Highlights of F-35 Flight Testing

At NAS Patuxent River, Md., NAS Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, and Edwards AFB, Ca.

Via Theo Spark:

Cloud Computing Vulnerable to Hackers

I love this idea of cloud computing, but it's not particularly safe.

Interesting piece at Los Angeles Times, "Hacker attacks show vulnerability of cloud computing":

As hackers continue their rampage against the world's largest banks, defense contractors and technology companies, executives and government officials are confronting a sobering truth: The bad guys are winning.

The seemingly unending string of high-profile attacks, most recently against Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp., have shown that nearly every organization is vulnerable to a growing contingent of well-trained and agile attackers who are finding security holes faster than they can be plugged.

"It's gotten very dangerous out there," said Stan Stahl, a security consultant and president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Information Systems Security Assn. "There's an epidemic of this stuff going on right now."

The increase in high-profile attacks comes as companies are looking to move more of their business operations online, including to the "cloud," in which computing tasks are outsourced to firms that maintain huge data centers around the world.

Despite the cloud's potential for cost savings and reducing the hassles of running in-house computer servers, security analysts say it may not yet be as safe as advertised — a warning that many companies are taking seriously.

Alex Bermudez, the security manager for Beachbody, a Los Angeles company that makes the popular P90X workout videos, said that although his company is beefing up security as it expands overseas, he's held off on shifting operations into the cloud.

"There are a lot of good technology companies doing the cloud well," he said, but having his company's data stored remotely, alongside data from many other firms, "is a little scary."

More at the link.

The Internet Lets It All Hang Out

See Gordon Crovitz, at Wall Street Journal. A great piece.

The Other America: Mountain View Workers Struggle as High Tech Booms

Fascinating piece at New York Times, "In Mountain View, 2 Contrasting Economic Worlds Intersect":

At the Google campus on the outskirts of Mountain View, employees sip lattes under brightly colored umbrellas as others pass on company bicycles, laptops secured in the front baskets. This year the company will add substantially to its work force of more than 5,000 in that Silicon Valley city, and it has just leased nine acres to expand its campus.

But closer to downtown, Carolina Rivera finds herself in a decidedly less attractive environment — the crowded office of the Community Services Agency, where she is looking for a job. She has three children to support and has not found anything since her hours at an organic-food factory were reduced. Those like Mrs. Rivera find life difficult in Mountain View: the competition for work is fierce, housing is expensive and cuts in government services are pending as the city tries to balance its budget.

Mountain View, home to technology kingpins like Google, LinkedIn and Symantec, illustrates the disconnect between the current technology boom and the daily economic realities of many in Silicon Valley. The five biggest tech companies with headquarters in town are valued at more than $200 billion, but Mountain View, with a population of 74,000, faces a $2.6 million budget gap and has an unemployment rate of 7.7 percent.

“We really are seeing two very different economies emerging,” said Emmett Carson, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. “We have the Google campus; they’re expanding, they’re adding employees, they’re doing very well financially. But the nonprofit sector and local government have been stretched to the maximum.”

But these people are supposed to be progressive:

Part of the problem is that corporate campuses, with their own cafeterias, day care centers and other employee perks, are not always very integrated into the surrounding community.

“The industry doesn’t create a lot of demand for services,” said Terry Christensen, a professor at San Jose State University who specializes in Silicon Valley politics. “The Google campus, they pay their taxes, but their workers don’t necessarily use parks, police and other traditional services, so you get a disconnect between the businesses themselves and the people who work in them.”

Just as important, many local residents are simply not in the talent pool for high-tech jobs. The people looking for work at the Community Services Agency have skills in other areas, like housecleaning, gardening and washing dishes, and those jobs are scarce.

Actually, Google acts exactly as it should. It's an extremely successful business that creates a self-sustaining social support system. The trick is to create more Googles, that is, to expand the employment sector to include more companies providing goods and services to an expanding marketplace, which will increase the demand for labor and take the strain off local governments, which don't have the money to care for the sick and unskilled. The rub is that Googe and other progressive tech firms are left-leaning business organizations that operate according to a vision more like Milton Friedman's than Paul Krugman's. It's all in the messaging. New York Times is going off the reservation on this one.

China Hacks Google

At WSJ, "Google Mail Hack Blamed on China":

Google Inc. said Chinese hackers targeted the email accounts of senior U.S. officials and hundreds of other prominent people in a fresh computer attack certain to intensify growing concern about the security of the Internet.

The victims, including government and military personnel, Asian officials, Chinese activists and journalists, were tricked into sharing their Gmail passwords with "bad actors" based in China, Google said in an unusual blog post. The attack's goal was to read and forward the victims' email.

The company, which in 2010 blamed China for an attack on its computer networks, said it recently discovered the Gmail campaign, which "appears to originate from Jinan, China," and targeted specific individuals.

In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security said they were working with Google to investigate the attacks. "We have no reason to believe that any official U.S. government email accounts were accessed," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

More at the link.

Interesting how the FBI got involved. It's a hacking case, you know, like Representative Weiner's. A Member of Congress certainly merits concern, although we've heard so many lies and distortions by now I think the dude's safe.

Anyway, see the Google blog post, "Ensuring your information is safe online." (Via Memeorandum.)