features like log structured file system, deduplication, customisable L1 and L2 cache, etc
• it delivers great performance on commodity hardware
• it runs on most of the hypervisors

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 1 - Overview

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 2 - Networking/iSCSI Topology

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 3 - Disk and Cache Types

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 4 - Installation Guide Notes

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 5 - Performance tests

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 6 - Failure Scenarios

StarWind Virtual SAN on ESXi review - Part 7 - Final Thoughts

Tagging @StarWind_Software @KOOLER @original_anvil

nixCraft has a nifty how-to on how to get a visible progress bar when using the dd command. Lots of people looking for this functionality. It uses the pv command.

Sample:

pv -tpreb /dev/vda | dd of=/dev/vdb

A review of the review process for Nutanix shows why you might want to reconsider doing business with the company. Poor reviews followed by blocking reviewing to keep customers from seeing how their products perform.

http://www.webupd8.org/2017/01/wine-20-stable-released-install-it-in.html

After more than a year of development, Wine 2.0 has been released with over 6600 changes, which include support for Microsoft Office 2013, GStreamer 1.0 support, various Direct3D 10 and 11 improvements and more.

Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) allows running Microsoft Windows application on Unix-like operating systems. It is written primarily using reverse engineering, to avoid copyright issues.

Wine 2.0 release highlights:

• support for Microsoft Office 2013;
• more Direct3D 10 and 11 were implemented, including several shader model 4 and 5 shader instructions, sRGB read/write support and more (but Direct 3D 11 is still not fully supported);
• GStreamer version 1.0 is supported for audio and video streams;
• 64-bit support on macOS;
• the macOS graphics driver supports a high-resolution ("Retina") rendering mode;
• window, bitmap and GDI DC render targets are implemented in Direct2D;
• in desktop mode, the taskbar displays running applications and allows switching between them;
• the clipboard support is reimplemented for better compatibility; copy & paste of HTML text is also improved. Drag & drop works more smoothly;
• font embedding in PDF files is supported;
• much more.

Nextcloud is tackling ransomware on your LANless / cloud based storage server through the use of an ransomware protection app that they have available in their app store. While not a complete security measure, the app can aid in reducing the risks and impact of a ransomware attack.

InfoWorld has a Roundup of Nineteen Free Programming Guides.

IBM has identified, announced and exploited a bug in the DropBox SDK. This exploit is especially dangerous as it is in the SDK rather than just in DropBox itself. This means that many applications made using the SDK may also be impacted. So the risk is potentially quite difficult to identify as any application that uses DropBox might carry the vulnerability.

http://fossbytes.com/learn-it-faster-the-complete-linux-kernel-in-a-single-map/

Microsoft has made their exam prep materials for the SQL Server exams available online for free.

The patent on MP3 decoders is expiring soon and that means that there will be a lot more flexibility for MP3 to be found inside of Linux and other open source systems where it is difficult to acquire patent rights.

Right now OReilly is offering free copies of their ebook Functional Programming with Python.

WSJ reports that Western Digital is Buying Sandisk for $19 Billion USD.

High tech meets agriculture meets recycling with Crop in a Box. This $43,000 unit built in a shipping container produces an acre's worth of crops in a very small space using little water and no sunlight. And you can monitor it from your smart phone!

CCleaner used to be free and the go to choice for registry cleaning but licensing and costs changed and it is not the great solution that it used to be. I've recently discovered BleachBit which is a free and open source replacement for CCleaner that has been around since 2008 and works on Windows (including Windows 10 now), Mac OSX and Linux!

This one is pretty amazing...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/03/lost-city-honduras-ciudad-blanca_n_6797194.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpsn00000001

Always a challenge with Sony's proprietary platforms, a group of hackers has managed to get Linux installed and running on Sony's latest gaming platform.

This one was so good, it needed a thread....