Fuzzing Raft for Fun and Publication
Good intro to fuzz-testing a distributed system; I’ve had great results using similar approaches in unit tests
EC2 Spot Blocks for Defined-Duration Workloads
you can now launch Spot instances that will run continuously for a finite duration (1 to 6 hours). Pricing is based on the requested duration and the available capacity, and is typically 30% to 45% less than On-Demand.
The Surveillance Elephant in the Room…
Very perceptive post on the next steps for safe harbor, post-Schrems.
And behind that elephant there are other elephants: if US surveillance and surveillance law is a problem, then what about UK surveillance? Is GCHQ any less intrusive than the NSA? It does not seem so – and this puts even more pressure on the current reviews of UK surveillance law taking place. If, as many predict, the forthcoming Investigatory Powers Bill will be even more intrusive and extensive than current UK surveillance laws this will put the UK in a position that could rapidly become untenable. If the UK decides to leave the EU, will that mean that the UK is not considered a safe place for European data? Right now that seems the only logical conclusion – but the ramifications for UK businesses could be huge. [….] What happens next, therefore, is hard to foresee. What cannot be done, however, is to ignore the elephant in the room. The issue of surveillance has to be taken on. The conflict between that surveillance and fundamental human rights is not a merely semantic one, or one for lawyers and academics, it’s a real one. In the words of historian and philosopher Quentin Skinner “the current situation seems to me untenable in a democratic society.” The conflict over Safe Harbor is in many ways just a symptom of that far bigger problem. The biggest elephant of all.
(tags: ec cjeu surveillance safe-harbor schrems privacy europe us uk gchq nsa)
ECJ ruling on Irish privacy case has huge significance
The only current way to comply with EU law, the judgment indicates, is to keep EU data within the EU. Whether those data can be safely managed within facilities run by US companies will not be determined until the US rules on an ongoing Microsoft case. Microsoft stands in contempt of court right now for refusing to hand over to US authorities, emails held in its Irish data centre. This case will surely go to the Supreme Court and will be an extremely important determination for the cloud business, and any company or individual using data centre storage. If Microsoft loses, US multinationals will be left scrambling to somehow, legally firewall off their EU-based data centres from US government reach.
(cough, Amazon)(tags: aws hosting eu privacy surveillance gchq nsa microsoft ireland)